Expansionism And Colonial Americ The Role Of Native Americans

As Yehuda Berg said, “words have energy and power with the ability to help…[and] to harm.” Expanding upon his reflection to examine varying social perspectives on American expansionist, colonial and slave society contexts, one can see that officials of European descent including Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and John Eliot converted white words and ideas into mutually intelligible Native American terms to persuade tribal leaders to adopt white mores. Accordingly, some Native Americans responded to these jabs of white supremacist coercion through outright resistance while others re-enacted white behaviors to receive preferential treatment from white leaders and gain social influence that had the potential to undermine white hegemony. Transcending

For example, less than forty-eight hours after arriving at Fort Clatsop, Clark judged that the entire Clatsop people with whom the expedition traded “resembled the...[Chinooks] in every respect except that of stealing, which we have not c[a]ught them at as yet.” Frustrated that one Clatsop man did not accept his offering of valuable goods such as his watch and American money, Clark proceeded to generalize all Clatsops as stingy since they differed from his incoming hope that the people would defer to white interests out of respect. By the end of their stay, on Monday January 6th 1806, Lewis generalized that these three groups with whom the expedition traded “in common with other savage nations ma[d]e their women [and men] perform every species of domestic drudgery.” Echoing his colleague’s frustrations, Lewis complained that these peoples’ egalitarian economic practices did not match up with Anglo-American gendered divisions of labor, where men served as large-scale suppliers and producers of goods while women merely produced smaller quantities of goods of lesser importance to male leaders, and their unorthodox egalitarianism would complicate his trade goals. In the early nineteenth century, white officials like Lewis would not speak to women as

While Eliot and other mission leaders had the last word in community policy decisions, they granted pious natives the power to elect chiefs, or sachems, who voiced tribal concerns within the framework of Puritan authority. In “praying towns,” indigenous parishioners of the Puritan churches could “send for...sachem[s] and the rest of the old and wise men” to respectfully bring personal and group vexations to the mission’s attention. This opportunity to raise concerns with the colonial leadership allowed local native peoples to advance and fight for their civil rights. Correspondingly, it is difficult to ignore how the up-and-coming Sassamon viewed these opportunities to cross-culturally communicate and take part in the colonial political