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Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau
Senator Arthur V. Watkins is the novel’s antagonist. A devout Mormon as well as a politician, he introduces the Termination Bill to Congress, threatening the continued survival of the people of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The novel as a whole, especially the storyline that follows Thomas, builds to the climactic scene in which Thomas and members of a delegation from the Turtle Mountain Reservation travel to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress against Arthur Watkins’s bill. Based on a real-life senator of the same name, Watkins is described by Martin Cross the most powerful person in Congress. His motivations are undeniably racist, yet he cloaks his racism in the language of empowerment and helping others, saying that he aims to “help” Native people “stand on their own two feet” by abrogating treaties signed between the U.S. government and Native tribes that were intended to last in perpetuity. One of Watkins’s most damning characteristics, according to Thomas, is that he doesn’t have a sense of humor. In the chapter where the delegation testifies before congress about the harm that would be caused by termination, everything Watkins says is taken from the actual congressional record. In a concluding note following the novel, Erdrich writes that the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa successfully opposed Watkins’s bill and was not terminated.
Arthur V. Watkins Quotes in The Night Watchman
The The Night Watchman quotes below are all either spoken by Arthur V. Watkins or refer to Arthur V. Watkins. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introductory Note
Quotes
My grandfather Patrick Gourneau fought against termination as a tribal chairman while working as a night watchman. He hardly slept, like my character Thomas Wazhashk. This book is fiction. But all the same, I have tried to be faithful to my grandfather’s extraordinary life. Any failures are my own. Other than Thomas, and the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant, the only other major character who resembles anyone alive or dead is Senator Arthur V. Watkins, relentless pursuer of Native dispossession and the man who interrogated my grandfather.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Three Men
Quotes
Thomas had a good friend in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Area Office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who had sent him a copy of the proposed bill that was supposed to emancipate Indians. That was the word used in newspaper articles. Emancipate.
A Bill
Quotes
In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex.
“They think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach out. They call it lightsome and gladsome.”
Who? [1]
Quotes
So it comes down to this, thought Thomas, staring at the neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of tedious words.
Who? [2]
Quotes
How should being an Indian relate to this country that had conquered and was trying in every possible way to absorb them? […] How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to their hearts, with something like love?
The Lamanites
Quotes
“Their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness, feeding upon beasts of prey, dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins.”
“What do you think, Rosey?” said Thomas. “It’s us.”
Thomas
Quotes
His mind was everything to him, but he hadn’t the slightest notion how to save it. He just kept diving down, grabbing for the word, coming back up. The battle with termination and with Arthur V. Watkins had been, he feared, a battle that would cost him everything.
Get the entire The Night Watchman LitChart as a printable PDF.
Arthur V. Watkins Quotes in The Night Watchman
The The Night Watchman quotes below are all either spoken by Arthur V. Watkins or refer to Arthur V. Watkins. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introductory Note
Quotes
My grandfather Patrick Gourneau fought against termination as a tribal chairman while working as a night watchman. He hardly slept, like my character Thomas Wazhashk. This book is fiction. But all the same, I have tried to be faithful to my grandfather’s extraordinary life. Any failures are my own. Other than Thomas, and the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant, the only other major character who resembles anyone alive or dead is Senator Arthur V. Watkins, relentless pursuer of Native dispossession and the man who interrogated my grandfather.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Three Men
Quotes
Thomas had a good friend in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Area Office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who had sent him a copy of the proposed bill that was supposed to emancipate Indians. That was the word used in newspaper articles. Emancipate.
A Bill
Quotes
In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex.
“They think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach out. They call it lightsome and gladsome.”
Who? [1]
Quotes
So it comes down to this, thought Thomas, staring at the neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of tedious words.
Who? [2]
Quotes
How should being an Indian relate to this country that had conquered and was trying in every possible way to absorb them? […] How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to their hearts, with something like love?
The Lamanites
Quotes
“Their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness, feeding upon beasts of prey, dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins.”
“What do you think, Rosey?” said Thomas. “It’s us.”
Thomas
Quotes
His mind was everything to him, but he hadn’t the slightest notion how to save it. He just kept diving down, grabbing for the word, coming back up. The battle with termination and with Arthur V. Watkins had been, he feared, a battle that would cost him everything.
