This essay will be discussing the way I felt Native Americans were being portrayed in the works of Ben Franklin and John Smith. As well as if the authors were treating them in a favorable or negative light. During the times of early exploration Europeans known as white settlers came to the new world and met the Native Americans for the first time. At first, some of the settlers not knowing what kind of people they were took them as dumb and primitive and not looking favorably on them. When the Indians entered the white people’s towns, they found it to be disrespectful.
OPPOSING ENCOUNTERS: ATTITUDES TOWARDS RACE IN EMILY CARR’S STORIES. There is an inherent duality in Ms. Carr experiences in the villages and her attitudes towards the indigenous people and what the colonizing Society thinks of the indigenous people. Ms. Carr represents the indigenous people as generous whereas the colonizing population portrays them as the absolute opposite of her experiences and this leads to two contradicting understandings of the indigenous people. However, Ms. Carr experiences in the villages overweighs the understandings of the colonizing society about the indigenous people since the stories dwell more on Ms. Carr’s experiences in the villages. This essay explores both the positive and the negative attitudes of the colonizing Society and the indigenous people towards the issues of race, their personal values and the role that Ms. Carr plays in challenging the colonizing Society as people who have wrong perceptions of the indigenous people.
In 1640 Massachusetts law required settlers to help their fellow Indian neighbors, but this friendly gesture was coupled with stern provisos. Any Indian who refused to fence his fields after such help was offered forfeited his right to sue for damages and if a beast trampled their cornfield they had to identify it. Plymouth magistrates allowed Indians to impound offending beasts, but this meant either that they drive the animals to the nearest English pound or construct one on
Besides being a highly influential Native American figure of early New England, Squanto played a role in the earliest known Thanksgiving celebration. Squanto spent much of his life living in the Plymouth Colony teaching his newly acquired English friends how to survive in this foreign land. He helped them greatly in the area of growing and gathering food. Without the help of Squanto, the English never would have discovered many important methods involved in growing a decent crops the American soil. Squanto showed the immigrants how to plant corn in hillocks, using dead herring as fertilizer after many failed attempts of growing while using their own Methods.
“Savages”: An Unmerited Misnomer During the colonist era, Indians were prejudiced, treated unjustly and discriminated. They were called savages because their customs differed from those of the Europeans, when at times they proved to be exactly the opposite. Indians were patient, understanding, and very civil, sometimes showing more courtesy than the Europeans themselves. However, because their culture and beliefs diverged from European customs, Indians were labeled as a lesser race and treated unfairly. In his essay, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America”, Benjamin Franklin defends the idea of Indian civility in a very persuasive manner with the use of several rhetorical strategies.
Some Indian merchants had realized that these trades were unfair so only sold good furs for what they believed was goo manufactured goods. Though there weren’t disputes between the French and the Indians, land disputes would break out between the Indians over hunting grounds. This trade made for a far less stressful relation between the French and the indigenous people of the ‘New World’. Trade did have its faults for the Indians. Disease brought with the French quickly killed many Natives because they didn’t have any immunes built up.
America’s History is Wrong The author of the book introduction titled Indian/White Relations: A View from the Other Side of the “Frontier,” Alfonso Ortiz, makes the reader scrutinize and think about how historians have recorded and retold America’s early history. The history familiar to most Americans is biased because it is in accordance with white settlers’ viewpoint only. The Native Americans viewed the white settlement differently than we recorded. The Americas were no “frontier” for exploration. The land was the home of the natives; it was explored and well known.
It also illuminates how the development of agriculture, private property, and patriarchy have negatively affected the living practices in many societies. The documentation of the Iroquois Indians further supports the idea of communal living and sexuality along with other claims made in Sex at Dawn. The characteristics and lifestyles of the Iroquois tribes show great similarity to that of our Bonobo ancestors described in Sex at Dawn. However, they differed from the modern patriarchal society in almost every way. Iroquois culture embodied a heightened communal ethic, which mirrors the egalitarian tendencies displayed by the Bonobos.
Social problems like these are treated in such a way that they leave viewers with the impression that they are caused by something innate within Aboriginal people, rather than by colonial impositions. These ideas are always presented as "common sense", and fail to address social or historical contexts, encouraging the wider community to adopt a shallow and bigoted view of Indigenous issues. This ideology of Indigenous Australians being a savage, much like a wild animal, leads some white settlers into the belief that they could be treated as such. In a letter to the editor in The Australian, Wednesday 20 June 1827, the author notes "It is said that the natives have become so very troublesome, that many persons have resolved to poison them", the comment’s tone suggests the white settlers likened them to pests. Furthermore, the linking of Aboriginals to animals is evident as the writer warns against the government “humanising and conciliating the savage tribes” as it would have dire consequences for the white
There were significant barriers that the explorers and the natives encountered. Even though an economic relationship was developed between the natives of the new found lands and the European explorers, it was not easy. For example, since different languages were spoken by both groups, communication was very limited. Also, the relations between the natives and the Europeans were not always on good terms. Finally, from analyzing these interactions between the Europeans and the natives, it can be seen that the Europeans, to some extent, thought of themselves as superior to the natives they encountered.