Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times. is a novel by the nineteenth-century American author and human rights campaigner Lydia Maria Child. Her first novel, published in 1824 under the pseudonym "An American", was inspired by John G. Palfrey's article in the North American Review. The novel is set during the late 1620s and 1630s. Among other themes, it relates the marriage of a recently immigrated white American woman, Mary Conant, to the eponymous Native American and her attempt to raise their son in white society.
The subject of miscegenation being taboo, the book initially fared poorly. An early review in the North American Review called the story "unnatural" and "revolting to every feeling of delicacy". However, before too long (and partly due to Child's intervention in Boston literary circles), many prominent Bostonians celebrated the novel. Child was later active as an abolitionist, feminist and supporter of Native Americans.
Contents
Plot
Hobomok is a work of historical fiction set in colonial New England. The events of the novel take place between 1629 and 1632 and concern the settlement of Plymouth and Salem, Massachusetts, by British-born Puritans, who are seeking religious freedom in the New World. The novel's protagonist is a teenage girl named Mary Conant, who, forbidden by her father to marry a non-Puritan white man, leaves white society for Native American society. She marries Hobomok, an indigenous man who has been an ally to her family. The novel ends when Mary's white lover, believed to be dead, returns to the colony. Hobomok dissolves his marriage to Mary, enabling her to marry Charles and to be reintegrated into white colonial society.
Major characters
Mary Conant is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Conant and the novel's protagonist. At the beginning of the novel, she appears obedient and angelic, the ideal daughter. As time moves on, Mary develops her sense of self and breaks from the mold of her Puritan community. Even though Mr. Conant forbids her relationship with Charles Brown, Mary ignores him and pursues Brown. Mary's strong-willed character and rebellious attitude manifest themselves in all aspects of her life. Towards the end of the novel, she marries Hobomok and has a child.
Mr. Conant is Mary's father and an authority in the Puritan Church. Mr. Conant is a traditionalist and doesn't allow Mary to marry Charles Brown because of their religious differences. Mr. Conant is the quintessential Puritan man: strict, stoic and repressive.
Mrs. Conant is married to Mr. Conant and is the mother of Mary. She is religious like her husband and frequently described as gentle and weak. She is obedient to her husband but wants the best for her daughter Mary. After she gets sick, on her deathbed, she tells her husband to let Mary marry Charles.
Charles Hobomok Conant (child) is the child of Hobomok and Mary Conant. After Hobomok's departure, he is raised by Mary and Charles in white society.
Sally Oldham Collier is the daughter of Mr. Oldham and best friend of Mary Conant. Sally is a flirty and mischievous personality who attracts many suitors. She works on her father's farm and acts as a nurse to the Salem colony. She is described as an upbeat personality with rosy skin, blue eyes and a plump figure. She ultimately marries John Collier, despite a marriage proposal from a different man named James Hopkins. Sally is known for presenting controversial opinions and for being assertive, as well as for being a free spirit who is apprehensive of the structure that living amongst a colony may bring to her life. Sally is against the marriage of Mary and Hobomok, but eventually comes to accept it, stating that he is “the best Indian I ever knew”, and that he now “seems almost like an Englishman” (172). Sally does not support Native Americans, rather she supports the idea of the “noble savage” and the westernization of native people.
Mr. Oldham is the father of Sally Oldham and family friend of Mr. Conant. He retains quite an outgoing nature, frequently questioning the current religious practices. This nature is also reflected through his daughter, Sally, who lives freely and speaks openly without the fear of consequences. Mr. Oldham is first introduced when he offers Mr. Conant some tobacco from his farm. He serves the purpose of progressing the debates with many of the main characters about the growing religious restrictions placed by the church.
Chapter summaries
Chapter 1.
The narrator describes his relationship to the land of New England and tells the story of one of his ancestors who lived 200 years ago. The ancestor arrives at Naumkeak (present day Salem, Massachusetts) and converses with Mr. Conant and Mr. Oldham about the colony. After dark, Mary makes her way into the woods and performs a ceremonial love ritual to reveal her true love. Hobomok, a Native American, jumps into the ritual circle before Charles Brown comes and escorts her away.
Chapter 2.
The people of the colony—which is now named Salem—gather to fulfill an order from the London Company and see the ships off. Afterwards, Thomas Graves tries to flirt with Sally Oldham, who wittily shoots him down. Mary and Sally walk together and Mary tells of the ritual she performed. She thinks that Hobomok played a trick on her and explains that Charles found her after he'd had a dream that she was in danger.
Chapter 3.
Mary goes out to milk the cows when Mr. Graves comes to flirt with her once again and she shoots him down once again. John Collier comes to call on the Oldham family and discusses religion, England, and the influence of the Catholic Church with them. Mr. Collier brings a marriage proposal from James Hopkins to Sally, but she tells him she prefers to be with Collier instead. Collier shares Sally's sentiment and her parents approve the match.
Chapter 4.
Hobomok goes to deliver a message from Massasoit to Sagamore John. There, he gets into an altercation when Corbitant accuses him of having feelings for Mary. Hobomok nearly kills him, but Sagamore John steps in and they settle down for a meal. As Hobomok leaves, he contemplates the idea that he might have feelings for Mary, but rejects them. Corbitant follows Hobomok and the two fight. Hobomok knocks Corbitant unconscious.
Chapter 5.
Mary is saddened by her mother's drastically decaying health it is said she finds comfort in her friend Hobomok. Hobomok returns to Salem and reports to the townspeople that alliances have been formed against them and warn them of an attack from Corbitant and the others, then leaves. The men discuss religion until Hobomok returns and an attack is mounted on the people of Salem, specifically with the intent of burning down the Conant's house. Hobomok stands guard outside of the Conant's house while it is happening.
Background and influences
Child was an avid reader of classical and contemporary works during her adolescence: Homer, Johnson, Milton, and Scott.
In her early twenties, she was inspired by essays written by literary critics in the North American Review, exhorting American writers to develop a genuinely American literature, free of European influence. American geography and social history was said to offer “panoramic landscapes, heroic Puritan settlers, and exotic Indian folklore” with which to forge compelling romance novels. Child was familiar with the time-line of Puritan history and had lived in Maine (then a portion of Massachusetts) for eight years, where she had numerous encounters with the indigenous people.
The epic poem Yamowyden (1820) and Hobomok
The 23-year-old Child discovered the narrative poem Yamowyden, a Tale of the Wars of King Philip: in Six Cantos (1820) when examining an old edition of the North American Review. Written by James Wallace Eastburn and Robert Charles Sands, the work had been provided an enthusiastic review by critic John G. Palfrey, declaring it a milestone in American literature. The poem, according to Palfrey, was a vigorous and striking dramatization of the King Philip’s War (1675–1676), demanding emulation from American writers. Lydia Maria Child recalled:
I had never dreamed of such a thing as turning writer; but I siezed [sic] a pen, and before the bell rang for afternoon meeting I had written the first chapter, exactly as it now stands…
The degree to which Child’s Hobomok was influenced by the earlier narrative poem is disputed. Biographer Carolyn L. Karcher notes that the similarities between are not superficial:
Both describe their Indian title characters as “cast in nature’s noblest mould [sic]”; both feature Anglo-American heroines who elope with Indian lovers in defiance of paternal wishes. And both model themselves on William Shakespeare’s Othello having their dark-skinned heroes win the love of a white woman through eloquent recitals of their exploits and adventures.
Karchner reports that Child’s “political consciousness” on the historical facts relating to the systematic expiration of native populations beginning in the American colonial period was fundamentally flawed at the time she penned Hobomok. As such, the central theme that emerges in Hobomok is more a resistance to male patriarchy than opposition to white supremacy, the latter which Child would soon embrace and becoming a highly influential abolitionist in the 1830s and 1840s.
Four years after writing Hobomok, in 1828, Child would join her spouse, David Lee Child, in crusades against the dispossession and expulsion of Cherokee Indians from ancestral lands in the Gulf Coast interior of the United States. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 ordered these largely agrarian people to occupy lands west of the Mississippi in what is now the state of Oklahoma. The removal was ultimately effected in The Trail of Tears of 1838.
Key themes
Gender expectations:
Key to the central conflict of Hobomok is the idea of Mary's identity as a woman. In the colony, she is expected to play the role of a secondary subject to the men in her life. Yet, she disrupts this expectation by taking an active part in her destiny. She pursues Hobomok, a native, and pays no mind to the roles that her family and Church expect her to fulfill. She becomes wild and powerful, like the untamed North American land, validating the fear held by male authority figures that women would be uncontrollable in the New World.
Puritan repression:
A key theme throughout Hobomok is the effect of Puritanism in Salem. The novel suggests that the unstable nature of early American colonies was due, in part, to social repression and disparate distribution of power. This idea is voiced by Mr. Oldham in a letter to Church elders. The letter serves as a warning toward the church that too much repression will result in rebellion. Oldham uses the metaphor that the church is “running its horses so hard, and drawing the reins so tight, that they might raise up and caste their riders into the mud.” The novel suggests that Mary's relationship with Hobomok constitutes one such rebellion.
Race relations:
The character Homobok reflects Child's understanding of white-Native American relationship. Child's depiction of Hobomok, and Native Americans in general, is progressive only to the extent of the early 19th century context. The story of an interracial marriage between a supposedly devoted Puritan and a Native American was truly novel at the time, even to a degree that Child felt the need to publish it anonymously under a pretense that the novel was authored by a man. However, the character Hobomok remains in the category of the "noble savage": a loyal ally to the white settlers who is considerably westernized and, in the 19th century context, civilized. Readers are constantly reminded of the racial status of Native Americans by the consistent use of word "savage" as Child refers to Hobomok and as Homobok refers to himself by third-person pronouns in conversations. However, Child does not indulge the U.S. policies toward Native Americans at the time. In fact, Child imagines a collaborative and inter-cultural relationship between the white settlers and Native Americans through the problematic but also harmonious marriage of Hobomok and Mary.