American Savages

1060 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Relationship between the United States and Native Americans

Benjamin Franklin wrote “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” to show that it was not the Native Americans that were “savages”, in fact it was the Americans that acted like savages towards the Native Americans because they were not accustom the their culture. Americans considered Native Americans to be “savages” because they had very different customs and lifestyle. Responsibilities that were considered important to Americans at that time were not important to the Indians. “Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base and the learning, on which we value ourselves they regard as frivolous and useless” ( 226). Americans consider things such as graduating high school and college and getting a job to support themselves and their families to be very important achievements and a huge responsibility. To the Native Americans being a good hunter and becoming a man are far more important to them. Although it was hard for Americans to accept that Native Americans believe those things are more important than graduating college, it does not by any means give them a reason to be considered “savages.” If anyone should be considered a “savage” it should be the Americans because of the way they reacted to the Native Americans when they showed them their culture. Boys in the Native American culture are pushed to be good runners, skilled hunters, and good warriors. When they achieve this they are considered men in their society. When they become too old to do all of this they become counselors of the village. Women are expected to raise children, make food, and take care of the children for a lifetime. There is no police force, government, or punishment in their culture. They do not need it. These r... ... middle of paper ... ...ative Americans were kind and polite to everyone and wear raised to see everyone equally. The Americans took advantage of their politeness and monopolized them because they knew that they did not know what they were doing. Once again this shows that it was not the Indians were “savages” but in fact the Americans were. Native Americans were stereotyped as savages during that time. They were taken advantage of and seen as ignorant. When in reality it was not the Indians that acted like “savages,” it was the Americans that treated the Native Americans poorly and took advantage of them. They did it because they were different. They were seen as different because they had a very different lifestyle than that of the Americans. Franklin wrote “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” to show Americans that they were the true “savages” not the Native Americans.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Memoir Of The Life Of Jeremiah Evarts

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cherokee tribes led the way in adopting American traditions and ideals. They created their own schools and drafted a constitution. Some Cherokee people became farmers and slave owners. When they felt they were wronged or being taken advantage of, they filed court cases and sought justice as an American would. Surely all of these things speak to the fact that being a Native American Indian does not automatically make someone a “savage.” Classifying the Natives and savage made it easier for Jackson to justify their expulsion. If he had recognized them as equal citizens he could not have forced them from their

    Read More

  • Hemming’s Noble Savages

    659 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout this time of discovery ships brought some of the savages back to Europe where they were paraded and shown off and discussed.  The impression that the savages gave the Europeans throughout this and throughout all of the encounters with them was a very noble impression which is what led Hemming to write the piece on the “Noble Savages”.

    Read More

  • Pratt's Attitudes Towards Native Americans

    1476 Words  | 3 Pages

    If someone in the present day penned this same document, it may have been considered to be extremely racist, but during this time period someone in the position of power as Pratt saying that Native Americans are deserving of respect and are equal to anyone else in America was revolutionary. Pratt genuinely thought that removing the Indians from their reservations and putting them into Indian schools was the best option for them to become “true Americans”. He goes on to say that many people believe that Native Americans are subhuman and incompetent simply because they have not been given the proper tools to thrive. If they live off the government regulated reservations their whole lives they will become a helpless people who won’t know how to provide for themselves. In a way, Pratt was right. When Americans came out West they disregarded the fact that Native Americans have been living on this land for hundreds of years, and it wasn’t until they came along issues began. Those who went out West destroyed their land, hunted bison nearly to extinction, and forced Native Americans off land that had been in their possession as long as they could remember. Because Americans were so unwilling to work in unison with the Native Americans rather than against them, the Natives had no choice but to conform to survive. Considering life on Indian Reservations is

    Read More

  • Land Of The Spotted Eagle Analysis

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they

    Read More

  • Our Hearts Fell to the Ground Exam

    1094 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first point of conflicting ideas of freedom was the Native tribes remaining slightly nomadic when hunting. This conflict was highlighted in the selection “On taking the new road” by Carl Sweeny on page 127. In the selection, Carl speaks of how his tribe’s traditions changed when forced to hunt within the reservation and also maintained lifestyles different to those of whites. The Whites often used these differences to reinforce the idea that the Native Americans were inferior. Carl mentions in the selection that Whites disapproved of the Natives withdrawing their students from school during the winter. It would have been common for the Whites to attribute this to the natives being “lazy” (Sweeny, p.127), instead of recognizing it as a cultural difference. White Americans did not want to accept that the Nativ...

    Read More

  • Talking Back to Civilization

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • First Inhabitants of the Great Lakes Region

    4113 Words  | 9 Pages

    to conclude that Indian life in North America was without doubt, altered if not completely destroyed of its dignity,

    Read More

  • `` The Savages Of North America `` By Benjamin Franklin

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Benjamin Franklin’s Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America, he writes about how the Native Americans were being called savages because their culture and traditions were different. The work that took place here, was him taking a stand and writing these remarks to bring awareness to others on how everyone is different in some way. Franklin explains, “ But they are still ignorant. You know our Practice. If a white Man in travelling thro’ our Country, enters one of our Cabins, we all treat him as I treat you; we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, we give...

    Read More

  • The Views of Native Americans and Europeans

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Europeans started to come over to the new world, they discovered a society of Indians that was strikingly different to their own. To understand how different, one must first compare and contrast some of the very important differences between them, such as how the Europeans considered the Indians to be extremely primitive and basic, while, considering themselves civilized. The Europeans considered that they were model societies, and they thought that the Indians society and culture should be changed to be very similar to their own.

    Read More

  • Stereotyping of the Native Americans in the 1820's and 1830's

    3089 Words  | 7 Pages

    For Americans moving west in the 1820's and 30's there was little firsthand knowledge of what the frontier would be like when they arrived. There was a lot of presumption about the Indians. Many felt, through the stories they heard and read, that they had sufficient information to know what the Indians would truly be like and how to respond to them. Unfortunately, as is described in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, white settlers stereotyped the Native Americans as savage, heartless beasts.

    Read More

  • Native Americans

    1224 Words  | 3 Pages

    Towards the development of the United States of America there has always been a question of the placement of the Native Americans in society. Throughout time, the Natives have been treated differently like an individual nation granted free by the U.S. as equal U.S. citizens, yet not treated as equal. In 1783 when the U.S. gained their independence from Great Britain not only did they gain land from the Appalachian Mountains but conflict over the Indian policy and what their choice was to do with them and their land was in effect. All the way from the first presidents of the U.S. to later in the late 19th century the treatment of the Natives has always been changing. The Native Americans have always been treated like different beings, or savages, and have always been tricked to signing false treaties accompanying the loss of their homes and even death happened amongst tribes. In the period of the late 19th century, The U.S. government was becoming more and more unbeatable making the Natives move by force and sign false treaties. This did not account for the seizing of land the government imposed at any given time (Boxer 2009).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Gender Frontier By Kathleen Brown

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, Brown claims on how gender roles and identities shaped the perceptions and interactions of both English settlers and the Native American civilizations. Both Indian and English societies have critical social orders between males and females. In addition, their culture difference reflexes to the English and Indian males and females’ culpabilities as well. However, the Indian people put too much responsibility to their women. Women were in charge as agriculturalists, producers and customers of vital household goods and implements. They were also in control for providing much of the material culture of daily needs such as clothing, domestic gears and furnishings like baskets, bedding and household building. Native American females were expected to do a range of tasks. On the other hand, the Indian men only cleared new planting ground and constantly left the villages to fish and hunt. Clearly, Native Indian women had more tasks than the men did. Therefore, Indian males’ social and work roles became distinctive from females’ at the moment of the huskanaw (a rite of passage by which Virginia Indian boys became men) and reminded so until the men were too old to hunt or go to war. English commentator named George Percy underlines, “The men take their pleasure in hunting and their wares, which they are in continually”. “On the other hand the women were heavily burdened with”, says other commentator, John Smith. Gender is directly referential in an important sense, describing how sexual division was understood in the social order. Consequently, Native American people prescribed the gender social practice that women should be loaded with range of liabilities than the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Benjamin Franklin Remarks Concerning The Savages Of Native America

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    Benjamin Franklin wrote “In Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America”, because he made observations and describes it in this essay the difference between the society of White English America and Native Americans. Furthermore, he needed people to understand that those supposed savages are different from us and that is acceptable. In every culture, whether White English America, or Native Americans, we all have some practices of disrespect and courtesy. Not all cultures are the same, as well as everyone’s life is different. Benjamin explains the differences between our society and their nation; moreover, he explains that their manners differ from ours as well.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Thomas King's 'The Inconvenient Indian'

    918 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • American Indians

    1645 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied all of the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who speaked hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large built terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper. seashells and soapstone.To this day, movies and television continue the stereotype of Indians wearing feathered headdresses killing innocent white settlers. As they encountered the Europeans, automatically their material world was changed. The American Indians were amazed by the physical looks of the white settlers, their way of dressing and also by their language. The first Indian-White encounter was very peaceful and trade was their principal interaction. Tension and disputes were sometimes resolved by force but more often by negotiation or treaties. On the other hand, the Natives were described as strong and very innocent creatures awaiting for the first opportunity to be christianized. The Indians were called the “Noble Savages” by the settlers because they were cooperative people but sometimes, after having a few conflicts with them, they seem to behaved like animals. We should apprehend that the encounter with the settlers really amazed the natives, they were only used to interact with people from their own race and surroundings and all of this was like a new discovery for them as well as for the white immigrants. The relations between the English and the Virginian Indians was somewhat strong in a few ways. They were having marriages among them. For example, when Pocahontas married John Rolfe, many said it has a political implication to unite more settlers with the Indians to have a better relation between both groups. As for the Indians, their attitude was always friendly and full of curiosity when they saw the strange and light-skinned creatures from beyond the ocean. The colonists only survived with the help of the Indians when they first settler in Jamestown and Plymouth. In this areas, the Indians showed the colonists how to cultivate crops and gather seafood.The Indians changed their attitude from welcome to hostility when the strangers increased and encroached more and more on hunting and planting in the Natives’ grounds.

    Read More

More about American Savages

Open Document