In these two passages, Momaday and Brown reveal their reactions to the desolation of the Native American lands. Though they have experienced the same land, they each have distinct opinions on its value and how the reader should view it. The two passages compare Momaday’s efforts to embellish with Brown’s efforts to inform through the application of uniform diction, contrasting point of view, and comparisons of the nature of current lands to that of previous ones. In his passage, Momaday writes to enhance the Native American landscape. He writes to instill a sense of excellence of nature and to convince the reader that there’s more to the landscape than what’s seen at a first glance. He represents the energy of the land with his pattern of …show more content…
He gives in to the common idea that westward expansion led to the destruction of Native American lands, which he angrily describes by writing with savage diction and comparisons to the previously existing land. He defines the plains with bleak adjectives like “dry” and “parched” to demonstrate that the land is not suitable for sustaining life. He adds to this by writing that the “sun baked the dry earth drier” and that “the streams stopped running,” to indicate that any life forms that had flourished at one point aren’t supported by the barren land any longer. By writing with this type of diction, Brown convinces the reader that the desolate land is no longer of any value. It creates a frustrated tone that makes the reader feel uncomfortable about what has become of the once spirited Native American lands. This tone is consistent throughout the passage, particularly when Brown contrasts the nature of the land he’s describing with the one he used to appreciate. He wrote that a few years earlier, “a thunder of a million buffalo hooves would have shaken the prairie in frantic stampedes for water.” He then continues the comparison by writing that the buffalo herds were “replaced by an endless desolation of bones and skulls and rotting hooves” and associates the land with death. This contributes to the resentful tone and makes the reader comprehend the abundance of life that is no longer able to thrive in the plains. Brown writes with this savage diction and these comparisons to communicate his anger and to inform his audience about the destruction of Native American
From the prologue through chapter one in “Wilderness and the American Mind”, the author emphasizes the affect wilderness had on the Europeans during the colonization of America. In today’s society, we are familiar with the concept of wilderness but few of us have experienced the feeling of being encapsulated in the unfamiliar territory. Today we long for wilderness, crave it even. We use it as an outlet to escape the pace of life. However, we have a sense of safety that the Europeans did not. We are not isolated in the unfamiliar, help is usually a phone call away. Though we now view the wilderness as an oasis because we enter at our own terms, in the early colonial and national periods, the wilderness was an unknown environment that was viewed as evil and dangerous.
Dr. Daniel K. Richter is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at University of Pennsylvania. His focus on early Native American history has led to his writing several lauded books including Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Past, and The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Richter’s Facing East is perhaps, a culmination of his latter work. It is centered from a Native American perspective, an angle less thought about in general. Through the book, Richter takes this perspective into several different fields of study which includes literary analysis, environmental history, and anthropology. Combining different methodologies, Richter argues Americans can have a fruitful future, by understanding the importance of the American Indian perspective in America’s short history.
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.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
The removal of Indian tribes was one of the tragic times in America’s history. Native Americans endured hard times when immigrants came to the New World. Their land was stolen, people were treated poorly, tricked, harassed, bullied, and much more. The mistreatment was caused mostly by the white settlers, who wanted the Indians land. The Indians removal was pushed to benefit the settlers, which in turn, caused the Indians to be treated as less than a person and pushed off of their lands. MOREEE
All in all, the treatment of the American Indian during the expansion westward was cruel and harsh. Thus, A Century of Dishonor conveys the truth about the frontier more so than the frontier thesis. Additionally, the common beliefs about the old west are founded in lies and deception. The despair that comes with knowing that people will continue to believe in these false ideas is epitomized by Terrell’s statement, “Perhaps nothing will ever penetrate the haze of puerile romance with which writers unfaithful to their profession and to themselves have surrounded the westerner who made a living in the saddle” (Terrell 182).
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...
In Our savage neighbors written by Peter Silver, violence and terror characterized the relationship between the Indians and the Pennsylvanian colonists. The conspectus of Silver’s book resides on the notion that fear was the prime motivator that led to the rebirth
In his essay, “The Indians’ Old World,” Neal Salisbury examined a recent shift in the telling of Native American history in North America. Until recently, much of American history, as it pertains to Native Americans; either focused on the decimation of their societies or excluded them completely from the discussion (Salisbury 25). Salisbury also contends that American history did not simply begin with the arrival of Europeans. This event was an episode of a long path towards America’s development (Salisbury 25). In pre-colonial America, Native Americans were not primitive savages, rather a developing people that possessed extraordinary skill in agriculture, hunting, and building and exhibited elaborate cultural and religious structures.
War is always destructive and devastating for those involved leaving behind a trail of death and barren landscape leading to heartbreak and shattered lives. War has its subjugators and its defeated. One enjoys complete freedom and rights while the other has neither freedom nor rights. Defeated and broken is where the Eastern Woodland Indians found themselves after both the Seven Years' war and the American Revolution. The Europeans in their campaigns to garner control of the land used the native peoples to gain control and ultimately stripped the rightful owners of their land and freedoms. The remainder of this short paper will explore the losses experienced by the Eastern Woodland Indians during these wars and will answer the question of which war was more momentous in the loss experienced.
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
She is commenting on how Native Americans lived before they were moved. They had a good life, as she writes, will a great sense of community, friendship and prosperity. No one in the tribe was left behind, no matter if they were not good hunters or gatherers. As long as you had a tribe to look after you, you will be alright. However, each stanza this pleasantness is interrupted by the white man. Even though what the Native Americans stand for is beautiful, they are removed and they are only allotted what the imperialists will give them. Here is a stanza to understand these concepts, “To each head of household—so long as you remember your tribal words for/ village you will recollect that the grasses still grow and the rivers still flow. So/ long as you teach your children these words they will remember as well. This /we cannot allow. One hundred and sixty acres allotted” (Da’). As we see with this quote, Da’ is pointing out how the new Americans exiled the Native people not only from their land, but their righteous ways of living, and the precious land that allowed them to be
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...
Nature is important to Native American Literature because they believe in the Great Spirit and the idea land is sacred. We see the importance of nature in the “Iroquois Constitution”, a speech by Chief Dekanawidah. The constitution is about preserving and honoring nature. “Firefly Song” also deals with the theme of nature. This poem describes living with light, no matter what happens in life. It is relevant to nature because the Ojibwa tribe chose to use a firefly as a representation of light. The Ojibwa choosing to use a firefly tells us, even the smallest creature in nature is important to them. Another piece of Native American Literature that displays the theme of nature is “Brother Eagle Sister Sky”. In this message given by Chief
In Luther Standing Bear’s “Nature” and Louis Owens’s “The American Indian Wilderness”, the authors dictate differences in Indian and white relationships with nature. They stress how Indians see nature, their balanced relationship with it, and how they know wilderness is just a European idea. While agreeing here, Standing Bear focuses on the Lakota view of how Indians truly lived while Owens reveals both sides and thinks white views can shift with time.