In Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” the classic western showdown comes to an anticlimatic end when the town marshal fails to produce a gun and the gunslinger walks away (not into a blazing sunset). With the disappointing showdown Crane illustrates the flat ending of the west when the town marshal’s bride comes unexpectedly to Yellow Sky. “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” demonstrates the complex dynamic of the West passing away as the East penetrates and fills the open desert plain. Jack Potter stands as the frontier hero who helps usher the East into the frontier. He acts as the classic American hero as depicted in the early nineteenth century captivity narratives that also encouraged expansion into the West. However, …show more content…
Kolodny explains that the captivity narrative and Indian War narrative have “long been appreciated by Americanists as an ongoing literary vehicle through which successive generations of Americans played out the symbolic dramas of westward migration” (330). Americans saw their fears of the wilderness conquered in captivity narratives and could then move into the West with their new knowledge. The captivity narrative can serve as a tale of westward expansion because, as Kolodny continues to explain, the captivity narrative represents “the mythopoetic prototype of the white man’s fantasied intimacy with the red...[where] Americans came to displace the Indian with the figure of the Indianized white man as the proper hero of the American wilderness” (330). The Indianized white man holds special knowledge of the wilderness and can straddle both civilization and the wilderness. Though captivity narratives may be somewhat different in their content from the classic Western tale popular while Crane wrote, they share an important figure: the rough frontier hero who understands and controls the land. Jack Potter in depicts the same kind of desire for westward migration as he comes to represent both Eastern and Western culture. Jack Potter serves as the tie that binds East and West together as the American hero of the frontier. Potter is described as “a man known, liked, and feared
Frontiersmen have existed throughout America’s history. According to Turner’s hypothesis, they push forwards for civilization and have shaped America. The stories All the Pretty Horses, The Gift of Cochise, and The Martian are all works of frontier literature. Each in their own way show frontiersmen during different times in America’s history with characters that interact with their respective frontiers in different ways. Through these three books one can see how the core interactions between frontiersmen and the frontiers call out the qualities of frontiersmen stated in Turner’s frontier hypothesis.
Between 1492-1776, although many people moved to the “New World”, North America lost population due to the amount of Indians dying from war and diseases and the inability of colonists to replace them. John Murrin states, “losers far outnumbered winners” in “ a tragedy of such huge proportions that no one’s imagination can easily encompass it all.” This thought of a decreasing population broadens one’s perspective of history from that of an excluded American tale full of positivity to that of a more unbiased, all-encompassing analysis. The Indians and slaves have recently been noted as a more crucial part of history than previously accredited with.
“The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado” Written by Elliott West. I chose to write about this book because of the large range of events and transitions that occurred throughout the American West that the author includes in the text. Elliot West highlights the struggles that many endured while trying to create better circumstances for not only themselves but also their families by moving to the west. He chronicles the adaptations that many white settlers arriving in the west faced in order to be able to make a living for themselves. But another reason why I found the book interesting was because of the way Elliot West provided perspective for each side of the struggle over the American West. He gives us the
In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will
Although stories are a universal art form, they hold a more significant role in Native American culture, and literature. This occurs due to the millennia spent in isolation from the rest of the world, and having stories as the main source of entertainment. Thomas King’s statement, “stories can control our lives,” is an important notion, because it embarks on the idea of molding the diseased into more interesting versions of themselves. The statement is prevalent in many pieces of literature which fuse reality into the imagination, and cause people to lose themselves in the fictitious realm. Native literature is all closely related, and they all hold messages within their stories that show their great culture; both the good and the bad. Story
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of
The somewhat nomadic lifestyle of the plains natives often interfered with White America’s exploration of the great Wild West. To solve this inconvenience, White Americans moved the Natives onto reservations, which were smaller plots of land, sometimes not in the tribe’s home area, and were subject to White American authority. The creation of reservations was just one of many assaults on Native culture and destroyed the Native’s idea that freedom meant the ability to roam.
Brown mainly relies on historical research while writing the manuscript for “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”. He studied personal descriptions, historical documents, and town council records to create a historically accurate account on how Americans conquered the West. While writing this book, Brown mainly writes about the events of the “Indian Wars”, which occurred during 1860’s through the 1890’s.
The book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, tells of Native American life on the reservation. In the story “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire” symbolism is used to echo how Native Americans were mistreated by the United States government. Still to this day Native Americans are forced to live on reservations which were originally prisoner of war camps. Alexie uses the symbolism of Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s conviction to show how Native Americans pay the price for injustices committed by the United States of America.
The American desire to culturally assimilate Native American people into establishing American customs went down in history during the 1700s. Famous author Zitkala-Sa, tells her brave experience of Americanization as a child through a series of stories in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Zitkala-Sa, described her journey into an American missionary where they cleansed her of her identity. In “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” Zitkala-Sa uses imagery in order to convey the cruel nature of early American cultural transformation among Indian individuals.
The Cherokee Indians are one of the most well-known American Indian tribes here in the U.S. However, once the Europeans came to the new world and started to expand their territory, this did not bode well for them. Many tribes were enraged by the expansion into Native American lands. Even when the Europeans had promised that they would not encroach onto their lands. Gold was said to be on the lands of the Cherokee and this made the Europeans want to break their promise to the Indians even more so now that they knew that gold was said to be there.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in
It is easy to see that current events and issues of the world around them have had an impact on authors and what they have written from the stories in this time period. The Native American authors wrote stories describing life during and after white man came to America. We read Oratory’s by two Native American’s COCHISE and CHARLOT. They gave heart-wrenching speeches, giving great details into the history of the tribes and the devastating effect the white man had on them. Author Zitkala Sa gave us a powerful interpretation of her life as a Indian and how the white’s coming to America affected her life.
This chapter, set in another part of the woods, introduces three more characters. Two of them are familiar; that is, they are familiar if the reader is familiar with other works by James Fenimore Cooper. Hawkeye (or Natty Bumppo) and Chingachgook have been serialized in several of the author's books. This chapter not only shows the close ties of these characters as they discuss familiar subjects but also shows the knowledge of the author about Indian customs and the historical background of America. It also depicts his sympathy for the Indians who were colonized and driven off their lands by European settlers. Cooper depicts his Indians as having keen senses and extensive skills. Hawkeye, for all his woodcraft, cannot match them; he cannot