Indeed, from their first arrival in the New World, the European explorers treated the native people, and the slaves that they brought, as barbarous heathens, incapable of higher thought or civilized behavior. For example, Christopher Columbus’s letter to the King of Spain from his first voyage intricately shows these original encounters. In this letter, he carefully describes the people of the island, pointing out that they “all go naked, men and women, as their mothers bore them” and that they “are very marvelously timorous.” He then adds that he “gave them a thousand handsome good things, which [he] had brought, in order that they might conceive affection for us and, more than that, might become Christians and be inclined to the love and service of Your Highness.” Though he is not describing forced religious conversion, he is undoubtedly showing how the Europeans treated people with religions that were different from their own.
Yet, modern times never focus on what problems the Europeans caused in their process to discover new land. They killed people, used many people as slaves, and spreaded many diseases all in search of new land and wealth. They destroyed the peace that maintained before they arrived to the land they explored. They tore apart many civilizations in order to build their own on top of it. The Age of Exploration was a time of corruption.
Because of the Industrial Revolution, many Europeans began to seek out other places and countries to colonize in and to find resources. In the 1760s natives from other lands were seen as individuals, thanks to Enlightenment thinking, and they were praised as individuals and seen as noble savages. Later, however in the 1910s the views of natives began to change and the natives began to be seen as uneducated primitives, a people who did not understand things as well as the “European mind.” During the Enlightenment, individualism was encouraged and so was the native culture of other people. William Smith (document 1) was a British soldier who was part of the troops that were able to get white prisoners back from primitive natives.
While I was reading chapter two I wasn't surprised with how the whites were treating the Native Americans I was just shocked with what they did to them. First they were told which half of the bay to live in. The whites wanted the area that was farmable to be for them while the Native Americans lives in the swaps, but that didn't seem to stop the whites for eventually wanting that land too. The whites would steal the land from the Native Americans because they would just happen to forget to write who the land belonged to down. This happened more on purpose so that the whites could get more of the land.
Ellie Reynolds advances a rhetorically effective argument on why government should not have regulatory control over offensive Native American mascots in schools across the country. She believes this control is more of a detriment to society than a service. Her article published on the DenverPost.com, “Native Americans Have Become a Political Pawn,” offers a compelling point of view on this controversial issue because Reynolds is a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe herself (Reynolds 659). Along with her strong view against government involvement on this issue, which she considers censorship by political correctness, Reynolds uses her personal experience, historical context, and the negative effects of political correctness to convey her effective
In the example of the Europeans and Native Indians, the Europeans used the justification of fatal impact for them to be considered as superior and the Natives
The Navajo Indian Tribe believes that it is disrespectful when someone points a finger at an object, or at someone. Their belief is that it is better to pucker their lips and nod their head toward the object. That is their way of displaying a ritual that is important to their cultural belief. If a nurse is trying to communicate with a Navajo Indian and he/she points to a communication board, then this shows disrespect according to their belief system.
The rhetoric by the Spaniard accounts make it difficult to re-tell history from the indigenous people’s perspective. For example: how do you explain human sacrifice today after the Spaniards gave their account of the situation? Bloodletting is a difficult ritual to explain. The Spaniards would have you think that the indigenous people of Mesoamerica were uncivilized savages and performed human sacrifices, but did not tell the reason behind the ritual. The reason for the Spaniards to speak ill of the indigenous people of Mesoamerica was to justify the cruelty they put the Indians through and to gain support and continued funding from Spain.
1. Paleo-Indians Paleo-Indians are described as the initial Americans, those who set forth the preliminaries of Native American culture. They trekked in bands of around fifteen to fifty individuals, around definite hunting terrains, establishing traditional gender roles of hunter-gatherers. It is agreed that such Paleo-Indians began inhabiting America after the final Ice Age, and that by 1300 B.C.E. human communities had expanded to the point of residing in multiple parts of North America. As these early Native Americans spread out, their sites ranged anywhere from northern Canada to Monte Verde, Chile.
Before Europeans came to North America, It was populated by many different tribes of Indigenous peoples. These tribes, for the most part had their own political, economic, and military systems that were eventually changed and manipulated because of the invading nations. In the books A land so Strange and Jacksonland, we see through the eyes of Cabeza de Vaca and Andrew Jackson exactly how Indigenous people were at the very beginning, and the changes they had to undertake. Obviously the books show us the view of the Europeans rather than the Indigenous people themselves, but in certain recollections from people like John Ross we see their viewpoints and why they did certain things. From the information presented in both these books, it’s clear
Paul Leroy Beaulieu wrote, “It is not natural for the civilized people of the west to gather the marvels of science, art, and civilization and not share the opportunities with the savages in need. We have a duty to spread knowledge of medicine, law, and Christian religion. Such a transformation of a barbarian country cannot be accomplished by business or economic relations alone.” (Document S). This idea of superiority empowered African imperialism.
During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, eExplorers from Europe had made vast advancements on traveling methods and shipbuilding and had new methods to travel the world. Due to needs for faster trade routes or access to new markets, most powers, starting with Portugal, had started sending Explorers to find different ways to trade and navigate. This would eventually lead them to the New World where they would meet people of different culture. Explorers during this period have many positive and negative effects on the natives. Europeans indirectly killed off native with diseases, enslaved natives with cruel slave methods, and tried to completely erase the native cultures in place of the typical European cultures and religion.
Hundreds of years that Native Americans have been oppressed and ignored, killed and forced onto tiny reservations, being demoted to savages and only half humans, and now they are printed onto football helmets. Most people do not even think of this, today black racism is the largest thing we see circulating the internet along with gender equality. But at least we are going somewhere with that, with things such as black history month, and teaching most kids from a very young age in school about slavery. When is the last time you heard about the reservations that Indians live on now? It is most likely not very recently, because we know that they have been very mistreated in the past, but most seem to think that this is a things of the past, that it isn’t a problem anymore.
Adam Sorenson Prof. Riggs COMP 01112 2/12/18 Misrepresentation of Native Americans Native American’s for many years now have been viewed as lone warriors or squaw, some people don’t even know that they still exist! People just think of the Native American people in storybook tales and nothing more then that. The Native Americans have been living in the United States for awhile now and were the first ones on the country’s soil. They were here way before Christopher Columbus and the other European Colonists even discovered America and they are still present in the U.S.
Moreover, Western civilization became the ideal civilization, and became way superior to African “civilization.” As a consequence, African tradition became perceived as primitive, outmoded, and sadly not welcomed by the rest of the world. Unfortunately, a lot of Africans experienced a trend of a dying out culture. (2) It can be implied that even the Africans’ self-perception dropped because the only lifestyle they knew was suddenly taken away from them and they were taught that it was substandard. Therefore, the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies, the Africans, had to adapt to a new, “superlative” culture and view it as more sophisticated than theirs.
