The Role Of Native Americans In American History

The tribal peoples now referred to as Native Americans are a community that was brought to the brink of destruction by the combination of treatments by the Europeans who colonized what is now called the United States of America. England and France are countries that engaged in wars in North America. Both countries are important to the history of America. They differed in their objectives in America and they differed in their treatment of the Native Americans. The objectives of each respective country as well as the social, political, economic, and cultural tensions of the time served as a backdrop and a contributing factor to the variations in the relationships with the Native Americans as well as in the treatment of the people.

During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.

To better understand the conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, one must closely examine the state of Europe’s economy at the time. Europe struggled with difficult conditions. This included poverty, violence and diseases like typhus, smallpox, influenza and measles. There were widespread famines which caused the prices of products to vary and made life very difficult in Europe. Street crimes and violence were prevalent in cities: “Other eruption of bizarre torture, murder, and ritual cannibalism were not uncommon”.2 Europeans

The constructive portrayals of Native Americans exist in the same way as the negatives and can be equally as damaging. Positive tropes tend to set a higher standard for a race and can lead to vacuous

During the time of 1763-1775 one of the occurrences that happened to affect the colonist’s perception of the British was the French and Indian War. The amazing thing is that the war itself was not the main factor of the colonist’s trouble with the British, but the time after the war that was the cause of trouble. During the war the British fought with France around the Ohio valley for the control of land. The Ohio valley was very important to both of the empires, because of the value of the land and the strategic point it held in the years to come. Although both had their struggles especially with the Native Americans that called this place their home. Most of the Native Americans sided with either the British or the French, because they thought that if they had

Everyone has a preconceived opinion of how a certain ethnic group is in terms of the way they live, the morals they hold, the way they deal with people different from them, and how they deal with one another. We come to these conclusions by what we have seen in the media, heard from other people, or actually experienced ourselves. Most people would consider these opinions to be stereotypes. Dances with Wolves is a motion picture that deals with and touches on all sides of personal stereotypes we as American and American Indians have about each other. John Dunbar takes us through and allows us to see how it is to come into a situation he was not familiar with and then eventually the

Our history is written by the winners of the bloody, and merciless battles that shaped our country. The hate that has slaughtered thousands of people, is also the hate that has made our country the beautiful tragedy it is today. We all know the history of how Christopher Columbus came to the native land, named the people here indians because he thought he was in the Indi mountains and brought disease and colonists to the land to make it part of spain.

The American Revolution was making the rich richer and the poor people slaves and Emerson thought that people should be allowed to think for themselves. The American economy was altered because it depended on imports from Europe. Native Americans had been kicked out because the U.S. thought that they were the obstacle for American “freedom”. Women had also demanded for more rights but society only saw them as housewives and that men were the workers. During that time women working was something that was not normal and women were treated like slaves getting paid less than men. Also Emerson said that people will walk on their own feet and will work with their own hands and also that they will speak their own thoughts and that is what women tried

In the early days of American history, there have been feuds among different cohorts. The infamous feud between the whites and the blacks has been a problem throughout history, and in some cases, the feud still happens today. Another prolonged feud is between the rich and the poor people because the rich can easily control the poor, and the poverty-stricken people cannot retaliate because the rich have more power. In early American history, there was a strong connection including rich white people to the slaves, Native Americans, and the impoverished people.

Native Americans may have been displaced or band from their lands, but because of their suffering they managed to keep their culture alive. Throughout the years Native Americans have been ignored and not taken into consideration in the media. When they are included in media depictions, they generally are portrayed as individuals from the nineteenth centuries or when shown as modern people they are represented as people with addiction, poverty and lack of education. This representation does not reflect among the wide diversity of hundreds of tribal cultures that exist within the borders of the United States. History is a story most often related through the subjective experience if the teller. With the inclusion of more and varied voices, histories

Native Americans, also known as Indians, have inhabited the United States for a great deal of time even before the Pre-Columbian Era,”spread southward throughout the Americas and possibly going as far south as the Antarctic peninsula.  This migration may have begun as early as 30,000 years ago and continued through to about 10,000+ years ago, when the land bridge became submerged by the rising sea level caused by the ending of the last glacial period”(Kennedy, Cohen & Bailey 2006, p. 6).  Countless numbers of different tribes and cultures roamed the lands of America from coast to coast; they are the true ancestors of the United States.  These Natives were known for their respect to the land and the people of the land, they thrived off of what mother nature had to offer, and they

Until fairly recently the popular culture of American literature and film did not attempt to study the true representations of Indians in North America. Instead they chose to concentrate on the romanticized/savage version of Native people: which is an idealistic view of a Native with long, beautiful flowing hair riding on a horse obsessed with chanting and praying to the savageness of a rowdy, wild Native causing unnecessary mayhem to the white people. This portrayal of Native people in mass media had led to the stereotyping of Natives, which in turn had ricocheted into real life. Not only do non-natives succumb to these ideals, but Natives do as well.

Even the alternative title “the Seven Years War” “coined by scholars to move away British’s simplistic notion” is misleading due to the fact that the fighting took place from roughly 1754 to 1763 within French and British colonies across the globe and roughly 1754 to 1760 in North America (Kelton, 792). The way that Europeans imagined this pivotal role in history has developed into the defeat of a “savage” foe to bring civilization and democracy to the new country, when in reality, the situation was much more complicated with Indigenous Peoples backing each side of the conflict. This misinterpreted historical

Filmmakers showed what they felt had already been conventional to their beliefs about Native Americans. In the film The Last of the Mohicans (1920) these two contrasting roles of Native Americans dominate most of the plot. The fiend is Magua, and the “noble” savage is Uncas. These two roles that are shown of Native Americans have some historical ground, but what makes one side good and the other bad? Is it because that is how society wants to see them? And does the director’s representation of the two sides gain them acceptance in American culture? In the history of America, Native American tribes often became associated with similar tribes with similar beliefs. This is true of the two tribes in The Last of the Mohicans. The Huron, who according to the historical events of Fort William Henry are the Iroquois and the Mohicans are historically associated with the Delaware. The Huron in the various versions of The Last of the Mohicans, come to represent the Iroquois who were allied with the French, and were seen as evil in the eyes of the British. The Mohicans, historically come to represent the noble Delaware, who were allied to the British. These tribes get grouped together, the “Huron [became] condensed into the same entity as Maquas, Mingoes and Mohawks and contrasted with the superior virtue of the Delawares and Mohicans” (Clark 122). These tribes were constantly intermixed

This predominantly accepted stereotype appears in a variety of films and is supported when the Natives in Hollywood are dressed as warriors, preserving the “savage” image (Boyd 106). In The Last of the Mohicans, a 1936 film based on the historical novel The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper, the intense bloody battles between Natives, English, and French were the highlight of the film (Cotton 11). In addition to being characterized as violent, Natives are often two-dimensional and lack character development, which furthers the stereotypes that were put in place centuries prior. Natives repeatedly portray the sidekick role to white men as well, and this is especially prevalent in the 2013 action film The Lone Ranger, where a Native boy, Tonto, plays the companion of John Reid (“The Lone Ranger (2013)”). These inaccurate clichés remain incessant when closely observed, as Native American tribes are almost always spotted on reservations or in the wilderness—yet another misconception.