Colonial fantasies - American Indians, indigenous peoples, and a Swedish discourse of innocence

This article examines representations of American Indians in a Swedish family magazine from the 1860s/1870s, tying these 'Indian stories' to perceptions carried by emigrants to the Americas. It argues that these representations conveyed a certain notion of the colonial process that allowed Swedes to both participate in and disavow the more unsavoury aspects of what the magazine called 'race wars'. An emerging discourse of innocence connected popular images with debates about emigration and scholarship in racial biology, which allowed both Swedes and Swedish-Americans to view themselves as modern and unconnected to the burdens of a colonial past.