Captivity and the Ambiguity of Civility If you were captured by Indians, would you assimilate to or vehemently reject their customs? Where do you draw the line of what is civilized and what is not? Questions such as these may be more difficult to answer after watching the film Dances With Wolves (Costner) or reading A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (Rowlanson 482-514). Two major themes shared by these stories are captivity and ambiguity of civility. While these themes are found in both stories, they are not without their differences. We will take a journey to discover the ambiguity of civility and explore the captives perspectives of their captivity. Let us begin our journey by comparing the captivity theme. Along with captivity, we will explore the levels of assimilation each captive reaches. In Dances With Wolves, there is an English woman who had been taken captive as a child. This woman, named Stands With A Fists, fully assimilated to the Native-American culture and customs. Stands With A Fists no longer spoke, dressed, ate, or lived as the English did. However, later in the film, she begins to recall the English language in order to translate for the Indians. Stands With A Fist, though captive, …show more content…
Rowlandson finds it easier and easier to eat, dress, and live as the Indians do, she also seems to war with herself on accepting these things. For instance, in the above quote, Rowlandson says both that the food is filth and that it tastes good to her. This begs the question, how much longer until Mrs. Rowlandson fully assimilated? Could she? Would she? It is easy to say that Stands With A Fist was able to assimilate because she was captured as a small child, but Dunbar was fully grown when he successfully integrated. Unlike Dunbar and Stands With A Fist, who set out on their own, but maintained the Indian culture, Mrs. Rowlandson was sold to her husband. Therefore, we will never know if she would have continued to
Inventing the Savage was an interesting look in how Native Americans are expected to assimilate into culture, and because they have no desire to assimilate in “Euro-American” culture, they are treated harshly. Though this book was published in 1998 (15 years ago), there is most likely unfair treatment for Native Americans in both regular society and prisons. By writing this book, Ross gives a great perspective on how Native Americans are treated like “cultural prisoners” and how the “Euro-Americans” do not take kindly to the behaviors of the Native Americans. Overall, this book is highly recommendable to anyone who has an interest in learning about Native American criminality, as well as the treatment of women in prison, but more importantly the treatment of Native Americans in prison even today.
Prison Writings, by Leonard Peltier, provides us with a heart-throbbing story of a martyr fighting for the right of his fellow Native Americans. In this book, Peltier explains the events that led to his arrest, and his experience being imprisoned for a crime that he didn’t commit. He starts off with a chilling tale, reminiscing the horror of being imprisoned, and recalling the paranoia of having to always be “on the edge” and of “never [letting] your guard down.” (Peltier, 3) He then tells us, in his point of view, the circumstances that led up to his arrest, revealing his poor upbringing in the Dakotas, and his involvement with the AIM (American Indian Movement). As an American Indian leader, Peltier went to help and protect the people at the siege going on at Pine Ridge, where there has a gun battle and two agents were killed. After the siege, Peltier went to hide in Canada, where he was captured by the RMP. He was then
would sign any treaty for her (Alexie).” However, alcohol only made their lives worse. Native Americans throughout the story began to realize that sticking to tradition was more important than following the negative roads of white American culture.
When she is first taken, Rowlandson is very adamant about noticing the difference between civilized Puritan life and the savage Indians. They eat horse and bear meat, things she finds uncivilized. When the Indians give her food, she often has it stolen from her by other Indians. The first week of her captivity she did not eat very much. She wrote that if was “very hard to get down their filthy trash,” (243). She was very ungrateful of the food they gave her, when they did not have to give her any at all. After she had been captive for a while she began to appreciate the food she was given. When she does eat and enjoy the uncivilized food the Indians give her, s...
... She undergoes a change and is positive but doesn’t capitalize on the Native Americans transformations that show they have had some change of heart. As the captivity theme got popular, two authors named Susanna Rowson and Charles Brockden Brown used it to their advantage in creating their own captivity narratives based on fiction. Mary Rowlandson’s story happened to her and they just wanted to write about it. The Native Americans reputations have been destroyed because of this theme and people are not realizing that captivity narratives are from an unfair time in the Native Americans culture.
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.
“Quantie’s weak body shuddered from a blast of cold wind. Still, the proud wife of the Cherokee chief John Ross wrapped a woolen blanket around her shoulders and grabbed the reins.” Leading the final group of Cherokee Indians from their home lands, Chief John Ross thought of an old story that was told by the chiefs before him, of a place where the earth and sky met in the west, this was the place where death awaits. He could not help but fear that this place of death was where his beloved people were being taken after years of persecution and injustice at the hands of white Americans, the proud Indian people were being forced to vacate their lands, leaving behind their homes, businesses and almost everything they owned while traveling to an unknown place and an uncertain future. The Cherokee Indians suffered terrible indignities, sickness and death while being removed to the Indian territories west of the Mississippi, even though they maintained their culture and traditions, rebuilt their numbers and improved their living conditions by developing their own government, economy and social structure, they were never able to return to their previous greatness or escape the injustices of the American people.
After struggling for five years to recover his niece, who is now a young woman, she is rescued by his own hands. Likewise, Dances with Wolves is a Western film directed and starring Kevin Costner. It is also situated during the American Civil War and tells the story of a soldier named John Dunbar that after a suicide attempt he involuntarily leads Union troops to a triumph. Then, by his request, he is sent to a remote outpost in the Indian frontier “before it’s gone”. There, the contact with the natives is eminent and thus it shows how through those contacts this soldier is transformed into another Indian that belongs to the Sioux tribe and who is now called Dances With Wolves.
Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” and Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” are two different perspectives based on unique experiences the narrators had with “savages.” Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages…” is a comparison between the ways of the Indians and the ways of the Englishmen along with Franklin’s reason why the Indians should not be defined as savages. “A Narrative of the Captivity…” is a written test of faith about a brutally traumatic experience that a woman faced alone while being held captive by Indians. Mary Rowlandson views the Indians in a negative light due to the traumatizing and inhumane experiences she went through namely, their actions and the way in which they lived went against the religious code to which she is used; contrastingly, Benjamin Franklin sees the Indians as everything but savages-- he believes that they are perfect due to their educated ways and virtuous conduct.
Dances with Wolves and The Searchers showed the relationship between the white men and the Indians. Overall, the relationship between the Indians and white men was nonexistent and they hated one another. However, in Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner decided to show another side to that relationship- a friendship (Dances with Wolves). In Dances with Wolves, the main character John Dunbar who is a Lieutenant in the military, finds himself alone and abandoned at his new post, Fort Sedgewick. He is living close to an Indian tribe named the Sioux. Many times they try to steal his horse and make him scared (Dances with Wolves). Despite that, Dunbar finds himself interested in their culture and the way they live. So he decides
Interestingly although she feared and reviled the Indians she states that not one of them offered the least abuse of unchastity to her. Her captors never sexually molested or violated her. Rowlandson learned to adapt and strove to make it thought her captivity alive. She learned how to gather food for herself. Tolerate the ways of the Indians, and make clothes for the tribe. She even decided to stay with the Indians when given the chance to escape. “Rowlandson refused them choosing to stay put and let God choose when she was fully redeemed and ready to be released”
Due to a limited food supply in the tribe, it can't be generosity given to Rowlandson; doing so would cause the entire tribe to become hungry. Rowlandson hand makes clothes for Native Americans in exchange for essentials. She trades with her caretakers and even the well-known King of the tribe. On several occasions she argues with the Natives, attempting not to lose what is her property. Trading and arguing with others was not a job performed by women in her colony; however, in her situation, a change of role is needed in order for her to live with her captors. In the seventeenth century, her change of role might have been seen as a sign of weakness, but today, it's much easier to see her change of role as being a sign of strength; After all, it takes a strong willed person to carry out a change in their life.
The movie Dances with Wolves was a real good movie and I enjoyed watching it. It showed how life was back in the time of the Civil War. The movie also showed how Indians lived and how they respect everything except the white men.
Discrimination was a tremendous concern in the nineteenth century, as slavery was still in place, and Native Americans were being moved across the country. Mark Twain’s book, Adventures of Huckleberry Film, consisted of a main character who faced discrimination due to the fact that he was a black slave. Not only was discrimination against Blacks prominent, so was discrimination towards Native Americans as depicted in Kevin Costner’s film Dances With Wolves. It is important to look at the experiences of the people within these examples to grasp a better understanding of discrimination in the nineteenth century. Minorities were thought of as inferior to white people, but experience with these people changed the way they were viewed, which led to Whites believing that minorities were just as equal.
The film, Dances With Wolves, was very cleverly written in my opinion. For most of the introduction, before John Dunbar begins to get friendly with the Sioux Indians, you are given an emotional expression of hatred and dislike towards the Native American Indians as they are slowly introduced into the script. There were a few scenes of brutality and savagery that triggered these emotions. For example, there was a...