The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter

First published: 1953

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Race and ethnicity, nature, family, and coming-of-age

Time of work: 1764-1765

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: An Indian village in Ohio and a white settlement in western Pennsylvania

Principal Characters:

• True Son, a fifteen-year-old white boy originally named
• John Cameron Butler, a captive reared by Indians, who cannot readjust to life in the white settlement
• Cuyloga, a Lenni Lenape Indian who adopted True Son to take the place of his son who had died
• Del Hardy, a frontiersman in Colonel Bouquet’s army, who keeps True Son from escaping on the journey back to the white settlement
• Half Arrow, an Indian cousin by adoption and friend of True Son, who later joins him in revenging Little Crane’s murder
• Little Crane, a Lenni Lenape Indian who is murdered when he attempts to visit his white wife, a captive returned along with True Son
• Harry Butler, True Son’s natural father, a successful pioneer farmer, who is pained at his son’s rejection
• Myra Butler, True Son’s natural mother, a sickly woman having difficulty coping with the harsh frontier life
• Gordon Butler, True Son’s younger, natural brother, a sensitive boy who accepts True Son without prejudice
• Wilse Owens, True Son’s natural uncle, a willful man whose hatred of the Indians makes him a suspect in the murder of Little Crane

The Story

Unlike most early American captivity tales that depict the joyful reunion with their families of whites who have escaped from their Indian captors, The Light in the Forest is a story of an unsuccessful attempt to reunite a white boy with his natural parents. Captured during an Indian raid on his father’s farm in western Pennsylvania, four-year-old John Butler is taken to a Delaware Indian village in the Ohio wilderness where Cuyloga, a tribal chief, adopts him to replace his own son, who has died from disease. Renamed True Son, he has lived eleven years as a member of the tribe, coming to regard Quaquenga and Cuyloga as his real parents, their daughters as his sisters, and the Ohio wilderness as his natural home.

As the result of a treaty calling for the return of all white captives, True Son is forced to journey to Paxton township in western Pennsylvania with Colonel Bouquet’s expeditionary force. To prevent his escape, he is entrusted to the safekeeping of Del Hardy, a frontier soldier. Other white captives, including Little Crane’s wife, also protest the compulsory return, much to the surprise of the rescuing soldiers. Half Arrow, True Son’s favorite adopted cousin, walks with him to give moral support until turned back at Fort Pitt.

When True Son is reunited with Harry and Myra Butler, his natural parents, he sullenly resists their efforts to reinstate him into the family and community, stubbornly insisting on his Indian identity. Equally indifferent to his father’s preoccupation with business ledgers and accumulating property and his invalid mother’s ineffectual ways, he finds comfort only in the companionship of his little brother, Gordon. Having been reared on stories of the white man’s treachery and cruelty, he hates his Uncle Wilse Owens, who had been one of the Paxton Boys, a group of militia that had massacred Indian women and children.

Within a year, Half Arrow comes for him, taking him secretly to where Little Crane, who planned to visit his wife, had been slain. Suspecting Owens to be responsible, True Son angrily confronts his uncle, but Owens seizes him, and in the ensuing struggle, Half Arrow seriously wounds the white man. Thwarted in their attempt to cut off his scalp as a trophy of revenge, they flee to the Indian village in Ohio where True Son joyfully rejoins his Indian family. Sadly, the joy is short-lived.

True Son joins Cuyloga and a group of braves in a war party to avenge Little Crane’s death. When True Son sees Thitpan massacre and scalp white children, he regretfully realizes that the Indians, too, are capable of barbaric cruelty. Compelled to pose as a white boy in need of help to lure to the shore a group of white settlers traveling on a raft, he shouts a warning, spoiling the planned ambush. True Son’s betrayal of the war party causes Cuyloga to repudiate his adopted son, declaring him an enemy and banishing him forever from his Indian life.

Context

Richter’s most significant literary achievements are his realistic historical novels with American backgrounds, and The Light in the Forest is his most important contribution to adolescent literature. The historical fiction preceding this novel is set in the Southwest during the last phase of westering—Early Americana and Other Stories (1936), The Sea of Grass (1937), and Tacey Cromwell (1942)—and in the Northwest Territory during earlier pioneer times—The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), The Town (1950), and A Free Man (1943). He later wrote A Country of Strangers (1966), a sequel to The Light in the Forest. Richter’s knowledge of the American past gave him a well-defined historical image of a change in the human condition attended by cultural loss. His fiction affirms enduring primitivistic and spiritual values, especially love for the land, the need to embrace hardship in order to develop such stoic virtues as self-discipline, as well as the need for roots. At the same time, he protests those forces of an industrial civilization that uproot and alienate man from the rhythmical order of nature.

The Light in the Forest plays a key role in this portrayal of America’s pioneer heritage. In providing an authentic sensation of life in early America, the novel offers an alternative to the sensational or sentimental costume romances that distort the past. The everyday details, anecdotes, and incidents of life in The Light in the Forest impart to the reader the feeling of having lived for a short while in those earlier days, experiencing both the good and the evil that make up the broad stuff of reality. Moreover, by treating both the Indian and white cultures fairly, Richter gives insight into the racial prejudice that so easily divides ethnic groups.

Richter wrote the novel during the Korean War, suggesting his awareness of the broader need for understanding and sympathy between hostile nations and opposing ethnic groups. By helping modern readers understand the racial divisions that have occurred in America’s development, The Light in the Forest joins a growing body of novels—such as Oliver La Farge’s Laughing Boy (1929), Hal Borland’s When the Legends Die (1963), or Frank Waters’ The Man Who Killed the Deer (1942)—that explore the Indians’ resentment at the loss of both their land and their heritage. Equally important, these works probe the psychological complexity of young people coming to terms with their own identity while caught between contrary cultural forces.

Bibliography

Barnes, Robert J. Conrad Richter. Austin, Tex.: Steck-Vaughn, 1968.

Carpenter, Frederic I. “Conrad Richter’s Pioneers: Reality and Myth.” College English 12 (1950): 77-84.

Cowan, William. “Delaware Vocabulary in the Works of Conrad Richter.” In Papers of the Twenty-ninth Algonquian Conference, edited by David H. Pentland. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1998.

Edwards, Clifford D. Conrad Richter’s Ohio Trilogy. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1970.

Flanagan, John T. “Conrad Richter: Romancer of the Southwest.” Southwest Review 43 (1958): 189-196.

Gaston, Edwin W., Jr. Conrad Richter. Rev. ed. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989.

Johnson, David R. Conrad Richter: A Writer’s Life. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Kohler, Dayton. “Conrad Richter’s Early Americana.” College English 7 (1947): 221-228.