In 1826 a small press in the northeastern United States released a novel whose historical themes suggested to its readership the influence of the British author Walter Scott. Writing about the novel the following year for the United States Review and Literary Gazette, William Cullen Bryant made lengthy reference to “the author of ‘Waverly’” and the political capacities of historical fiction before moving on to the specific background of the 1826 narrative he was reviewing. The novel revived the prenational American scene of an earlier century, drawing on the rhetoric and imagery of the New World Eden while treating a series of violent battles between European imperial and indigenous armies. Within various subplots coalescing around interindigenous conflicts and secret pacts, this historical narrative featured two women descended from Scott's archetypal fair and dark ladies, one pure and the other tainted, opposing symbolic moral registers of innocence and an imposed guilt. A story of interracial male alliances and cross-cultural struggles for possession of the fair lady, the novel's central focus upon the capture and potential violation of its female characters coincided with a popular interest throughout the United States in the theme of captivity. Yet the ultimate marriage of the fair lady to her appropriate male counterpart was secondary to the narrative's larger project: to document the alleged passing of a particular historical moment for indigenous America – and to recommend a clear political order for the future.