American Literature
" The former calls for
a voluntary or forced acquisition of the culture of the dominant group, a kind of cultural modification from one group of people to another, or more
specifically, a process of cultural adaptation by the subordinate people toward the dominant people's culture within the context of social
advancement in American society at that time. The latter indicates the disappearance of group identity through nondifferential association and
exogamy, which requires a mutual effort of both dominant and ethnic groups. Cooper was keenly aware that, to his contemporaries, that was
something to be wished for but entirely nonfeasible. His perception of the encounters between the European colonizers and their colonized natives
convinced him that the acculturation occurring during the process of the Western overseas expansion was basically a confrontation between two
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