Ethnocentrism In The Ghost Dance War

Trigger agrees that “...the native American evidence was strongly colored by a desire to please Europeans...historical records are stereotyped in various ways that must be understood before they can be used reliably as historical documents” (Trigger, 1991, p. 1196). Trigger’s thorough article provides clear, specific situations that occurred during European contact, and the position they were affected in. For example, Natives believed the Europeans were“...supernatural spirits...Europeans...offered...supernatural interpretation in terms of native religious concepts” (Trigger, 1991, p. 1200). This situation is related to the romantic behavior of the Indians as the Europeans were arriving into their land. A historiographical example which relates and agrees to Trigger’s argument is the novel, Native Americans: Opposing Viewpoints, because it provides several different viewpoints rather than favoring only 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

“Indians are like the weather.” With his opening words Vine Deloria Jr. sets up the basis for the rest of his witty yet substantial manifesto, Custer Died for Your Sins. The book, which describes the struggles and misrepresentation of the American Indian people in 1960s American culture, is written in a style that changes from ironic and humorous satire to serious notions, then back again. Through energetic dialogue that engages the reader in a clever and articulate presentation, Deloria advocates the dismissal of old stereotypes and shows a viewpoint that allows the general public to gain a deeper understanding of what it is to be an American Indian.

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.

While she and her husband denounced the Peyote religion due to their first-hand observation of peyote's destructive--often deadly--effects, they asserted the superiority of Indian spirituality over the disregard for nature, disrespect of other cultures, and depredation of people which accompanied alleged Christian practices such as stripping children from their language, culture, religion, family, and environment, the blatant injustice and trauma of which the reader poignantly feels in her fiction during the hair-cutting scene and in the mother's desperate cry to her departed warrior brothers.

In dealing with America’s indigenous people, the dominant strategy among white settlers, was, in the best of cases, to ignore the Native Americans until they pass away and, in the worst of cases, to actively contribute to their demise. In John Okinson’s short story, “The Problem of Old Harjo,” the former approach towards dealing with the Indian population is presented. Unable to change old Harjo’s ways, and frankly, unwilling to, Miss Evans knows that she will continue to be haunted by the fact that Harjo was prohibited from joining the church until “death—the great solvent which is not always solvent—came to one of them.” The death of old Harjo is one of the two solutions suggested by Okinson (and the only viable option since Harjo is much older than Miss Evans and, as a women of the clergy, Miss Evans will surely not

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.

In Seneca Chief Red Jacket’s Address to White Missionaries and Iroquois Six Nations, Red Jacket delivers a speed in Buffalo Grove, New York in 1805, regarding his tribe’s view on religion. For instance, when giving an anecdote on the history of his ancestors, he states, “Our seats were once large, and yours very small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets, You have got our country, but you are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us.” which evokes pity to listeners by telling how the Christian whites stole the land from the Native Americans who had fed them and clothed them only to be returned with nothing but the loss of their homeland (Red Jacket 2). Expressing a contradiction of the treatments, Red Jacket conveys the moral question of whether it was right of Europeans to treat their Native hosts in such a tactless manner. There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one’s native land and Red Jacket expresses that emotion of sorrow by claiming that his people could not even find a place to put their blankets as their land was not in their possession anymore. In addition, whites felt entitled to convert the native americans to the ways of Christ by

“A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson is a short history about her personal experience in captivity among the Wampanoag Indian tribe. On the one hand, Mary Rowlandson endures many hardships and derogatory encounters. However, she manages to show her superior status to everyone around her. She clearly shows how her time spent under captivity frequently correlates with the lessons taught in the Bible. Even though, the colonists possibly murdered their chief, overtook their land, and tried to starve the Native Americans by burning down their corn, which was their main source of food, she displays them as demonizing savages carrying out the devil's plan. There are many struggles shown

The Sioux Native Americans have a profound respect for their faith and hold true to their beliefs shown by the sacredness of the Great Mystery’s creations such as nature shown in Standing Bear’s “Nature” as well as Zitkala-Ša’s American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings. Differing from the Native Americans, the European settlers show a variation of different levels of reverence for Christianity and it’s beliefs. The European’s demonstrate a lack of respect for Native American religion shown by the tactical attempts to convert Native American culture to converge with their belief system and practices. However, Native Americans show a lack of respect for Christianity and its beliefs within Mary Rowlandson’s experience as a captive. She uses the Bible to pull her through heart-wrenching and painful experiences from being shot to loosing her daughter against the wishes of her master and mistress. Although the experiences within Native American literature display the importance of religion and devotion to the Native American beliefs and ceremonies, it also shows the presence and effect of religion among the European settlers both respectable and corrupt.

Since God was not tolerant of sinners and evil acts, Mary recounted many different acts that were considered evil or barbaric that the Native Americans did. For example, when the Native Americans attacked Mary’s town, she described the aftermath as, “a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here and some there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves,” (Derounian 12-51). Mary separates the

Mary Rowlandson believed the Native Americans were savage, blood-thirsty creatures that were either going to kill or be killed. In her story, she supports her claim by using vivid imagery of a major event that took place during her lifetime. A very interesting quote from Rowlandson’s literature is “It is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped naked by a company of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out” (Rowlandson). This quote uses an incredible amount of imagery and allows the reader to see just how Rowlandson feels about the natives.

In Captivity and Conversion, Hilary E. Wyss challenges the traditional Indian-American models of captivity and conversion narratives, by which historical accounts represent Native Americans. She raises the question “What makes a story Native American?” Wyss argues that these narrative models are not an accurate universal representation of Native Americans. Essentially, Euro-Americans filtered Native American history, according to their bred expectations, to share Native American history through the ideal models of captivity and conversion narratives. Generally speaking, captivity narratives tell of the tragic events endured by Anglo-Saxon victims of Indian captivity; Conversion narratives are based on American Indians who abandon their subordinate culture for an Anglo-Saxon one. To prove the inefficacy of these binary models used to encompass all Native American individuals, Wyss uses the autobiography of William Apess and the accountings of Mary Jemison to exemplify nontraditional Native American stories of captivity and conversion.