The Relationship between Colonists and Native Americans Assignment

The Relationship between Colonists and Native Americans - Assignment Example It will show that history can reflect the time it is written in, and that word choice and grammar can influence the reader's attitude toward the subject. The overwhelming attitude towards Native Americans is, in the earliest extract (1877), one of hatred and violence. Words like savage and hostile abound, amongst descriptions of the Native American attack on Jamestown and other settlements as massacre, murder and exterminate (in-class exercise). The author writes that his contemporaries are fighting against Native Americans in Arizona and Montana (the Apache Attacks and Nez Perce War), which is almost something the reader does not need to be told, given how intense and hateful this piece seems. There is no mention of Native American culture, although the author does (begrudgingly) admit that the tribes could build shelters, grow crops, and hunt. Any reference to an exchange between European and Native American culture is hidden in whining laments that Native Americans appear to be in nately hostile to European culture, called here 'civilization'. By contrast, the 1885 piece comes across as slightly less impassioned. Whereas the 1877 text ends by saying that it is certain that Native Americans will have disappeared from the American continent within a few years, the 1885 text expresses hopes that the Native Americans will be 'Christianized' rather than dying out. The 1885 piece attempts to be fairer to the indigenous tribes, but still makes incorrect assumptions, such as the 'fact' that Native Americans lived very simplistic and uncivilized lifestyles. Non-neutral language is used to claim that the Native Americans were inferior to the settlers in the fields of arts and inventions, progress and education, disposition, and religion, and had been since their collision with European culture two hundred years before. The only area in which Native Americans are not lesser is 'endurance,' yet this achievement is still couched in terminology which makes these people see m not quite human. It is easy to suspect that the writers of the textbook 'knew' this through experience. The two extracts from nineteenth-century textbooks neither mention individuals, whether European or Native American nor refer to any sort of cultural exchange. Admittedly, this would be hard given that neither text admits the existence of a Native American culture. Nor does either piece suggest any possible explanation for the failure of the Jamestown settlement other than Native American savagery. Therefore these earliest passages reflect the real-life hostilities occurring at the time between Europeans and Native Americans. The Apache Attacks lasted until 1900 when the last fighting tribe surrendered, so it is understandable – if despicable – that the textbooks adhered to the image of Native Americans as an enemy which must be destroyed. It is more difficult to completely exterminate an enemy if there is evidence of the enemy's humanity, or that a valuable part o f human cultural history might be lost in their destruction, so it makes sense that contemporary textbooks were unconcerned with these subjects. The 1927 text is the first to recognize that at least some of the Native American tribes were fairly advanced and cultured.