Why are natives savages

When I ask the question of whether there could have been another way for the races to interact than mutual massacre, he brings up one of the few figures who emerges with honor from his chronicle of this savage period: Roger Williams. I had always admired Roger Williams for his belief in religious toleration, which was realized in his Rhode Island colony, a place where all the dissenters and the dissenters from the dissenters could find a home to worship the way they wanted.

Not only was he close to the original inhabitants, he could speak some of their languages and had the humility to recognize he could learn from them.

He was a perfectionist. And no form of Christianity was good enough for him. He started out in the Church of England. He was a very strange man. He was a zealot. He was trying to find out the proper form of Christianity. He started with the Church of England and that was full of trouble.

Then he became a Baptist and that was no good. He kept taking off all the clothes of organized Christianity till nothing was left. And he ended up in a church of his own with his wife and a few Indians.

He was well educated, he was a gentleman—but he was a nut case! Among his views, first of all, was that you do not seize Indian land. And you treat people civilly and there is no purity in any stage of Christianity, hence toleration.

He became properly famous for all this—later. At the time people hated him. Because he was breaking up the unity of Christianity. One of his contemporaries had a wonderful phrase for him. But he got close to the Indians, knew them well, lived with them.

A zealot, but tolerant. An outcast, but a self-outcast. A visionary sense of the way to a better future in that dark century. So much of the American character, like Williams, emerges from the barbarous years. These images in American culture establish and reinforce an understanding of Native American men as inherently violent.

Curiously, some illustrations in popular sources of the time period present the Native American man as a friendly native with a desire to use his violent nature in ways that benefit and protect white America. Composers and illustrators alike worked to ease cultural anxieties about the Native American man as primitive by portraying the "Noble Savage" as a friendly protector of America.

Violent stereotypes were used to justify the white population's efforts to subdue Native Americans. If the Native Americans in pulp stories and popular songs were the last of their kind, then they no longer posed a threat to white domination. Depictions of the Native American as violent savages extended beyond images of war or conflict into hunting scenes. Granted stereotypes like the noble and ignoble savage and the Vanishing American, who, in particular, believed them—and how do you show that they believed them?

Citing a few heavyweight thinkers proves little, and smacks of elitism. How about ordinary people? What did they think—and how do we know? Here the popular culture of any given period is relevant. Today we would look at the electronic media, films, music, etc. At the very least, the sheer pervasiveness of the major Indian stereotypes in popular culture will be a revelation to most students. Given that people held certain views about Indians, So what? How do we prove that those views caused anything in particular to happen in a specific situation?

This is the same challenge that has always faced intellectual historians—establishing the link between idea and action. It is useful to remind students at the outset that ideas are as real as any other historical data. Since history itself is a mental exercise, the historian can hardly deny people in the past a fully active mental life of their own.

As a general proposition, what people believe explains what they do. When, for example, Congressmen in the nineteenth century debated Indian affairs and referred to the bloody savage to promote an aggressive policy, or talked about a noble race that had been dispossessed to advocate a humanitarian policy, we can see a belief system at work with direct, practical consequences.

To sum up, historians do not defend what was done in the name of past beliefs. They are not apologists or advocates. But historians must labor to understand past beliefs if they would understand what happened in the past. Ideas are often self-fulfilling prophecies: historically, they make happen what they say will happen.

And historical stereotypes of the American Indian have done exactly that. Bird, ed. Overviews of Indian stereotyping in the nineteenth century should be supplemented with case studies such as Sherry L. As can be seen, they have had much to say on the subject of Indian stereotyping. A readable, accessible book is Louise K. The image of the Indian in art has been comparatively neglected.

Two illustrated essays provide different interpretations. Two well-illustrated exhibition catalogs examining relevant issues are Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk and Robin F. Nigh, comps. Boehme, et al. There has been a growth industry in Edward S. Curtis: The Life and Times of a Shadow Catcher is the most substantial of the many Curtis picture books, and students always enjoy looking at his work. Christopher M. Curtis fired the opening salvo by documenting the ways Curtis manipulated his subjects to create images of the timeless Indian.

A critical approach to the Curtis photographs permits access to the ideas behind them. Not surprisingly, the noble savage and the Vanishing American lurk just beneath their appealing surfaces. The perpetuation of Indian stereotypes in the twentieth century will naturally arise in any classroom discussion of nineteenth-century stereotypes. Students invariably turn to film, television, and music as sources for their own ideas, and I have already mentioned the usefulness of a film like Dances with Wolves in stimulating interest.

Consequently, the literature on cinema as a source for Indian stereotypes may prove relevant. But in bringing the subject of Indian stereotypes in literature and art up to the present, it seems to me useful to end with something else—the contemporary American Indian voice.

Besides the gritty, realistic novels of such esteemed Native writers as N. He has also contributed to numerous other volumes and edited or co-authored several volumes on the art and artists of the American West. To cite this essay: Dippie, Brian W. National Humanities Center.

All rights reserved. Revised: May nationalhumanitiescenter. What strange things did the Indians believe about spirits?