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Native american stereotypes research paper
Native American relationships with colonists
Native American relationships with colonists
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Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Franklin to this day remain two of the prominent figures from their time in their descriptions and accounts of the culture and interactions among the Native Americans and the colonials. It is interesting to look at their widely different opinions on the Native Americans. The difference in time certainly must have had some impact on their differing point of views. As another century of learning to cohabitate with the colonials surely had to have some effect on how Native Americans treated and dealt with them. Rowlandson has negative and resentful remarks about the Native Americans. Her disparaging views of the Native Americans are based from her personal experience as a victim of inhumane acts and as a prisoner …show more content…
According to Franklin, “perhaps, if we could examine the Manners of different Nations with Impartiality, we should find no People so rude, as to be without any Rules of Politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some Remains of Rudeness” (Franklin 927). Franklin presents more positive aspects of the Native Americans’ etiquette and formality. He talks about how the Native Americans show their hospitality by providing victuals and skins to rest on and offering pipes and tobacco to strangers. He also talks about how it is uncivil to enter a village without a notice. However, Rowlandson focuses on what defines Native Americans for their violent and immoral characteristics. She states, “Little do many think what is the savageness and bruitishness of this barbarous Enemy” (Rowlandson 489). Rowlandson recalls how she was refused to be given a spoonful of meal. She also remembers the unexpected and merciless attack by the Native American to Lancaster. Perhaps, she would find Franklin’s comparison of the Native American to the norms of Americans and Europeans as naïve and far too …show more content…
The Native American was offered less for his furs than before they went to church, which he thinks was unfair and a way to swindle the Native Americans. He mentions, “they pretended of meeting to learn good Things, the real purpose was to consult how to cheat Indians in the Price of Beaver” (Franklin 930). Franklin feels genuinely for the Native Americans for the inconsistencies with the colonials they habitually tolerate. In contrast, Rowlandson considers only the Native Americans’ hypocrisy at events such as they are grieving with their lost lives while joyfully celebrating the unjustified killings of the Englishmen. She says, “they mourned (with their black faces) for their own losses, yet triumphed and rejoiced in their inhumane, and many times devilish cruelty to the English” (Rowlandson
Although John Smith, Mary Rowlandson and Jonathan Edwards are very different writers we can find a few similarities in their quotes we are learning. Quoting Seneca and other Latin authors, he presents his narrative with clear political intentions using third person and the first person in other occasions to make himself look as a hero who has managed to escape from captivity and death in three different occasions and has conquered exotic lands. On the contrary, Mary Rowlandson quotes Biblical passages, as she is a Puritan jeremiad with a strong religious background. The same happens with Jonathan whose religious thoughts are his main subject. Both Rowlandson and Edwards believe that everything is God’s will. Mary focuses her narrative on the violence of the attack, how she survives from captivity and she feels the need to write a book to teach a moral lesson to the congregation. However,
There are various things that make up a piece of literature. For example: choice of diction, modes of discourse, and figurative language. Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano were great examples of authors that used these elements of literature. There are similarities and differences in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and From Africa to America. Though Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano shared similarities in experiences, they had different writing personalities, purposes, attitudes, tones, and relations with their communities.
Each European country treated the Native Americans distinctively and likewise the diverse Native Americans tribes reacted differently. The vast majority of the tribes didn’t wish to overtake the Europeans, but to rather just maintain their status quo. Moreover, Axtell mentions that during the inaugural stages of the encounter, the relationship between the two parties was rather peaceful since the Europeans were outnumbered by the natives. Axtell depicts that unlike the Europeans, the Native Americans treated the strangers equally or superior to themselves. The Indians would welcome the Europeans into their towns and shower them with gifts and blessings. The relationship between the two factions was going serene until the cultural differences became a burden on both
Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.
In Mary Rowlandson, “A Captivity Narrative”, Rowlandson recounts her experiences as a captive of the Wampanoag tribe. The tribe took captives from Lancaster in 1676 because of the ongoing violent altercations between the English colonists and Native Americans during King Philip’s War. Since many of the Native Americans brethren had fallen in battle, they saw it fit to take English folk captive and use them to take the place of their fallen brethren, trading/ransom pieces, or killing them in revenge. This was becoming a common practice for the Native Americans to attack villages and in result, some English started fleeing the area or started to retaliate. Rowlandson was a Puritan wife and mother, in her
...ve Indians. From the copious use of examples in Winthrop's work, and the concise detail in Rowlandson's narrative, one can imbibe such Puritans values as the mercy of God, place in society, and community. Together, these three elements create a foundation for Puritan thought and lifestyle in the New World. Though A Model of Christian Charity is rather prescriptive in its discussion of these values, Rowlandson's captivity narrative can certainly be categorized as descriptive; this pious young woman serves as a living example of Winthrop's "laws," in that she lives the life of a true Puritan. Therefore, both 17th century works are extremely interrelated; in order to create Winthrop's model community, one must have faith and closely follow Puritan ideals, as Rowlandson has effectively done in her A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.
In her book, Jackson argues that the treatment of the American Indians by the Europeans in the 1800s was atrocious and dishonorable. A Century of Dishonor opens with an introductory chapter, in which Jackson briefly discusses the interactions between the Native American Indians and several different companies of explorers. Through this, she analyzes the history of the
To understand Jackson’s book and why it was written, however, one must first fully comprehend the context of the time period it was published in and understand what was being done to and about Native Americans in the 19th century. From the Native American point of view, the frontier, which settlers viewed as an economic opportunity, was nothin...
One of these people was Thomas Jefferson, who was the 3rd president of the United States. Before he became president he supported military actions against the Indians. When he became president, he was an advocate for the removal of the Indians from the western united states as a solution to the conflicts with the settlers. He also had regarded the Indians as "Noble Savages" which is a term that was coined by the French Enlightenment Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He believed that the people of earth had corrupted the intrinsic good of man. There was a stark shift in the perception of the Indians before, during and after President Jefferson's time in office. The book also contained some rather descriptive language when it came to talking about the resilient nature of Indians and the unusual punishments that the Indians gave to Europen settlers who were captured by them endured. One example of this is when Dennis Rusoe D'Eres was talking about Indians would whip the captured and drink their warm blood from their bodies while they were still alive, also day by day they would keep the prisoners captive with no nourishment and "burn them to the bone" so to
The non-Natives did not accord the Indians an opportunity to express themselves, which "Moses Paul is only a Native American just as he is a detestable being." The author implies that there are a lot of partialities practiced by the non-natives who were the British at the time. The Indians suffered silently under the British Empire since they had nowhere to air their views and fight for their rights as the result. On the contrary, Mary Rowlandson book explains how the Native Americans did not allow them to say anything. Even when they were injured or fell sick such as it happened to Mrs. Rowlandson's daughter, there were no medications to be given to
“The fact that we were unconsciously part of a plan to weaken and cross out the Indianness in you, to pattern your land with our grain and beets and corn and alfalfa now clearly hits me. It is like a blow to the gut to learn that the years spent on the reservation, the times wading in the Wind River, were not the free years of childhood, but the manipulations of a power hungry to exonerate itself, to free itself, to purge the treaties of any real meaning or responsibility. They stole from me my innocence, leaving me a co-conspirator, an enemy to the children I grew with ton the prairie, drove us apart when we could have and should have forged an alliance for our own survival. The force of this unremitting design has killed many of my friends and acquaintances and left me forever with a feeling of unintentional complicity and sadness.” (Wind River, Wunder)
Mary Rowlandson was a pretentious, bold and pious character. Her narrative did not make me feel sorry for her at all, which is strange since she really did go through a lot. During the war, the Narragansett Indians attacked Lancaster Massachusetts, and burned and pillaged the whole village. During the siege Mary and her six year old child were shot, she watched her sister and most of her village either burn or get shot. She was kept as a captive, along with her three children and taken with the Narragansett’s on their long retreat. The exposition of the story is set immediately. The reader is perfectly aware of Missus Rowlandson’s status and religious beliefs. She constantly refers to the Narragansetts in an incredibly condescending way, to the point that you know that she does not even consider them human. She paints them as purely evil pe...
The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a personal account, written by Mary Rowlandson in 1682, of what life in captivity was like. Her narrative of her captivity by Indians became popular in both American and English literature. Mary Rowlandson basically lost everything by an Indian attack on her town Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1675; where she is then held prisoner and spends eleven weeks with the Wampanoag Indians as they travel to safety. What made this piece so popular in both England and America was not only because of the great narrative skill used be Mary Rowlandson, but also the intriguing personality shown by the complicated character who has a struggle in recognizing her identity. The reoccurring idea of food and the word remove, used as metaphors throughout the narrative, could be observed to lead to Mary Rowlandson’s repression of anger, depression, and realization of change throughout her journey and more so at the end of it.
He shares the impressions the Pilgrims had of the natives beginning with the sentence “And also those which should escape …” whereby he describes the Native Americans as being “cruel, barbarous, and most treacherous”. Bradford also describes the natives as being “furious in their rage” and “merciless”. He further notes that these angry natives are lustful for killing and are only able to quench their lust through the purposeful torment of their victims. Bradford’s language is very straightforward. He does not attempt to veil the brutality he is describing with pretty words or euphemisms. I felt the words and phrases such as “flaying some alive”, ”cutting off the members and joints of others”, and the “boiling on the coals …whilst they live” were especially vivid and detailed in such a fashion as to illicit the reader’s hatred for the “savage” natives (126). Bradford’s writings lead the reader to believe that the fate of the surviving Pilgrims ultimately requires them to be victorious over hostile and wicked natives. The imagery his language inspires in the minds of his readers could only lead them to view the natives as evil and
The Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied all of the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who speaked hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large built terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper. seashells and soapstone.To this day, movies and television continue the stereotype of Indians wearing feathered headdresses killing innocent white settlers. As they encountered the Europeans, automatically their material world was changed. The American Indians were amazed by the physical looks of the white settlers, their way of dressing and also by their language. The first Indian-White encounter was very peaceful and trade was their principal interaction. Tension and disputes were sometimes resolved by force but more often by negotiation or treaties. On the other hand, the Natives were described as strong and very innocent creatures awaiting for the first opportunity to be christianized. The Indians were called the “Noble Savages” by the settlers because they were cooperative people but sometimes, after having a few conflicts with them, they seem to behaved like animals. We should apprehend that the encounter with the settlers really amazed the natives, they were only used to interact with people from their own race and surroundings and all of this was like a new discovery for them as well as for the white immigrants. The relations between the English and the Virginian Indians was somewhat strong in a few ways. They were having marriages among them. For example, when Pocahontas married John Rolfe, many said it has a political implication to unite more settlers with the Indians to have a better relation between both groups. As for the Indians, their attitude was always friendly and full of curiosity when they saw the strange and light-skinned creatures from beyond the ocean. The colonists only survived with the help of the Indians when they first settler in Jamestown and Plymouth. In this areas, the Indians showed the colonists how to cultivate crops and gather seafood.The Indians changed their attitude from welcome to hostility when the strangers increased and encroached more and more on hunting and planting in the Natives’ grounds.