Medieval monster templates were repurposed from Indians onto Muslims

Evidence

The story of Jane McCrea was retold numerous times in works of frontier fiction, in which Indians are described as “monsters, only human in outward form.” Captivity narratives, rape fantasies, and rescue stories, while originally focusing on American Indians, are later applied to Africans, Muslims, and African-Americans. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 571

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core inquiry: shows the same manufactured monster-figure migrating across targets, evidencing that the image (‘fear without an object’) transfers onto whoever is the enemy of the day.
• QUESTION: Tracks the specific genealogy from Indian-captivity narratives to Muslim panic — worth chasing the exact literary chain (which frontier works were ‘later applied’?).