In the document, "Indians: Textualism, Morality, and The Problem of History," Jane Tompkins examines the conflicts between the English settlers and the American Indians. After examining several primary sources, Tompkins found that different history books have different perspectives. It wasn’t that the history books took different angles that was troubling, but the viewpoints contradicted one another. People who experience the same event told it through their reality. This becomes a problem when a person who didn’t experience the effect wants to know what happened. Tompkins said, "The problem id that if all accounts of events are determined through and through by the observer’s frame of reference, that one will never know, in any given case what really happened (202)." The problem was evident when Tompkins was researching the history of the Europeans and Indians. She started her inquiry with the book Errand into the Wilderness by Perry Miller. In the preface of his book Tompkins found that Miller didn’t even recognize the Indian’s existence in America, calling it "vacant." The fact is that there were Indians here, Miller just didn’t see history in that light. Secondly, Tompkins went to the book, New England Frontier Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675 authored by Alden Vuaghan in 1965. This Vuaghan’s angle toward American history was antipodal to Miller, even though the writers spoke of the same effects. Vuaghan recognized the Indian’s presence, he...
In the book Bad Indians, Miranda talks about the many issues Indigenous People go through. Miranda talks about the struggles Indigenous people go through; however, she talks about them in the perspective of Native Americans. Many people learn about Indigenous People through classrooms and textbooks, in the perspective of White people. In Bad Indians, Miranda uses different literary devices to show her perspective of the way Indigenous People were treated, the issues that arose from missionization, as well as the violence that followed through such issues. Bad Indians is an excellent example that shows how different history is told in different perspectives.
She examines some similarities in today’s “white culture” and the historical attitude of the exploring Europeans. The Europeans, when inhabiting North America, “just moved in and said they had God on their side and the Indians weren’t much anyway but a few of them could work for them sometimes if they behaved themselves, and the rest were lined up for disposal” (377). The Europeans believed themselves superior to the Indians; any and all action – fair and unfair alike – taken against the Indians was justifiable because it helped the Europeans. Grover argues that this irresponsible approach is the basis of the white culture. White culture is simply American culture taken and modified as seen fit by white people.
The author warns us in the foreword that the book is not neutral and fair-minded study of the removal of the Indians which in its self would make historians pass judgment. The author has predetermined that white Americans were at fault and that the Indian were faultless. W...
Jane Tompkins, in the “Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the problem of History” evaluates the responses from another period about what occurred between Europeans and Indians in the 17th century. Understanding what occurred and how did it occur are difficult to get while many different versions are. During the manner of collecting solid information, she confirms that although the fact could see in many other ways, the content of fact remains the same. As an individual, reading Tompkins’ provided examples of bias give me an insight into the power of social ethos that rules our real opinions and beliefs. As a student, reading Tompkins’ method of comparing and contrasting another response teach me that learning the facts without evaluating other perspectives can never give one a full description of the event. I believe we all have a tendency to build our opinions based
A Declaration in 1622 is a piece of history that will forever be debated. It was written by Edward Waterhouse who was a prominent Virginia official. In a Declaration in 1622, he describes his first-hand accounts of English genocide and the relationship between the Powhatan and settlers. The point of this paper is to claim that Waterhouse’s portrayal is realistic due to his factual perspective of the time period on the contrasting aspects of the Powhatan and settlers. Diving into Edwards historical accounts can show the hardships of the settlers, the varying characteristics of both groups, the importance of tobacco, and the demonization of Native Americans. The characteristics will conclude the factually sound delineation of Edward Waterhouse.
Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Franklin to this day remain two of the prominent figures from their time in their descriptions and accounts of the culture and interactions among the Native Americans and the colonials. It is interesting to look at their widely different opinions on the Native Americans. The difference in time certainly must have had some impact on their differing point of views. As another century of learning to cohabitate with the colonials surely had to have some effect on how Native Americans treated and dealt with them. Rowlandson has negative and resentful remarks about the Native Americans. Her disparaging views of the Native Americans are based from her personal experience as a victim of inhumane acts and as a prisoner
Many school children celebrate a cliché Thanksgiving tradition in class where they play Indians and Pilgrims, and some children engage in the play of Cowboys vs. Indians. It is known that some died when colonization occurred, that some fought the United States government, and that they can be boiled down to just another school mascot. This is what many people understand of the original inhabitants of America. Historical knowledge of these people has been shallow and stereotyped. The past 150 years has given birth to a literate people now able to record their past, present, and future. Native American literature, as it evolves, defines the Native American culture and its status in the world, as an evolving people, more so than any historical account can.
It appears that rather than highlight the atrocities committed against Native Americans, historians chose to ignore them perhaps out of shame or guilt. Historians often appear to minimize the contribution of Native Americans in the colonies’ path to development. According to Salisbury, Native Americans “Were not static isolates lying outside the ebb and flow of human history” (29). Native peoples, while not as advanced as European societies, where evolving through innovations in agriculture and trade.
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
I interviewed Mr. D on March 20, 2018. Mr. D. is a 23-year-old graduate student at the University of Nebraska at Kearney from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in Organizational and Relational Communications and is currently employed at said university. Throughout his college career, Mr. D. was an active member and president of his fraternity, served as a mentor for the Thompson Scholars Learning community, participated with his home church and helped the university’s recruitment office.
History is a story told over time. It is a way of recreating the past so it can be studied in the present and re-interpreted for future generations. Since humans are the sole beneficiaries of history, it is important for us to know what the purpose of history is and how historians include their own perspective concerning historical events. The purpose and perspective of history is vital in order for individuals to realise how it would be almost impossible for us to live out our lives effectively if we had no knowledge of the past. Also, in order to gain a sound knowledge of the past, we have to understand the political, social and cultural aspects of the times we are studying.
Today, career is inseparable from the terms work, labor, or job. It has been applied to jobs with explicit internal development and has been extended to any favorable or desired occupation. Career is still used in the abstract sense of politicians and entertainers, with some conscious and unconscious class distinction, to work or a job which contains some implicit promise of progress.
"Incidentally, I despise everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity." These are Goethe's words. With them, as with a heartfelt expression of Ceterum censeo [I judge otherwise], our consideration of the worth and the worthlessness of history may begin. For this work is to set down why, in the spirit of Goethe's saying, we must seriously despise instruction without vitality, knowledge which enervates activity, and history as an expensive surplus of knowledge and a luxury, because we lack what is still most essential to us and because what is superfluous is hostile to what is essential. To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge uses it, no matter how elegantly he may look down on our coarse and graceless needs and distresses. That is, we need it for life and action, not for a comfortable turning away from life and action or merely for glossing over the egotistical life and the cowardly bad act. We wish to use history only insofar as it serves living. But there is a degree of doing history and a valuing of it through which life atrophies and degenerates. To bring this phenomenon to light as a remarkable symptom of our time is every bit as necessary as it may be painful.
History is invigorating and intriguing. History has the ability to put knowledge in a new light. Imagine learning new critical pieces of information and then you visit a museum or place of that particular topic that you enjoy and placing the new information into practice is like getting all the pieces to fit into the puzzle. Now, the pieces fit in the puzzle before; but the person placed a bright LED light instead of a normal light in the light fixture. I have always loved learning, and history enables me to have that opportunity to learn something new. History is captivating to me because it is requires actively seeking knowledge, creates insight into other situations, and enables a person to research important events in history.