Michael J. Colacurcio in The Province of Piety emphasizes Hawthorne's description of the ultimate destruction of the Indian.

"All of it seems carried out in illustration of the multitude of sins covered by the all-purpose `progressive' doctrine of `Anglo-Saxon energy--as the phrase now goes.' . . . Humorously executed, `Main Street' is nevertheless one of the most destructive attacks on mainstream American ideology ever written. Ironically conceived, it is yet Hawthorne's fullest defense of his own historicist method and doctrine (40).

In any case, as Hawthorne would make painfully clear in `Main Street,' the original Americans did not simply `vanish`; they had to be killed" (116). (courtesy of Dr, Michael J. Colacurcio)