

He and True Son get into an argument about the rights of Native Americans, and Uncle Wilse slaps True Son. However, True Son's bond with Gordie is dampened by his introduction to his Uncle Wilse, a former leader of the violent, Indian-hating Paxton Boys who scalped many Native Americans, including some True Son knew.

The only solace for True Son is his younger brother, Gordie, who is fascinated by True Son's native culture and wants to learn about living in nature. They urge him to speak his biological name, John Cameron Butler, but he refuses. His mother is sickly, and his father is stoic, but neither understands True Son's language or his culture. Soon, True Son meets his real white family, the Butlers. True Son feels some relief when he meets up with his Lenape cousin Half Arrow and his wife, Little Crane, who visit him in town and hope to rescue him. True Son tries to commit suicide by eating a poisonous plant, but Del stops him, convincing him not to die. Del doesn't understand this, seeing the stone settlements of the white men as proof of their superiority and culture. However, True Son hates the white men and the white village, missing the freedom in nature he found with the Indians. True Son is given temporarily to Del, who speaks some of the Native languages, in order to help True Son reacclimate and feel more comfortable. Cuyloga loves his white son, but, ultimately, cares more about keeping his land – he forces True Son to abandon his adopted family to return to the white village. He threatens the Lenape tribal leaders that if the hostages are not returned, the Lenape will lose their land and their freedom. However, True Son's life with the Lenape is interrupted when Colonel Bouquet marches with 1,500 men to the tribe in order to reclaim the lost children. True Son, embraced by his adopted tribe, has been taught that white men are violent and evil, often killing Native Americans for sport.
In the forest of the night book summary free#
Nearly a decade before, the Lenape tribe had captured a number of white children, and had raised the babies as their own – one of these children is True Son, who has been with his adopted father Cuyloga since he was four-years-old and has come to love his free life as an Indian.
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The novel begins in 1764 in Western Pennsylvania, where relations between the local Native American tribes and the white settlers are strained and violent. The book was adapted into a feature film of the same name, produced by Walt Disney Productions in 1958. The central conflict of the story follows True Son's struggle to find a home when conflicts between the Lenape and white men break out, and tensions rise between both communities. The Light in the Forest (1953), a work of historical fiction by Conrad Richter, takes place during the American Revolutionary War, following True Son, a young white boy who was captured by the Leni Lenape tribe and assimilated into Native American culture, where he lived happily for eleven years.
