Mark Twain And Zitkala Sa

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

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.

He also explains how important transitions in American government and news were altered as a result of the war and the emotions and opinions it spread. Silver reflects on the misunderstanding of religions and how the Indian War even partitioned major religious groups into mortal enemies, such as the Quakers and the Protestants, based on whether they were depicted as allies of the Native Americans. Lastly, Silver accomplished supporting his thesis by adding factual evidence of the effect of the Indian War on writing, art, and entertainment because he included excerpts as well as cartoons and drawings of attacks from real-life poets and artists. These examples prove to an audience who cannot understand the feelings of people from hundreds of years ago exactly how scared and angry both sides were at one another and their desperation to be the superior civilization in America. Having studied extensively at Harvard University and Yale University and taught at both Princeton University and Rutgers for about fifteen years, it is apparent that the depth of knowledge about the French and Indian War Silver has obtained must be considerably immense which gives him the title as a legit

In her book American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa's central role as both an activist and writer surfaces, which uniquely combines autobiography and fiction and represents an attempt to merge cultural critique with aesthetic form, especially surrounding such fundamental matters as religion. In the tradition of sentimental, autobiographical fiction, this work addresses keen issues for American Indians' dilemmas with assimilation. In Parts IV and V of "School Days," for example, she vividly describes a little girl's nightmares of paleface devils and delineates her bitterness when her classmate died with an open Bible on her bed. In this groundbreaking scene, she inverts the allegation of Indian religion as superstition by labeling

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

Zitkala-Sa’s The School Days of an Indian Girl is an autobiography that was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1901. The autobiography in detail describes her experience in her community, the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota as a child and later her journey ravelling with European-American missionaries to attend a Quaker Missionary School that teaches speaking, reading and writing in English. Upon her arrival at the missionary led school, Sa felt ostracized, fearful, and terrified of every little adjustment or ordeal that appeared to be foreign or unknown to her based upon her cultural identity and heritage. Her trauma often led to many nights where she would sob and cry herself to sleep. Her daunting experiences of having her heritage ripped away ensued when Sa caught word that her “long and heavy” hair was to be cut (314). From the teachings from her Mother, Sa understood that “only the unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy” (314). She cried and shook her head with anguish but as her thick braids were cut she then “lost her spirit” (315).

“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.

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.

Twain describes the time of war as “a glad and gracious time,” and the victorious soldiers as “bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory!” His positive description of imperialism represents the common belief that war is a glorious event and a source of pride for the victors. Twain also describes those against the war, but in a negative light: “the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning...” Twain’s description of anti-imperialists and the treatment they received from others shows how unpopular and seemingly insane their ideas were. Though Twain himself was an anti-imperialist, he describes them in a negative way to gain readers. Most Americans in the early 1900’s were imperialists, and through a positive and prideful description of imperialism at the beginning of his essay, Twain is able to draw in many readers he would have offended if he wrote only of the horrors of imperialism. Twain’s word choice drew in more readers, causing many to now question imperialism. Twain’s word choice describing both pro- and anti-imperialists widens his audience, and his thoughts on the effects of imperialism are seen by more readers. His word choice effectively spreads his message.

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

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain...There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.,” Chief Seattle Speech of 1854. The culture of the Native American people has been deteriorating ever since the Europeans arrived in the Americas. The impactful and immense loss of lifestyle that they faced is one that can never be recovered, what the United States has given them are generations of trauma and blatant suffering. However, the U.S. did not stop there, a multitude of cultures have been broken to help keep America pure. For instance, one of the most significant cultures that have been dismantled by the U.S. other than the Natives and their music were the languages and music of the African slaves. The apparent likeness of these two cultures in the ways in which their deconstruction impacted them is in more of an abundance, such as the dominating influence of the Christian religion and the gravely vital role of maintaining what little heritage they could through language. In contrast to this, the two groups had an opposing difference pertaining to how the Natives and slaves tried to compensate the immense loss of their culture through the generations.

Mark Twain is one of America's most famous and celebrated authors. He has written many compelling novels and stories. Some of these great works of art include, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Innocents Abroad. Many of his stories take place in the south with various interesting characters like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Many people know about his books, but few know about him as a person.

In this course, we have learned the meaning and content of imperialism, more specifically modern imperialism, and how it affects both the colonizers and the colonized. In the first half of the semester, the imperialists’ view was taken into account through literature. We have studied this perspective in books written by well-known authors, like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Melville’s Typee, and Ingalls’ Little House On The Prairie. On the other hand, the colonized , or natives’ reactions and struggle against imperialism was also considered, for example, in Ngugi’s A Grain Of Wheat, and in Silko’s Ceremony, and that is my main discussion in this essay.