Violence and Historical Memory Theme Analysis

Hope Leslie is set during the Pequot War, which took place between 1636 and 1638 and involved New England’s Native Pequot tribe and the region’s newly arrived English colonists. Though Sedgwick was not the first American author to offer a fictionalized account of warfare between colonists and American Indians, her approach is noteworthy in several key ways. In particular, Sedgwick offers a remarkably sympathetic perspective on the violence Native people suffered at colonists’ hands. Additionally, this perspective is mainly narrated by women, who have often endured the greatest losses. When Sedgwick portrays the Pequot warriors’ actions, she also humanizes them more than contemporary accounts usually did. While Sedgwick doesn’t downplay the violence that Pequot warriors committed—the raid on the Fletcher home being the most vivid example—the accounts of her Native characters help place these events in a broader perspective. By including Native voices and humanizing perspectives in her portrayal of the Pequot War, Sedgwick suggests that American memories of these events have been disproportionately biased toward the conquerors’ account, and that a more nuanced perspective is needed in order for American readers to truly understand their history.

Sedgwick prioritizes accounts of warfare which are sympathetic to the American Indians. When Mrs. Fletcher admires her young son, Everell, the old Pequot woman, Nelema, laments, “I had sons too—and grandsons; but where are they? They trod the earth as lightly as that boy; but they have fallen like our forest trees, before the stroke of the English axe. Of all my race, there is not one, now, in whose veins my blood runs.” By comparing Pequot tragedy and even the threat of tribal extinction to the thriving of a white colonial family, Sedgwick lays emphasis on the starkly differing fortunes of the two peoples to a degree that other contemporary accounts did not.

This is even more strongly the case when Magawisca voices her perspective to Everell. The colonial boy directly invites the Pequot girl to tell her people’s story, and she does not mince her words: “Then listen to me,” she tells him, “and when the hour of vengeance comes […] remember it was provoked.” Coming as it does, shortly before Magawisca’s father leads warriors in a retaliatory raid against the Fletchers for the death of most of his own family, Magawisca’s account forces readers to consider that, horrifying as the raid might be, colonists’ provocation of the Pequots was a factor.

After Magawisca tells her story, Everell is moved, even though he has heard the outline of events before: “Everell had heard them detailed with the interest and particularity that belongs to recent adventures; but he had heard them in the language of the enemies and conquerors of the Pequods; and from Magawisca’s lips they took a new form and hue[.]” In other words, Everell recognizes that the account he has already heard—“in the language of the […] conquerors”—is different from the perspective of those who have been conquered, and that their perspective is inherently valuable and worth hearing, too. This, in turn, potentially shifts Everell’s outlook on the conflict.

Sedgwick also portrays American Indian warriors themselves in a sympathetic light. Although the Pequot attack on the Fletcher homestead is violent, their chief, Mononotto, is not portrayed as monstrous. When the Fletcher infant reaches toward him imploringly, “Mononotto’s heart melted within him; he stooped to raise the sweet suppliant.” Seemingly moved by the baby’s innocence, Mononotto thereafter calls a halt to the raid. Though Sedgwick does not deny the violence they commit, she humanizes the very figures who are often portrayed as subhuman in popular literature, and she intentionally places their acts of violence in a broader historical context, inviting better understanding.

Before the intended sacrifice of Everell, who is captured during the raid, the gathered Pequot people are also sympathetically portrayed: “There might have been among the spectators, some who felt the silent appeal of the helpless courageous boy; some whose hearts moved them to interpose […] but they were restrained by their interpretation of natural justice[.]” The American Indian people are not devoid of human feeling, Sedgwick emphasizes—and the violence they commit is not, in their eyes, arbitrary. Rather, it functions according to a law that makes sense to them—suggesting that, from the Pequot people’s perspective, white people’s actions often appear to be as subhuman and arbitrary as American Indian people’s actions are to white colonists.

The outcome of the Pequot War was the effective elimination of the Pequot tribe. Approximately 700 were killed, captured, or sold into slavery; most of those who survived the war were absorbed into other New England tribes. Yet Sedgwick isn’t satisfied to consign the Pequot story to distant history, instead making it vividly present through the memories of characters who suffered these events. In doing so, she obviously cannot change the past—yet she suggests that, like Everell Fletcher’s, her readers’ outlook can be enriched and broadened by listening to stories that haven’t typically been heard.