In an attempt to understand whether or not Plenty Coups's hope was justified, philosopher Jonathan Lear brilliantly juxtaposes the great Crow chief's response to the collapse of civilization with the starkly contrasting response of the legendary Sioux chief Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull's understanding of courage was rooted firmly in traditional Sioux values and ideals which he took upon himself to embody, and therefore judged Plenty Coups's leadership and radical hope to be foolish and cowardly. Frederick E. Hoxie writes, "Sitting Bull insisted that authentic tribal leaders would never cooperate with the American government. To do so would be to surrender one's personal authority and sacrifice one's followers to the whims of petty officials" …show more content…
Lear argues "the Crow were able to leverage for themselves a better outcome than they could have done by pursuing any other strategy" (Lear 137). But how is the reader to know this for certain? Surely it is possible for not only the Crow but all Native Americans to have held their ancestral lands and kept their culture alive, at least for a time, had all plains Indians temporarily laid down their differences to war against the whites in lieu of tribal warfare: this is illustrated on a smaller scale in historical and oral records of the battle between the three Indian peoples led by Sioux chief Sitting Bull who exacted victory over General Custer and the two Indian societies who acted as little more than supplementary cavalry to American troops. Lear is smart enough to assure multiple times that he cannot be certain about what might have happened in any event had circumstances been different, so why does he stray from his established uncertainty in this case? This is done because it is necessary for Lear to ensure the reader formulates no truth other than the one which he provides: the Crow's cultural plight was inevitable no matter the response to the white encroachment on the land. It is only in this scenario that Lear's notion of radical hope holds significance. Without it, the book is simply a waste of nearly 200 pages printed hundreds of thousands of times centered around an obsession with the diction of a rather vague
“Plenty-Coups Chief of the Crows” was authored by Frank Linderman in 1930. This book interested me because it was Plenty-Coups account of his life. Plenty-Coups couldn’t write English. So when Mr. Linderman came by asking for his account of his life, Plenty-Coups couldn’t deny. Also why this book interested me was because we were learning about the Native American’s when I picked this book. Final reason why I picked this book is because I have never read a Native’s auto biography.
Powhatan was the chief of a large Confederacy consisting of around thirty-two tribes living in the Virginia area. He was viewed as a strong and powerful leader who wants the best for his people. He explains that the reason for his speech is that he is near the end of his life and is concerned about their relationship when his successor takes place. Chief Powhatan wants peace between the English and the Powhatan people. “I exhort you to peaceable councils…” Willing to Chief uses the phrase “I wish their experience was equal to mine,” meaning he wants his children to have the same relationship with the colonists as his generation has enjoyed. Chief Powhatan states that Native Americans have the love for colonists, “not be less than ours to you”.
The book opens "Nous sommes tours Sauvages," which translates to "We are all Savages." It's a fitting way to begin a book chronicling the story of Major Robert Rogers and his rangers journey, Native American slaughter, and return home. In White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America, author Stephen Brumwell depicts a well researched, unbiased image of: war, hardship, courage, savagery, vengeance, and survival. Brumwell wants to show his readers an image of the true nature of war and all the trimmings that goes along with it. There has never been a war where atrocities were not committed. Further more, there has never been a war where the atrocities were not committed by all sides, to one extent or another. This war was no different. This compelling read draws from a broad range of primary sources, including Rogers' Journals, contemporary newspaper accounts, the letters and remembrances of Rogers' surviving Rangers, and several generations of Abenaki oral history.
Throughout the history of the United States, the discussion surrounding Native American relations has been fueled by prejudice and misunderstandings. In Andrew Jackson & His Indian Wars, Remini does not seek to excuse or exonerate Jackson. Consequently, Remini is more focused on analyzing what transpired and why. To support his central themes, Remini uses evidence spanning the entire spectrum of Jackson’s career. Beginning
One of the hardest realities of being a minority is that the majority has a thousand ways to hurt anyone who is part of a minority, and they have but two or three ways to defend themselves. In Sherman Alexie’s short story The Toughest Indian in the World, Roman Gabriel Fury is a member of the Native American minority that makes up less than two percent of the total United States population (1.2 percent to be exact). This inherent disadvantage of being a minority, along with various cultural factors, influences the conflicted character of Roman Gabriel Fury and his attitudes toward the white majority. Through his use of strong language, demanding tone, and vibrant colors, Roman Gabriel Fury is able to reveal his complex feelings about growing up Indian in a predominately white world.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
...dian, you must fight for your nation and tribe and never give up. This proverb just shows how strong, fearless, and determined the Cheyenne Indians were because they basically say their nation cannot be conquered.
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...
Examination of Indian policy in Frank Linderman’s Pretty-Shield: Medicine Women of the Crows help to make sense after disappearing of Buffalo by depicting a vanishing population which sometimes is referred as vanishing Red Man. In this case, the Crow people are compared with disappearing people in that after the disappearance of the buffalo; The Crow people lost their hopes and their spirits crushed. The Crow faced constraints by the United States government. The American agents also pestered the Crow people. This made them lose their land, and their cultural practices were limited (Grace Stone
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
The ways in which the author could strengthen the book, in my opinion, is instead all the descriptive, to me meaningless points as how they were coloring themselves, the author should have put a little bit more facts in there to make it more documentary. Anyhow, overall the book has strength in letting the reader understand the history from both sides, whites and Indians. Many people have different views on the persecution of Native Americans, some think that it was all Indians’ fault and that they caused their own suffering, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, because they were not the ones who invaded. And Native Americans had every right to stand up for the land that was theirs.
In this book, Robert M. Utley depicts the life of Sitting Bull a Hunkpapa Indian, from when he was born to his death in 1890. Utley shows both the personal life and political life that Sitting Bull endured throughout the years. Utley looks at Sitting Bull's life from both “...the white as well as the Indian perspective. From both, he emerges as an enduring legend and a historical icon, but above all as a truly great human being.” (xvi). To his tribe Sitting Bull was an extraordinary man who was brave and respected, but to many in the US government believed him to be a troublemaker and a coward. Utley works to prove how Sitting Bull was a man who became an American patriot.
Although the work is 40 years old, “Custer Died for Your Sins” is still relevant and valuable in explaining the history and problems that Indians face in the United States. Deloria’s book reveals the White view of Indians as false compared to the reality of how Indians are in real life. The forceful intrusion of the U.S. Government and Christian missionaries have had the most oppressing and damaging affect on Indians. There is hope in Delorias words though. He believes that as more tribes become more politically active and capable, they will be able to become more economically independent for future generations. He feels much hope in the 1960’s generation of college age Indians returning to take ownership of their tribes problems and build a better future for their children.
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...