In “Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)” colonial life and all its uncertainty and hardships are displayed with the intent of shaping how people view their present by showing them a small piece of our history. The film takes place during the American Revolutionary War where a young couple, Gil & Lana Martin, must survive the attacks of British allied Native Americans on their small farm and community. During 1939 when the film debuted, the United States was still deeply intrenched in the Great Depression and all the personal burden and suffering the citizens were experiencing. After coming out of the prosperous 1920’s where decadence and an economic boom helped define a decade the economic collapse of 1929 marked a point of great hopelessness for …show more content…
“Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)” is essentially a propaganda film which sought to assuage the catastrophe of the Great Depression while also instilling a feeling of American Patriotism in the citizens of the United States. In 1939 American politics had a isolationist view of the world and was hesitant to get involved in world wide affairs such as the beginning of World War II on September 1, 1939. It was the view of many Politian’s and citizens alike that there was no reason to get involved with the war unless the United States was directly attacked. This isolationist way of thinking can be seen in “Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)” as colonists only rise up to fight the Natives when their farms and property are attacked. Colonists do not go out of their way to engage the British allied Natives but instead the Natives are the ones who are portrayed as the aggressors throughout the film. It is also meaningful that the British are hardly depicted in “Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)” despite the film being a Revolutionary War historical fiction. While there are a few characters leading the Native tribe which are characterized as British; that is the end of their representation in the film. This is due, in part, to the fact that despite many isolationist views that it would have been counter productive at this point in history to …show more content…
Edmonds in 1936. The novel is much truer to the actual historical events and the complexities of Revolutionary War era life. Historical accuracy is not the film makers first priority. Instead the film maker is more interested in telling a story with characters that audiences relate themselves to. Audiences in 1939 where more comfortable culturally with the use of stereotypes than perhaps audiences today. “Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)” filmmakers certainly heavily relied on certain tropes and prejudices which where used to define entire groups of people in 1939. Lana Martin exemplified the “fairer sex” whether she was excessively hysterical at the sight of the Native American Blue Back in her new home or demurely submitting to her husband’s authority. During 1939 this wasn’t an unusual portrayal of women in film which emulated society’s view of women. However, Lana is seen working beside her husband in the fields of their farm performing hard manual work. This is an aspect that diverges from the way which women were typically represented in the media. But in 1939 some women where working just as hard as their male counterparts where in order to scrape by and feed their families. Jobs where few and far between but women made up 25% of the workforce for the first time in American history, though most women were still bound to the
In the fourth chapter titled “Native Reactions to the invasion of America” in the book, “Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, the author James Axtell shares with us an essay he wrote and shared at a conference at Vanderbilt University. Historical accounts are followed beginning at the arrival of explorers and settlers until the 1700’s with various Native tribes in North America. Axtell’s goal is to educate us on the multitude of ways Native Americas reacted during various periods of colonization, and the various methods that the Native Americans perished. Axtell also educates us in his essay on the ways that Native Americans tried to ultimately prevent their extinction at any cost. Overall, the authors intent is to educate us
At the start of John Demos' book, a group of Native Americans attacked the English town of Deerfield, kidnapped a few of its people, and took them to Canada. Thirteen days after the attack, on October 21, 1703, Reverend John Williams, the town's leader, wrote to Joseph Dudley, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for tax relief, funding to rebuild the fort, a prisoner exchange to free the captured residents, and soldiers to protect the town. Governor Dudley agreed to fulfill the reverend's requests, and stationed 16 soldiers at the town's fort (p. 11-13). In response to English counterattacks against the French colonies,...
The United States may be glamor of hope and prosperity for many nations still undergoing democratic maturity and development; however, her story is one that combines deadly struggles and an array of governmental decisions that defined the path to freedom of now the world’s most powerful country. One of the ways to understand the history of the United States is through revisiting the Trail of Tears, which is documented in the film. We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears. Notably, the film documentary with five parts in total highlighting the history of Native Americans from the 17th
Native American Literature & Film 22 April 2014 Social Injustice in Roundhouse Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation.
The depiction of Native Americans to the current day youth in the United States is a colorful fantasy used to cover up an unwarranted past. Native people are dressed from head to toe in feathers and paint while dancing around fires. They attempt to make good relations with European settlers but were then taken advantage of their “hippie” ways. However, this dramatized view is particularly portrayed through media and mainstream culture. It is also the one perspective every person remembers because they grew up being taught these views. Yet, Colin Calloway the author of First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, wishes to bring forth contradicting ideas. He doesn’t wish to disprove history; he only wishes to rewrite it.
The article, “Native Reactions to the invasion of America”, is written by a well-known historian, James Axtell to inform the readers about the tragedy that took place in the Native American history. All through the article, Axtell summarizes the life of the Native Americans after Columbus acquainted America to the world. Axtell launches his essay by pointing out how Christopher Columbus’s image changed in the eyes of the public over the past century. In 1892, Columbus’s work and admirations overshadowed the tears and sorrows of the Native Americans. However, in 1992, Columbus’s undeserved limelight shifted to the Native Americans when the society rediscovered the history’s unheard voices and became much more evident about the horrific tragedy of the Natives Indians.
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
Neil Diamond reveals the truth behind the Native stereotypes and the effects it left on the Natives. He begins by showing how Hollywood generalizes the Natives from the clothing they wore, like feathers
Although these movies also comprise the detailed information on these tribes, I do not admire the activity of the tribes, which this creation portrays. Speaking about the tribe of Mohawk people, one of the five members of the Iroquois League, it is important to stress that they regard British authorities as their allies, so they sold the British government a lot of their lands. It was a mistake, which made this tribe poor and unhappy.
Other incidents like these include the unjust treatment Bonnie receives from the police, the lack of regard Buddy receives as a Vietnam veteran, and the reveal that the police plotted against Buddy and his sister. This posits the police who conspire with the resource stealing corporation and representative of white capitalism that created and maintains white, hegemonic values as the “bad guys.” These realistic portrayals that occur to the hundreds of Native tribes across the states and millions of Native residents present Buddy, Philbert, and Bonnie, individual representatives of Native American communities, as victims of racial profiling, gentrification, and police brutality, all major components of racism. It is these portrayed issues that the audience of the film is instructed to empathize, “placating viewers wary or weary of “white guilt” and documenting realistic, legitimate political and cultural struggles of Native peoples “(O’Connor & Rollins, 2011, pg.
“Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa Indians, is trying to take Detroit, and the neighboring Indian groups join in and help. They have become disenchanted with the French, plus the French aren’t really there anymore. They hate the English. They want their land back. Starting to succeed and the British negotiate and reach a settlement. In order to keep Pontiac happy, no settlement allowed in the Frontier region. An imaginary line is drawn down the Appalachian Mountains, colonist cannot cross it. This doesn’t last long, in 1768 & 1770, Colonists work with the Iroquois and Cherokee and succeed in pushing back the line and send in surveyors. Colonists begin to settle. So, despite this line, colonists push west anyway” (Griffin, PP4, 9/16/15). During the Revolutionary War, “Native Americans fought for both sides, but mostly for the British, thought they stood to be treated more fairly by British than colonists. Those that fought against the colonists were specifically targeted to be destroyed during battles. There were no Native American representatives at the treaty meetings at the end of the war” (Griffin, PP8, 9/21/15). Even the Native American’s thought of their women, because they believed “an American victory would have tragic consequences: their social roles would be dramatically changed and their power within their communities diminished” (Berkin,
Nevertheless, in the author’s note, Dunbar-Ortiz promises to provide a unique perspective that she did not gain from secondary texts, sources, or even her own formal education but rather from outside the academy. Furthermore, in her introduction, she claims her work to “be a history of the United States from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective but there is no such thing as a collective Indigenous peoples’ perspective (13).” She states in the next paragraph that her focus is to discuss the colonist settler state, but the previous statement raises flags for how and why she attempts to write it through an Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz appears to anchor herself in this Indian identity but at the same time raises question about Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz must be careful not to assume that just because her mother was “most likely Cherokee,” her voice automatically resonates and serves as an Indigenous perspective. These confusing and contradictory statements do raise interesting questions about Indigenous identity that Dunbar-Ortiz should have further examined. Are
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...
“When the World As We Knew It Ended,” written in response to 9/11, dramatizes the conflict between Native American identity and American politics. It is important to consider the perspective of an author when analyzing their poetry, because doing so allows for a more complete understanding of their message and point of view. In this case, Joy Harjo’s works are deeply influenced by her personal experiences as a Native American woman; therefore, to overlook her heritage would result in a loss of perspective. The speaker introduces where “we” is: “an occupied island at the farthest edge” (1). With Harjo’s Native heritage in mind, the “occupied island” symbolizes the reservations Native Americans were assigned to in the aftermath of the genocide