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Versions of Yamoyden: Native Americans in Early Nineteenth-Century Narratives

This essay discusses Yamoyden, a narrative poem published in 1820 by James Wallis Eastburn and Robert C. Sands, in terms of how American literary pioneers utilized and transformed its narrative through their interaction with different regional and cultural/social interests. In this interpretation, Yamoyden is proposed as New York historiography displaced onto New England, fashioned after Washington Irving’s “Philip of Pokanoket,” a romantic understanding of Metacom (King Philip). It is argued that Yamoyden demonstrates the incompatibility between the Puritan pursuit of freedom and its self-justification, and uses beloved elements of the natural world to symbolize the vexed problem of coexistence of Native Americans and whites. The essay puts this reading of Yamoyden into conversation with Hobomok and Hope Leslie, revised versions by Massachusetts authors; The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish, a New York variation influenced by the Massachusetts revisions; and Metamora, a masterpiece of national importance.