More handpicked essays just for you.
Introduction to the history of american literature
Essays on native american culture
Native Americans Research Essays
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie and Louise Edrich’s The Game of Silence the main protagonists have differing views about the Native Americans and white settlers, respectively. These views on Laura, in Little House of the Prairie, and Omakaya, in The Game of Silence, give us a complete picture of the situation of the US during the period of Manifest Destiny. In Little House on the Prairie, the story gives the perspective of Laura and her family moving west from her home in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Being a little girl, from the beginning of the novel Laura is curious about the Native Americans and wishes to see a papoose, a Native American baby. Wilder states, “Pa knew all about wild animals, so he must know about …show more content…
The Game of Silence follows a year in Omakaya’s life with the impending news of if her family must leave their home due to the white settlers. Omakaya has a close view on the life of white settlers with Clarissa, otherwise known as the Break-Apart girl. Omakaya and Twilight often play with the Break-Apart girl despite being unable to communicate via language (Edrich 55). Omakaya and Twilight name Clarissa the Break-Apart girl because of the tight corset around her waist. Omakaya reflects that,“Without this thing, the Break-Apart Girl was shaped just like any girl and she seemed happy to run and play, to dive into the water (Edrich 146). Despite at first seeming unusual, Clarissa is just like any other little girl like Omakaya and Twilight. Omakaya sees that Native American and white little girls are the same despite at first appearing very different. However, for Omakaya the implications of white settlers taking their land a much greater implication lands. “The Ojubwe were being forced west, into the country of the Bwaanag, away from their gardens, away from their ancestors’ graves, away from their fishing grounds, away from their lodges and cabins and all that made the island home (Edrich 251)” Omakaya is forced to leave her home, the place of her ancestors, due to western expansion. Leaving home for anyone can be an arduous task and for the
There are many similarities and differences between the story “The Most Dangerous Game” and the episode of Gilligan's Island that we watched. Some similarities include: someone is being hunted, the setting is similar, and both victims get away in the end. Some differences include: the moods of the stories, the strategies that are used by the huntees, and how the hunter got to the island.
Local histories written in the nineteenth century are often neglected today. Yet from these accounts, one can see a pattern develop: the myth of Indian extinction, the superiority of White colonists and also to understand how American attitudes and values evolved. The myths were put forth for a reason according to Jean O’Brien. O’Brien explains how the process came to fruition in Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England. In the majority of local town histories, Indians are mentioned in passing, as a past that will never return. Indians were ancient, whereas English colonists brought modernity to New England. Jean O’Brien argues that local histories were the primary means by which white European Americans asserted
When considering the birth of America, most people look to Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. In An Infinity of Nations, Michael Witgen looks to shed light on the role Native Americans played in the formation of early America. Witgen analyzes the social relationships between the European settlers and the indigenous tribes of the Anishinaabeg and the Haudenosaunee in order to tell the story of the westward expansion of early American civilization. Witgen depicts agreement and conflict between the colonizing groups while also explaining the formation of power within them – but his analysis is incomplete. The incorporation of Joan Scott’s and Michael Foucault’s definitions of gender and power relationships into
Dr. Daniel K. Richter is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at University of Pennsylvania. His focus on early Native American history has led to his writing several lauded books including Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Past, and The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Richter’s Facing East is perhaps, a culmination of his latter work. It is centered from a Native American perspective, an angle less thought about in general. Through the book, Richter takes this perspective into several different fields of study which includes literary analysis, environmental history, and anthropology. Combining different methodologies, Richter argues Americans can have a fruitful future, by understanding the importance of the American Indian perspective in America’s short history.
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.
To understand Jackson’s book and why it was written, however, one must first fully comprehend the context of the time period it was published in and understand what was being done to and about Native Americans in the 19th century. From the Native American point of view, the frontier, which settlers viewed as an economic opportunity, was nothin...
Several times, silence is oppressive due to the fact it stunts communication and relationships within the family. For instance, when Naomi is molested by Old Man Gower, in which he tells her to defer from telling her mother this information for obvious reasons. A. Lynne Magnussen observes the following: “Before Gower: knowledge between mother and child is antecedent to words. After Gower: the silence hides a secret betrayal” (Magnussen 8). This explains how Naomi’s relationship with her mother never became vocal, let alone overly vocal, before the secrets began with Old Man Gower. The weight of the secret strained the relationship, but Naomi was the only one who was able to recognize the situation since her mother had no part. Naomi herself describes the experience as a mountain splitting in half: “[Naomi’s] mother is on one side of the rift. I am on the other. We cannot reach each other” (Kogawa 77). In addition to this instance, the rest of Naomi’s story is also driven by oppressive silence in the government’s treatment to the Japanese-Canadians. They were evicted from their homes and businesses without any guarantee that they would see any of their possessions again. Eventually, this lead to the Japanese-Canadian community being forced into ghost towns to build up a new life. Their letters were
When the shape of America first started to grow from just land to the 13 colonies to the westward expansion of our country in less than a century, it sure feels like hopes and dreams came true. Though it might have seemed like an easier task, it took luck, labor, and intense warfare. The long process of American territorial expansion was justified by a mid-century ideology known as Manifest Destiny (pg 1). The one people we seem to forget about when we discuss the growing settlement of our country are the Native Americans. They had inhabited the country long before Columbus had discovered America, and still play an important part in today’s society. Manifest Destiny justified the displacement and domestication of Native Americans all while
The movement westward during the late 1800’s created new tensions among already strained relations with current Native American inhabitants. Their lands, which were guaranteed to them via treaty with the United States, were now beginning to be intruded upon by the massive influx of people migrating from the east. This intrusion was not taken too kindly, as Native American lands had already been significantly reduced due to previous westward conquest. Growing resentment for the federal government’s Reservation movement could be felt among the native population. One Kiowa chief’s thoughts on this matter summarize the general feeling of the native populace. “All the land south of the Arkansas belongs to the Kiowas and Comanches, and I don’t want to give away any of it” (Edwards, 203). His words, “I don’t want to give away any of it”, seemed to a mantra among the Native Americans, and this thought would resound among them as the mounting tensions reached breaking point.
Native American’s place in United States history is not as simple as the story of innocent peace loving people forced off their lands by racist white Americans in a never-ending quest to quench their thirst for more land. Accordingly, attempts to simplify the indigenous experience to nothing more than victims of white aggression during the colonial period, and beyond, does an injustice to Native American history. As a result, historians hoping to shed light on the true history of native people during this period have brought new perceptive to the role Indians played in their own history. Consequently, the theme of power and whom controlled it over the course of Native American/European contact is being presented in new ways. Examining the evolving
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were
Manifest destiny has been idealized in America since the budding of the nation, and in the late 1800s it went hand in hand with the American Dream. It was government funded and railroad approved, as both ruling powers promised immigrants and citizens a prosperous life in the West. Americans weren’t apt to allow anything to keep from recognizing their dream, and unfortunately Native American tribes in the West proved to be roadblocks for American settlers. Thus began the dissolution of tribes and the belief that colonization of the Native Americans would be anything but destructive. Though these actions may have been met with relief from American settlers, the implications of cultural immersion and forced education proved to be disadvantageous to Native Americans residing in the West.
Unconcerned about the legitimacy of their actions, European colonisers took lands unjustifiably from indigenous people and put original inhabitants who had lived on the land for centuries in misery. The United States also shared similarities in dealing with native people like its distant friends in Europe. Besides the cession of vast lands, the federal government of the United States showed no pity, nor repentance for the poor Cherokee people. Theda Perdue, the author of “Cherokee Women and Trail of Tears,” unfolds the scroll of history of Cherokee nation’s resistance against the United States by analyzing the character of women in the society, criticizes that American government traumatized Cherokee nation and devastated the social order of
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...