From the very beginning of European colonization of the New World, the Native American population has continually been dropping. Throughout the frontier history of the United States, the chief objective of the pioneering white race was to move the savages aside by any way necessary, in order to settle the vast landscape of the continent. It was not until the Indian population was almost entirely wiped out that American society took an interest in the phenomenon of the perishing native race. Going along with societal trends, renown Western novelist Zane Grey published a work focused on the doomed people. "The Vanishing American apart, none of Grey's novels were ever made into really important movies;" but, like other Zane adaptations, this 1925 Native American epic "retained the values of his story" (Everson 170). Remaining loyal to the author's ideals, The Vanishing American focuses on the plight of a vanquished tribe living in a world in which the ill-fated rarely receive a second chance. Understanding the theory of the Vanishing American can best be achieved by first identifying with the history of European settling of the New World. For evidence of popular thought dealing with the natives of America during the beginning of European exploration, one must look no further than the works of William Shakespeare. The Tempest clearly presents the racial superiority, which its English audience supposed they possessed over the people of the New World, as an obvious fact. "To theatergoers Caliban (the savage native) represented what Europeans had been when they were lower on the scale of development" (Takaki 32). As America began to be further developed, the savagery seen in the natives somehow began to connect them to evil ... ... middle of paper ... ...Wesleyan UP, 1982. Everson, William K., and George N. Fenin. The Western: from silents to the seventies. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973. Iverson, Peter. The Navajo Nation. Albuquerque: University Of New Mexico Press, 1981 Jackson, Andrew. "5th Annual Message December 3, 1833." Andrew Jackson 1829-1837 Indian Land Cessions in the American Southeast. TNGenNet Inc, 2002. http://www.tngenweb.org/cessions/jackson.html. Jefferson, Thomas. "Jefferson to Banneker August 30, 1791." The Works of Thomas Jefferson vol. 6. Ed. Paul Ford. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904. Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1993. Vanishing American, The. Dir. George B. Seitz. Perf. Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, and Malcolm McGregor. Paramount Pictures, 1925.
To many of the English colonists, any land that was granted to them in a charter by the English Crown was theirs’, with no consideration for the natives that had already owned the land. This belittlement of Indians caused great problems for the English later on, for the natives did not care about what the Crown granted the colonists for it was not theirs’ to grant in the first place. The theory of European superiority over the Native Americans caused for any differences in the way the cultures interacted, as well as amazing social unrest between the two cultures.
The other author to provide readers with a different historical perspective is Daniel Richter. Richter’s book Facing East from Indian Country allows readers to see the story of coming to America from the Native American perspective. An interesting point that Richter makes in his book is “Perhaps the strangest lesson of all was that in the new nation whites were the ones entitled to be called “Americans” Indians bizarrely became something else” . In early America when the first Europeans arrived to America they mistakenly referred to the natives as “Indians”. Even people today use the term “Indian” when referring to the Native
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
Turner fails to realize the extent to which Native Americans existed in the ‘Wilderness’ of the Americas before the frontier began to advance. Turner’s thesis relies on the idea that “easterners … in moving to the wild unsettled lands of the frontier, shed the trappings of civilization … and by reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that the source of American democracy and national character.” (Cronon) While this idea seems like a satisfying theory of why Americans are unique, it relies on the notion that the Frontier was “an area of free land,” which is not the case, undermining the the...
The article, “Native Reactions to the invasion of America”, is written by a well-known historian, James Axtell to inform the readers about the tragedy that took place in the Native American history. All through the article, Axtell summarizes the life of the Native Americans after Columbus acquainted America to the world. Axtell launches his essay by pointing out how Christopher Columbus’s image changed in the eyes of the public over the past century. In 1892, Columbus’s work and admirations overshadowed the tears and sorrows of the Native Americans. However, in 1992, Columbus’s undeserved limelight shifted to the Native Americans when the society rediscovered the history’s unheard voices and became much more evident about the horrific tragedy of the Natives Indians.
Axtell, James. “Native Reactions to the Invasion of North America.” Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. 97-121. Print.
Director Jim Jarmusch’s film Deadman displays many of the accepted conventions for Western genre films, but manipulated in such a way as to create a revisionist, rather than a classical, western. The most obvious example of this manipulation are the characterizations of the hero, William Blake, and his Native American partner, Nobody. Blake is an awkward easterner who travels westward unaware of the different rules governing western life, instead of the rugged, knowledgeable outdoorsman who “does what he has to do” to defend justice and honor. Nobody’s character is unusually independent, educated, and kind towards Blake, instead of the traditional Western genre’s violent, unintelligent Indian.
In Chapter 8 of Major Problems in American Immigration History, the topic of focus shifts from the United States proper to the expansion and creation of the so called American Empire of the late Nineteenth Century. Unlike other contemporary colonial powers, such as Britain and France, expansion beyond the coast to foreign lands was met with mixed responses. While some argued it to be a mere continuation of Manifest Destiny, others saw it as hypocritical of the democratic spirit which had come to the United States. Whatever their reasons, as United States foreign policy shifted in the direction of direct control and acquisition, it brought forth the issue of the native inhabitants of the lands which they owned and their place in American society. Despite its long history of creating states from acquired territory, the United States had no such plans for its colonies, effectively barring its native subjects from citizenship. Chapter 8’s discussion of Colonialism and Migration reveals that this new class of American, the native, was never to be the equal of its ruler, nor would they, in neither physical nor ideological terms, join in the union of states.
Since the settling of the English colonies in the early 17th century, pioneers have been destined to expand into the North American frontier and to domesticate it with their Christian faith and progressive nature. In their exploration of the frontier, however, the Puritan colonists often encountered Indians whose savagery challenged their discipline and morals. Just as the colonists expanded, Indians also saw their native lands of many years vanish. The situation naturally compelled the Puritans and the Indians to fight each other for their mutual interests. Thus, while most accounts of Western history focus on the heathen threat, both Indians and colonists experienced the harshness of the captivity myth and its evolution into other mythology that defined American history.
Franklin, Benjamin “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 476-80. Print
In the late 1800s, Native Americans were “vanishing” to extinction, however that is untrue by Americans greediness for more Native American lands. At first, the Americans when in conflict with the Indians usually wanted peace, but after 1869, they began to brutally massacring any Indians- men, women, and children . After the defeat of many Indian tribes, the Americans came in and started to implement reservation where they can only stay in certain areas. With many of them illiterate most of them went to boarding school and became whiter. Many Native Americans had an unfair life where many try to stay alive and not vanished from society, in contrast imperialist Americans were afflicting pain on the poor Indians by killing them and not supplying them
The prevailing opinion is that European explorers came to the America’s to peacefully colonize and gradually begin mutually beneficial relationships with the native people. However, Howard Zinn proves that the majority of explorers could not coexist with the native tribes, as the conquerors slowly stole their land, and did not return the initial hospitality most of the natives had showed to them. Therefore, the European colonizers blatantly ignored the rights of the Native Americans and acted with violence towards them. In order to conquer the natives, the colonizers “set fire to the wigwams of the village” and “ [destroyed] their crops” (Zinn).
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.
During the European expedition in America, they founded colonies in North America that attracted thousands of settlers. The Europeans tried to get rid of the Native Americans in order to get what they wanted, which was economic wealth, landowning, slave trade, property ownership, and tobacco. M. Zylstra writes about “Colonization of History”, hybridization of history, and what the colonization of the natives by the Europeans lead to. Zylstra states.
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