And it is worth noting that the Norton Critical Edition of The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer includes the essay by Carter Revard, "Why Mark Twain Murdered
Injun Joe: And Will Never Be Indicted," which asks the same question you do.
 (First published in the Massachusetts Review 40, no. 4 (1999-2000):
643-670).  But I have a student working on this topic, and she convinces me
that there is a fair amount of scholarship out there to draw upon.

Randall

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I've been working my way through Roughing It (again) recently, doing
> public readings.  It caused me pause when I reached his description of
> the Goshoots Indians.  It's quite common for discussion of Twain to
> center on assumed racism because of his use of a particular word but
> rarely have I seen any discussion of his prejudice against native
> Americans - Indians. When it does come up it is generally in regard to
> Injun Joe.  Injun Joe is an entirely different matter, he is for the
> most part a product of the dominant culture, the "white" culture.  The
> Goshoots are part of an entirely foreign culture to Twain and he seems
> unable to understand it or even recognize that it is a foreign culture.
>
> Roughing It comes from very early in Twains career so I'm wondering if,
> after all his world travels, he ever came to see native Americans in a
> better light.
>
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>                          in your philosophy.
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