Dan Cutler's Life

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

Have you ever heard of the Cherokee Indians? Sure you have! Just as a reminder, they are the biggest tribe, and most known of out of all the Indian tribes there has ever been in the southeast. They are very important to American History and helped shaped us to be the Americans we are today, which is clearly what I 'll be explaining in this paper. Throughout the paper, I 'll tell you everything you need to know about the Cherokee Indians and continue to relate to the thesis.

The Lakota, an Indian group of the Great Plains, established their community in the Black Hills in the late eighteenth century (9). This group is an example of an Indian community that got severely oppressed through imperialistic American actions and policy, as the Americans failed to recognize the Lakota’s sovereignty and ownership of the Black Hills. Jeffrey Ostler, author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, shows that the Lakota exemplified the trends and subsequent challenges that Indians faced in America. These challenges included the plurality of groups, a shared colonial experience, dynamic change, external structural forces, and historical agency.

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

Throughout the course of history there have been numerous accounts regarding Native American and European interaction. From first contact to Indian removal, the interaction was somewhat of a roller coaster ride, leading from times of peace to mini wars and rebellions staged by the Native American tribes. The first part of this essay will briefly discuss the pre-Columbian Indian civilizations in North America and provide simple awareness of their cultures, while the second part of this essay will explore all major Native American contact leading up to, and through, the American Revolution while emphasizing the impact of Spanish, French, and English explorers and colonies on Native American culture and vice versa. The third, and final, part of this essay will explore Native American interaction after the American Revolution with emphasis on westward expansion and the Jacksonian Era leading into Indian removal. Furthermore, this essay will attempt to provide insight into aspects of Native American/European interaction that are often ignored such as: gender relations between European men and Native American women, slavery and captivity of native peoples, trade between Native Americans and European colonists, and the effects of religion on Native American tribes.

8. Zinn attempts to prove the Indians were not inferior by saying how they had developed into egalitarian communities, larger populations, more divisions of labor among men and women and had built irrigation canals, dams, were doing ceramics, weaving baskets, and making cloth out of cotton. A culture known as Moundbuilders had built enormous sculptures out of the earth that were miles long and many other tribes had tool makers, potters, jewelry makers, weavers, copper engravers and saltmakers. The Indians were able to govern themselves by working together and lived in peace with no laws, sheriffs, judges, juries, courts, or jails. Their culture was complex, and although they did not have a written language they kept their history going orally with song and dance and their relations among men women and children were more beautifully worked out than probably any other place in the world.

When the first colonists landed in the territories of the new world, they encountered a people and a culture that no European before them had ever seen. As the first of the settlers attempted to survive in a truly foreign part of the world, their written accounts would soon become popular with those curious of this “new” world, and those who already lived and survived in this seemingly inhospitable environment, Native American Indian. Through these personal accounts, the Native Indian soon became cemented in the American narrative, playing an important role in much of the literature of the era. As one would expect though, the representation of the Native Americans and their relationship with European Americans varies in the written works of the people of the time, with the defining difference in these works being the motives behind the writing. These differences and similarities can be seen in two similar works from two rather different authors, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.

The relationship between the English and the Native Americans in 1600 to 1700 is one of the most fluctuating and the most profound relationships in American history. On the one side of the picture, the harmony between Wampanoag and Puritans even inspires them to celebrate “first Thanksgiving”; while, by contrast, the conflicts between the Pequots and the English urge them to antagonize each other, and even wage a war. In addition, the mystery of why the European settlers, including English, become the dominant power in American world, instead of the indigenous people, or Indians, can be solved from the examination of the relationship. In a variety of ways, the relationship drastically alters how people think about and relate to the aborigines. Politically, the relationship changes to establish the supremacy of the English; the English intends to obtain the land and rules over it. Socially, the relationship changes to present the majority of the English settlers; the dominating population is mostly the English settlers. Economically, the relationship changes to obtain the benefit of the English settlers; they gain profit from the massive resource in America. Therefore, the relationship does, in fact, change to foreshadow the discordance of the two groups of people.

description of native life are described in such a way as to emphasize some of

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 Indian presence precipitated the formation of an American identity” (Axtell 992). Ostracized by numerous citizens of the United States today, this quote epitomizes Axtell’s beliefs of the Indians contributing to our society. Unfortunately, Native Americans’ roles in history are often categorized as insignificant or trivial, when in actuality the Indians contributed greatly to Colonial America, in ways the ordinary person would have never deliberated. James Axtell discusses these ways, as well as what Colonial America may have looked like without the Indians’ presence. Throughout his article, his thesis stands clear by his persistence of alteration the Native Americans had on our nation. James Axtell’s bias delightfully enhances his thesis, he provides a copious amount of evidence establishing how Native Americans contributed critically to the Colonial culture, and he considers America as exceptional – largely due to the Native Americans.

Inman, Natalie. “ ‘A Dark and Bloody Ground’: American Indian Responses to Expansion during the American Revolution.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 70, no.4 (2011): 258-275. Natalie Inman writes concerning the Native American population’s response to not only the European Arrival and invasions but also the after-effects of the long-term settlement efforts on behalf of the new frontiersmen and women who attempted to locate beyond the mountains of Tennessee.

“The Long, Bitter Trail” by Anothony F.C. Wallace revealed a lot about the relationship between the Indians and Americans during the 1800’s. A key figure that is followed is Andrew Jackson the 7th president of the United States. It begins by talking about Andrew Jackson drive to take more land from the Indians in the East. In 1802 Andrew Jackson was appointed to general of the militia in Tennessee, where he fought and won against the Creek Indians in 1814 and held of British forces in

Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. Author: Peter Silver. Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company New York (2008)

The ways of Native Americans have been both a cultural and societal sustainment within the United States today. However, not in the way traditional sustainment is seen as. In Phillip J. Deloria’s book, Playing Indian, he asks how across American history “has the notion of disguised Indians dumping tea in Boston harbor had such a powerful hold on Americans’ imaginations?” (9) What is it exactly that captivates the minds of Americans’ over the culture of our Native American predecessors? Before the passing of the Stamp Act in 1795, American colonists started mentioning of Tamenend, a Delaware chief who allowed William Penn to pass through his lands. The Shuylkill Fishing Company started a trend of clubs commemorating to the event with dancing, parades with people cladded in Indian costumes, “longtalks”, and maypoles being erected every first day of May to celebrate the beginning of spring and eventually being called “King Tammany’s Day.” Deloria makes the case of how the Roman Catholic holiday of Carnival makes the minstrel appearance of a “double life” (15) with both French and English celebrations and how the concept of “mocking” different cultures to be an Old World concept and something that has made itself well known as concrete in the holiday and the nations that take part in it. The Americans thus continued this timely tradition by taking part in celebrations with Indian wear and rituals without truly immersing themselves with any contact with the Native