1 Quinn, A. H., A History of the American Drama, from the Beginning to the Civil War (New York, 1923), p. 278.Google ScholarCf. Sitton, Fred, “The Indian Play in American Drama, 1750–1900,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University (1962), p. 84.Google Scholar

2 “The Redskin in the Drama, Early Representations of the American Indian in the Theatre,” New York Dramatic Mirror (July 20, 1907). From a clipping in the Theatre Collection of Harvard College Library.

3 Undated clipping in Theatre Collection of Harvard College Library. The clipping also refers to a New York production of James Barker's The Indian Princess, at the Park Theatre (“some twenty years after”) as an “operatic spectacle.”

4 Sitton, p. 130. See also Quinn, A. H., Representative American Plays (New York, 1938), 6th rev. ed., p. 79Google Scholar, for date of the Dunlap play. Sheridan's Piiarro was being produced in Philadelphia during the period 1855–60, according to Parrott, F. J., “The Mid-Century American Theatre, 1840–1860: A Survey of Theatre Production, Comment and Opinion,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., Cornell (1948), p. 132.Google Scholar

5 Parrott, p. 99, notes performances of Metamora in Philadelphia during the period 1850–1855. Reiser, Albert, The Indian in American Literature (New York, 1933), pp. 98–99Google Scholar, mentions its popularity for twenty-five years after its première. It was put on in Charleston on March 2, 5, 1831; Jan. 15, 20, 1841; Feb. 16, 1844; and Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, 2, 1847, according to Hoole, William Stanley, The Ante-bellum Charleston Theatre (Alabama, 1946), p. 183.Google Scholar Although the London Era referred to it as “a senseless production,” it played four times there on March 26, 28, 31, and Apr. 2, 1845, at the Princess Theatre. See Richard Moody, “Lost and Now Found: the Fourth Act of Metamora,” American Literature, XXXIV (Nov., 1962), no. 3, 356; and Ibid., p. 354, for the statement that “Metamora was the Indian drama of the nineteenth-century American theatre.”

6 Moody, Richard, Edwin Forrest, First Star of the American Stage (New York, 1960), p. 95.Google Scholar

7 Moody, Richard, America Takes the Stage (Bloomington, Ind., 1955), p. 95.Google Scholar

8 Page, Eugene R., ed., Metamora and Other Plays, vol. XIV in America's Lost Plays (Bloomington, Ind., 1965), p. 9.Google Scholar

9 Charles Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage, Between the Years 1749 and 1855. Arranged and illustrated by Thompson Westcott, 1868. Published in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch for May 7 and after in the year 1854. Available in microfilm at the University of Pennsylvania Library. See second series, vol. III, p. 267.

10 Ibid., 3rd series, pp. 50–51. See Plate IV, opposite p. 50, Moody, Edwin Forrest, for Mathew Brady's well-known portrait of Forrest in deer-skin costume.

11 Allen apparently lisped badly. See Smith, Sol, Theatre Management In the West and South For Thirty Years. Interspersed with Anecdotal Sketches (New York, 1868), p. 140.Google Scholar

12 Edwin Forrest, p. 97. See, also, Keiser, p. 65, where the immense popularity of the Indian drama, circa 1830, is attributed to Forrest's “masterful acting.” Actors like John R. Scott are given credit for helping to popularize plays like Oralloosa, Sassacus, Outalassie, Kairissah, etc. See Hutton, Lawrence, Curiosities of the American Stage (New York, 1891), p. 18Google Scholar, where he says that Scott was “always a great favorite with the gallery as a ‘red man of the woods.’”

13 Moody, , Edwin Forrest, p. 96.Google Scholar

14 Moody, , America Takes the Stage, p. 80.Google Scholar “The interrelation of painting and scene-painting, each in turn affecting the other, is far closer than most historians of pictorial art have perceived,” according to Mathews, Brander, ”The Evolution of Scene Painting,” Scribner's Magazine, LVIII (July, 1915), 88.Google Scholar

15 America Takes the Stage, p. 80. For the quotation, see also Nathan, Walter L., “Thomas Cole and the Romantic Landscape,” Romanticism in America, ed. by Boas, George (Baltimore, 1940), p. 33.Google Scholar Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, and The Deerslayer were all adapted for the stage during this period, as was Robert Montgomery Bird's Nick of the Woods.

16 Reiser, p. 73.

17 Ibid. Also Nelligan, Murray H., “American Nationalism on the Stage: The Plays of George Washington Custis (1781–1857),” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LVIII, no. 3 (July, 1950), 324.Google Scholar

18 Nelligan, theater announcement, opposite p. 304.

19 Ibid., p. 324.

20 Custis, G. W. P., The Indian Prophecy (Georgetown, D. C., 1828), pp. 9 and 16.Google Scholar In Harvard University Library.

21 Ibid., pp. 18, 22, 24.

22 Quinn, , History of American Drama, p. 272Google Scholar, also notes later revivals in New York and Philadelphia. Cf. Odell, George C. D., Annals of the New York Stage, III (New York, 1927–1945), 494.Google Scholar

23 Durang, 3rd series, p. 272.

24 Quinn, A. H., Representative American Plays (New York, 1938), 6th ed., p. 168.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 312.

26 Quinn, , Representative American Plays, pp. 173ff.Google ScholarMoody, , America Takes the Stage, p. 99Google Scholar, sees the magnificent settings as expressive of “the noble nature of the Indian.” Indeed, one of the characters in Pocahontas (Rolfe) apostrophizes the “sublime scenery” (Act I, scene 3).

27 Quinn, , History of American Drama, p. 273.Google Scholar “The prompt copy…shows many cuts.”

28 Washington National Intelligencer (Feb. 6, 1836). See Nelligan, p. 321.

29 Washington Globe. See Nelligan, p. 320.

30 The popularity of Pocahontas continued late into the period, well after the reaction of James Rees's statement (in 1846) that “the Indian dramas of late have become a perfect nuisance.” See Hutton, Lawrence, Curiosities of the American Stage (New York, 1891), p. 18.Google Scholar Brougham's burlesque of Pocahontas came out in 1847, and “by the fifties serious Indian dramas had become infrequent,” according to Moody, , America Takes the Stage, p. 105.Google Scholar Nevertheless, Pocahontas (by Custis) was still being performed at the Charleston Theater on Feb. 5, 6, 1858. (Hoole, p. 172.) Custis' other Indian plays—The Pawnee Chief, Monongahela, and Tecumseh have survived only as titles (according to Quinn, , History of American Drama, p. 272Google Scholar), although Nelligan, pp. 312–314, presents a theatre advertisement for the production of The Pawnee Chief on Feb. 22, [1830?].

31 H. W. Schoenberger and Ware, Ralph H., “The Sentinels and Other Plays by Richard Penn Smith” in America's Lost Plays, XIII (Bloomington, Ind., 1965), 91.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 271.

33 Ibid., p. 80, 3rd series, vol. IV. The play had a run of five nights “to a full house.” “Poor Wemyss, who played Don Christobal, lost two front teeth in a combat with Forrest….” Oralloosa was performed with “new dresses designed by the American costumer, Andrew Jackson Allen,” at the Camp Theatre in New Orleans (Apr. 9, 1834). Kendall, John S., The Golden Age of the New Orleans Theatre (Baton Rouge, 1952), p. 85.Google Scholar Kendall says the play was “well received” and “repeated immediately.” (pp. 84–85.) The play was produced in Charleston on May 12, 1851, and in San Francisco at the American II Theatre on Jan. 13, 1855. See Hoole, p. 187, and Gaer, Joseph, ed., The Theatre of the Gold Rush Decade in San Francisco, abstract from the SERA project 2-F2–132 (3-F2–197) (California Literary Research, n.p., 1935), p. 47.Google Scholar

34 Strictly speaking, Putnam is not an Indian play, but it did have an Indian character in it, whose little son Putnam saves. See Durang, V, 263.

35 Barnes, Charlotte M. S., Plays, Prose, and Poetry (Philadelphia, 1848), pp. 262–263.Google Scholar

36 Moody, , America Takes the Stage, p. 103.Google Scholar See also Pettit, Paul B., “Important American Dramatic Types to 1900,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., 1949, Cornell University, p. 321.Google Scholar

37 Durang, VI, 341.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid. Durang seems to be mistaken in attributing this painting to William Henry Powell. Powell did paint DeSoto's discovery of the Mississippi, as the capitolrotunda bears witness to this day. But it was Brumidi who did The Burial of DeSoto (in the frieze of the same building). It is possible, of course, that Powell may have painted a “Burial of DeSoto,” too, but I have not been able to locate it.

41 Moody, , America Takes the Stage, p. 107.Google Scholar

42 Ibid.

43 Odell, VI, 533.

44 Ibid., p. 433.

45 Pettit, Paul B., “Important American Dramatic Types to 1900,” p. 322.Google Scholar

46 Swinney, Donald H., “Production in the Wallack Theaters, 1852–1888,” unpublished Ph.D. diss. in Drama, Indiana University, 1962, p. 121.Google Scholar

47 Allston Brown, T., A History of the New York Stage, 1732–1901, I (New York, 1903), 134.Google Scholar

48 Sitton, p. 117.

49 Clipping from Boston Transcript, Sept. 25, 1925, in Harvard Theatre Collection.