Indians By Jane Tompkins Summary

In her essay ““Indians”: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History”, Jane Tompkins takes her readers behind the scenes of her academic research in attempts to discover the true history of Indians—Native Americans. She encounters several versions of history regarding her study and therefore was left questioning how to make sense of history when there are so many versions of it. Throughout the course of her research, she realized that the historical facts differed in perspective because the historian’s background, towards the study, differed as well. This goes well with Carr’s essay and how he mentions that the historian is tied to his facts. As mentioned earlier, Carr explains how the historian writes accounts based on his or her worldview;

She mentions how she was able to become aware of the differences in the attitudes that informed the approaches of each historical account, commenting on how this made her suspicious about everything. Once again mentioning the same point as Carr made on his essay. Carr claims that the historian does, in fact, create the facts he or she presents. He continues by stating how the historian’s intentions could have affected his or her decisions on which facts to reveal. However, she goes on to explain how she was able to understand that the intentions of the historians should have not been all that suspicious to her, as the historian’s intentions only gave perspective into how he or she might have viewed the situation. Tompkins concludes by mentioning how she realized that although historical facts may have differed it did not mean that all perspectives were to be regarded as the truth. She argues that relativism should not be accepted as an answer to history and its many perspectives. Tompkins explains that relativism would bring upon perspectivism in history, and in return “wipe out completely the subject matter of