One of the defining features of “Ten Indians” is the language that the Garners use to discuss Indigenous people, slurs and stereotypes that are especially jarring in a 21st-century context. While their diction characterizes them as bigoted individuals, Ernest Hemingway uses the Garners to critique the anti-Indigenous bias that is deeply embedded in American culture more broadly. Through setting, symbolism, and contrasting characterization, he examines how white settler colonialism depended on anti-Indigenous violence to spread and how American culture maintains this bias.

Multiple aspects of the story’s setting expand the Garners from a single American family to a symbol of American settler colonialism. First, the story takes place on the Fourth of July, linking the events of that day with the very idea of America as a free nation with its own identity. Independence Day not only celebrates the United States’ liberation from Britain but also its conquest of Indigenous people—indeed, the Declaration of Independence decries “merciless Indian Savages” as the natural enemies of white settlers. While the Declaration of Independence famously states that “all men are created equal,” “men” refers to a very specific class of people: white, Christian, landowning men.