The Crucible : The Persecution Of Native Americans

The unjust history of America contains the many Native American genocides executed throughout the 1790s-1920s over

Native Americans have been forced out of their culture over time, forced into assimilation, lost their rights, and have lost their land due to policies and laws by the whites that can’t bear the Native American way of life. There used to be many Native American tribes all throughout North America, and now these tribes are spread across the country and are blended into the rest of the population. The native ways have changed drastically in the last two centuries due to relocation programs, Indian boarding schools, and the way to classify which tribe each person belongs to. Native Americans have endured so much pain, which results from everything they have lost over time, and they have constantly paid the price for their ethnicity.

Native Americans have been oppressed by numerous entities including the government, businesses, and white settlers

An often forgotten group of oppressed people are Native Americans. Many gloss over or just ignore the injustices they have faced. Such examples of their oppression are prevalent but often neglected. Such as how they were faced with many injustices from american settlers as they tried to force them from their land , the countless massacres, and lastly the atrocities they faced on the trail of tears.

From its birth, America was a place of inequality and privilege. Since Columbus 's arrival and up until present day, Native American tribes have been victim of white men 's persecution and tyranny. This was first expressed in the 1800’s, when Native Americans were driven off their land and forced to embark on the Trail of Tears, and again during the Western American- Indian War where white Americans massacred millions of Native Americans in hatred. Today, much of the Indian Territory that was once a refuge for Native Americans has since been taken over by white men, and the major tribes that once called these reservations home are all but gone. These events show the discrimination and oppression the Native Americans faced. They were, and continue to be, pushed onto reservations,

It is clear that throughout many years there has been an exemption of treatment when talking about the Native Americans in the United States. Supposedly every individual is endowed with the right of freedom, equality, and of seeking for happiness, but Native Americans were treated irrationally. From the discovery of America, to the founding fathers and settlers, the treatment and attitude towards Native Americans has been unsettling at best. The colonial policies toward the Native Americans affected the Indians in ways that changed their relationship between their tribes and the new nation. Cabeza de Vaca, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and Benjamin

Throughout history, Native Americans have been victimized by Americans and the American Government. Native Americans were here long before the English settlers found and migrated to America. They tried to buy the land from Native Americans, and money was not important to them so they refused. Over time this costed a lot of Native American lives and most of their land was taken from them. Native Americans were immensely mistreated in the 1900’s by white Americans and are still being wronged by deceiving history in textbooks and other learning aid.

A classroom of children stood around a broken picture frame. The children all had a shocked expression on their face, knowing that they were about to be in serious trouble. The picture contained their teacher’s family, and they knew it would be a big deal when she found out. When the crash happened, none of the students saw what happened. It was too busy, because they were huddled around the teacher’s desk, putting the present they got for her on it. The smashing of the glass cued the teacher to whip her head around, and she demanded that class to tell her what happened as she began to carefully pick up the broken pieces. She then explained that if no one had anything to confess, they would all get equally punished. At this point, all the hands raised. Not to admit guilt, but to point fingers at other kids. In The Crucible, when the girls are dancing in the woods, they did not think it was a big deal, but when some of the girls started to get ill, just like the glass breaking, they knew they would get in trouble. This led to a witch hunt to avoid the persecution of playing in the woods. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the character’s accusation of others, rather than accepting fault, exemplifies the human tendency to avoid persecution at all cost.

The Native Americans didn’t participate in discrimination; they were affected by people discriminating against them. The immigration of Indian American has taken place in several waves since the first Indian American came to the United States in the 1700’s. Indians are among the largest ethnic groups legally immigrating to the United States. When white people first landed on the east coast, they pushed the Native Americans back with peace treaties, trade agreements and if that failed, violence.

Decades of discrimination against the Native American people including the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee has led to a so called “compromise” and the much needed formation of the American Indian Movement to try and keep Native American culture and customs alive. This unfair treatment and discrimination has been fueled by many different people and reasons, but ultimately boils down to the greed and intolerance of the white man. Numerous indian tribes were already living in the United States when the european people settled here. The act of living and existing in nearly complete peace for a great deal of years started its swift decline in the years leading up to 1830, again fueled by greed for land and materials along with intolerance of the indians obliterated any chance of fair treatment, or the two groups living in complete peace again.

Native American history is, almost definitely, one of the bloodiest and most tragic series of events ever recorded. From the time when Europeans first landed in America, Indians were enslaved, persecuted, used, violated, and slaughtered by explorers and, later, colonists and

The slow yet brutal destruction of their population took place from 1492-1891. According to the legal definition by the UN, this act is considered genocide which was perpetrated by both European colonizers and the United States government. Tensions escalated and soon they were dehumanized to the point where massacres such as Wounded Knee, hundreds of innocent Native Americans were slaughtered by American soldiers. A significant precedent of the genocide was when White Americans began making Indians the “other”. By viewing them as uncivilized creatures, it is easy to separate oneself from a group so different.

A quote by Edward R. Murrow states, “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” During the Red Scare, Senator McCarthy did terrorize a whole nation, and Arthur Miller became a victim of McCarthyism. Miller suffered through accusations of possibly believing in communism; as a result, he wrote a play called The Crucible, in which he used the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to explain the communist hysteria during the 1950s. Arthur Miller develops an allegory in The Crucible by comparing the Salem Witch Trials to McCarthyism by using ringleaders, persecuted couples, and hypocrisy in the government or legal system.

For more than 300 years, since the days of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Government, an attempt of genocide of the Native American Indian has existed. From mass brutal murders and destruction by Spanish and American armies, to self-annihilation through suicide, homicide, and alcohol induced deaths brought about because of failed internal colonialism and white racial framing. Early Explores used Indigenous inhabitants upon first arriving to the America’s to survive the New World and once they adapted, internal colonialism began with attempts to convert the Indians to Christianity, repressing their values and way of life, forcing them into slavery, and nearly exterminating an entire culture from existence.

course of 500 years, there has been little progress in ending the inequity that the Native