Land as a Commodity

A Plea for the West: a sermon preached before the Missionary Society of the Synod of South-Carolina & Georgia in Augusta, November 21, 1824

Land accumulation was essential component to the creation of the United States and its identity. A Presbyterian sermon titled A Plea for the West perfectly encapsulates the drive to replace and “civilize” Native Americans in order to gain access to their land and labor, creating avenues to forge the land into a more European image that can be “worked”. The sermon was delivered in South Carolina in 1824 preaching, “The tomahawk has been converted into the ploughshare. The forest has given way to the cultivated field…” here the language of colonization is plain to see, the land is quite literally being “converted” simultaneously with the people, “…The son of the warrior has become the husbandman or the mechanic”.¹ The religious transformation of the people of America through missionaries and assimilation coincides with the extractive transformation to create the new ideal of the physical landscape that matched the agrarian "American Dream". 

This landscape was not only a commodity itself but a place where more commodities could be produced, if only it were cleared first. The value of this land to (white) Americans can be seen in their increasingly aggressive efforts to obtain it as well as their ideological push to justify its theft in propaganda like the examples shown. Land "acquisition" was vital in creating the booming capitalist economy that would prop up the young nation and put it on the global stage. 

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826

Review of the Last Mohicans from The Wilmingtonian, 1826. 

The Last of the Mohicans is a novel set during the French and Indian War primarily in New York, published in 1826. It has gone down as one of the most popular fictions of American history and has been adapted into numerous movies and series some of which went on to receive awards. The story follows a white man raised by the Mohican tribe and the various encounters he has with Natives, British, and the French, it is ripe with Christian, specifically Protestant values and beliefs that shape the characters actions and fate.² Its popularity not only when it was first published but decades after points to its significance in contributing to the American mythos. The story reflects the ideas of divine providence in the times of expansion, casting the colonization of the people and land of the Americas as inescapable and the will of God. By assigning a religious warrant to the theft of Native land, there is a moral, not only excuse but motivation behind this commercial project. Not to mention the shallow interpretation of Native people through the indigenous characters, furthering the colonizer rationale with archetypes like the noble savage, belittling Natives peoples' intelligence in order to make it seem like the right thing to do by taking this land. 

The review of the novel shortly after its publishing sings it praises, showing how prevalent this kind of framing was in the minds of Americans. The fact that it is promoted as a children's book³ illustrates how morally correct it was seen to have been.