Injun Joe (nonfiction)

Injun Joe disguised as the blind beggar.

Injun Joe is the primary antagonist in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Background

Peoria people

The Peoria (or Peouaroua) are a Native American people. Today they are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. Historically, they were part of the Illinois Confederation.

Language and name

Traditionally, the Peoria spoke a dialect of the Miami-Illinois language. The name "Peoria" derives from their autonym or name for themselves in the Illinois language, peewaareewa (modern pronunciation peewaalia). Originally it meant, "Comes carrying a pack on his back." No speakers of the Peoria language survive. Along with the Miami language, a smaller number of the Peoria tribe of Oklahoma once spoke Cahokia, Moingwea, and Tamaroa.

• Peoria people @ Wikipedia

Cahokia

Map of Mississippian and related cultures.

Cahokia:

• The largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico
• 120+ earthen mounds — many massive, square-bottomed, flat-topped

• Cahokia @ Wikipedia

Monks Mound

Monks Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas and the largest pyramid north of Mesoamerica. The beginning of its construction dates from 900–955 CE. Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, the mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet (30 m) high, 955 feet (291 m) long including the access ramp at the southern end, and 775 feet (236 m) wide. This makes Monks Mound roughly the same size at its base as the Great Pyramid of Giza (13.1 acres / 5.3 hectares). The perimeter of its base is larger than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. As a platform mound, the earthwork supported a wooden structure on the summit.

Unlike Egyptian pyramids which were built of stone, the platform mound was constructed almost entirely of layers of basket-transported soil and clay. Because of this construction and its flattened top, over the years, it has retained rainwater within the structure. This has caused slumping, the avalanche-like sliding of large sections of the sides at the highest part of the mound. Its designed dimensions would have been significantly smaller than its present extent, but recent excavations have revealed that slumping was a problem even while the mound was being made.

• Monks Mound @ Wikipedia

Commentary

Description of Injun Joe

One night, Injun Joe, Dr. Robinson and Muff Potter are in the graveyard to steal a body from a grave for Dr. Robinson, but once Injun Joe and Muff Potter have exhumed the body, they demanded additional money from Dr. Robinson. Injun Joe reminds the doctor of an incident which he says he has not forgotten and then kills him. Injun Joe blames Muff Potter for the murder, but Tom and Huckleberry Finn witness the murder, and at Muff Potter's trial, Tom Sawyer testifies that Injun Joe was the killer. Injun Joe runs from the courtroom, leaving Tom in fear of retribution. Eventually, Injun Joe is found dead behind a newly sealed cave entrance, having starved to death.

—Injun Joe @ Wikipedia

Critical Analysis of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A third person narrator describes the experiences of the boys, interspersed with occasional social commentary. In its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain changes to a first person narrative which takes moral conflicts more personally and thus makes greater social criticism possible. The two other subsequent books, Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, are similarly in the first person narrative from the perspective of Huckleberry Finn.

The book has raised controversy for its use of the racial epithet "nigger"; a bowdlerized version aroused indignation among some literary critics.

The book has been criticized for its caricature-like portrayal of Native Americans through the character Injun Joe. He is depicted as malevolent for the sake of malevolence, is not allowed to redeem himself in any way by Twain, dies a pitiful and despairing death in a cave and upon his death is treated as a tourist attraction. Revard suggests that the adults in the novel blame the character's Indian blood as the cause of his evil.

—[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer#Critical_analysis

Rissetto @ twain.lib.virginia.edu

In 1876, Twain published one of his most popular works of fiction — The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The villain of the novel, Injun Joe, is unequivocally evil — there is little to stimulate the reader to sympathize with Joe's plight or understand his actions. However, Injun Joe acts out of more than just an evil nature — he is evil because of his "Indian blood," a fact which the novel's characters reiterate repeatedly.

Injun Joe's "evil Indian nature" is made more ominous by the culture of violence that Twain attributes to Native Americans. Joe is not satisfied to merely rob or humiliate the Widow Douglas; instead, he plans on torturing her in ways that he imagines are most excruciating for women. He says to , "When you get revenge on a woman you don't kill her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils — you notch her ears, like a sow's!" (208)

Injun Joe's torture fantasy is not developed without motivation; Joe explains that he wants revenge (another stereotype of American Indian behavior is the Indian's insatiable desire for revenge for any slight, no matter how small, done to them). He announces: "I tell you again, as I've told you before, I don't care for her swag — you may have it. But her husband was rough on me — many times he was rough on me — and mainly he was the justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all. It ain't the millionth part of it! He had me horsewhipped! — horsewhipped in front of the jail, like a nigger! — with all the town looking on! HORSEWHIPPED! — do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But I'll take it out on her."

Joe's reason for revenge is resonant of Magua's motivation revenge in Last of the Mohicans. Magua, a Huron Indian, transgressed a rule of the British army which stated that no Indian should drink alcohol and then enter a soldier's tent. Magua protests his punishment by claiming, "Magua was not himself; it was the fire-water that spoke and acted for him! but Munro did not believe it. The Huron chief was tied up before all the pale-faced warriors, and whipped like a dog " (Cooper 116).

Both Injun Joe and Magua defied public law and received the mandated punishment. Neither one was punished unjustly in the context of the narrative, and while both feel justifiable humiliation for the publicity of their punishment, neither experience engenders sympathy from the reader.

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Injun Joe must be excised from the narrative as part of its eventual triumph. This is visible in the final chapters when first Tom and Becky, and then Injun Joe, are trapped in the cave. After Tom and Becky escape from the cave, Judge Thatcher places an iron door over the mouth of the cave to prevent any stragglers from similarly getting lost. In terms of the narrative structure, Injun Joe must die so that Tom can live.

Even more devastating than his death is the exploitation of Injun Joe's demise. During his fatal captivity in McDougal's cave, Injun Joe had used a cup to catch the precious drips of water from a stalactite; after his death, this cup assumed symbolic significance. "It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's Cup stands first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even "Aladdin's Place" cannot rival it" (240).

The success of Injun Joe's Cup in Twain's narrative implies many things about Twain's ideology concerning American Indians at this time. Primary among those things is the suggestion that American Indians have no place in American culture other than as relics exhibited as tourist attractions, or as beggars, living off of the government dole. The cup is a duplicitous symbol because it can imply either of these.

—Injun Joe by Rissetto @ twain.lib.virginia.edu

tomsawyer.fandom.com

Injun Joe (Indian Joe, sometimes disguised as an ostensibly deaf-mute Spaniard) is the main antagonist of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Along with fellow graverobbers Muff Potter and Dr. Robinson, he is first encountered by Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a graveyard at night; the robbers exhume a corpse and then engage in a scuffle. A drunken Potter is knocked out and Injun Joe kills Dr. Robinson, placing the knife in Potter's hand to frame him.

Injun Joe starves to death in McDougal's Cave after its main entrance is sealed up after the rescue of Tom and Becky Thatcher.

—Injun Joe @ tomsawyer.fandom.com

villains.fandom.com

—Injun Joe @ villains.fandom.com

See also

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (nonfiction)
• Mark Twain (nonfiction)

• Tom Sawyer: a Broad and a Detective