Who Were Really The Savages? Essay

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.

In American Indian life, they believe their life is interconnected with the world, nature, and other people. The idea of a peoplehood matrix runs deep in Indian culture, in this essay the Cherokee, which is the holistic view of sacred history, language, ceremony, and homeland together. This holistic model shapes the life of the American Indians and how their sense of being and relationship to their history is strong and extremely valuable to them. This essay will try to explain how each aspect of the peoplehood matrix is important and interconnected to each other and the life of the Native Americans.

The frequent depiction of the “Noble Savage” trope has many functions, with its main function being to portray Native Americans as sinless uneducated humans and to make their abusers and torturers seem evil and superior, which in most cases the torturers are indeed evil. Bartolomé de Las Casas and Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca use the “Native Savage” trope for different reasons, which makes their portrayal different, and not because they are writing about different tribes and groups of Native Americans. The “Noble Savage” is a very common adaptation of Native Americans, but the definition isn’t as pretty as the name of the trope may seem to be.

Additionally, Royal gives clarification for Native Americans’ positive stereotypes. He explains, “ But this is far from modern concepts of ecology. Native Americans in fact overhunted deer and beaver even before the arrival of the white man, and did not seriously try to preserve the resources in the vicinity of their villages. As a result, the typical woodland village, having exhausted local soil and game, had to move on average every eight to 10 years” (Royal 47). Although the Native Americans did not destroy the environment like Europeans on such a large scale, they are not trying to protect the environment either. This opposes the stereotypes that Native Americans are model ecologists. Royal also examines the inhumane sides of Native American tribes. Royal reveals, “The

Just as the Greeks, the Romans and any other great civilization, Native Americans had their own gods with certain values. These values are a sharp contrast to the current european expansionist mindset and give great insight into understanding Native American’s actions and behavior. These documents are about Native American culture and are written around the arrival of European settlers. These documents show the conflicts that many Native Americans had were due to many miscommunications and conflicts in values. The two Native American values that the Europeans most tread on were their very philosophy and honor, which leads to some of the most brutal acts of war and massacres.

The Cherokee tribe is an excellent example of the havoc and devastation caused by the Europeans. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the Cherokee people were one of the largest of five Native American tribes that were settled in the American Southeast, although they were originally from the Great Lakes region of the country. They were of Iroquoian descent. Contrary to the stereotypical assumption that many people make that all Native American Indians lived in teepees, the Cherokee people lived in log cabins. They were a large, highly religious tribe split into several smaller sections, each section led by a chief. Interestingly, when the American Revolution occurred, the Cherokee Indians assisted and supported European soldiers, even going as far as to partake in several attacks and battles. Around the time of the 1800s, the Cherokee Indians had adopted the European culture, dressing similarly and utilising European methods of farming, building and cooking. During the year of 1828, the discovery of gold was made by Europeans on the

If one thing is to be respected and understood about the American Indians, it would be that their history and culture goes much further back than contemporary American history. Consequently, the relationship developed between American Indians and the United States is as unique as it is complicated. This unique relationship started because the American Indians were the first faces seen by fresh colonials from Europe. Despite this fact, the American Indians have faced cultural appropriation on a level that cannot be compared to any other ethnic group or minority. Any American who has been through kindergarten can associate Indians and Pilgrims with Thanksgiving, but how many of those Americans can tell about the Battle of Little Bighorn or the Alcatraz Proclamation? The unique relationship between the United States and American Indians has grown over time to allow for the level of appropriation that can be observed today. It is this unique relationship that has allowed the American Indian culture to be exploited because

Native American, or American Indians, have a rich culture comprised of struggle, strife and success. For this paper, i will discuss the Native American Culture and it's history.

Native Americans have had a long history of resistance to the social and cultural assimilation into white culture. By employing various creative strategies, Native Americans have attempted to cope with the changes stemming from the European colonial movement into the Americas. There are fundamental differences in world views and cultural and social orders between Indians and Europeans, which contributed to conservatism in Native American cultures. In this paper, two aspects of such cultural and institutional differences of Native American societies will be examined: holistic Native American beliefs versus dualistic world views and harmony versus domination. These two aspects are important in terms of explaining changes (or lack thereof) in

The horse left a large impression on the lives of the Plains Indians; however, the real question being viewed is how this animal impacted the lives of, more specifically, the Sioux, Comanche, and Apache Plains Indians. Life before the introduction of the horse was a challenge. The Sioux’s constant migration with the buffalo required long days and created the need for a tool like the horse in order to better the living standards. The Comanche Indians were extraordinary horsemen once the horse was introduced to them allowing hunting and gathering to become more efficient. The Apache Indians were known for their fighting skills and warrior-like attributes. When they encountered the Spanish conquistadors and saw their use of the horse, strong desires for this animal swept over the Apache population and quickly lead to the trade and even theft of the horse. It boosted the abilities to fight for these Indians and provided them with a tool that made them, in their opinion, almost invincible. This information is being derived from a source that covers every Plains Indian tribe and accurately expresses the actions of these Indians. Without a bias, it describes that advantages and disadvantages of each tribe, and in this case, explains the actions of the Apache Indians. Even with this advantage, however, the Comanche Indians still seemed to have an advantage over the Apache Tribe. This efficiency as well as addition to the Indian tribes allowed for these societies to feel more

The Native Indian history of violence and debasement changed their views and self-image as well. This change later affects how they adapt to American culture and education after being dissuaded from embracing their own for so long. The violence and indifference shown towards the Native Americans during the “Trail of Tears” contributed greatly to this change. In this dreadful journey, Natives of all kinds were forced off

All humans are interested in their origins and trying to account for their existence through creation stories. Native Americans tribes are no different from the rest of humanity. The tribes’ stories explain how people came into existence, how they came to be live on the lands they do and the how people interact with nature and each other. These trends can be seen in the legends of three tribes hailing from New England to the Great Lakes Region.

Culture is intertwined throughout out everything that Native Americans are. Their religion, way of survival, justice system, holistic views, and so much more, comprise their culture. Over the past 200 plus years, Native Americans have been subjected and forced to conform to European derived ideology. This has impacted Native Americans culture from a past, present, and future perspective. These perspectives will be addressed as well as combined into one.

Native Americans hold a type of esoteric concept that comes from their philosophy of preserving their environment as well as their kinship that ties them together (Access Genealogy, 2009). They not only have social ties, they are politically and religiously organized through their rituals, government, and other institutions (Access Genealogy, 2009). They work together to reside in a territorial area, and speak a common language (Access Genealogy, 2009). They are not characterized by any one certain structure (Access Genealogy, 2009). However, the society agrees on fundamental principles that bond together a certain social fabric (Access Genealogy, 2009). Different Native American tribes throughout the years have had different ideas, opinions, philosophies, which are not always predetermined by their past ancestors.