American Indians
Uploaded by cwegrzynowski on Jun 24, 2013
Candace Wegrzynowski
Final research paper
04/17/2013
The American Indians have been abused by White conquers for centuries. An entire ethnic group has been almost completely annihilated by the dominate society and in more modern times mocked and misunderstood. Researchers have shown that from colonial times to modern times, Whites have seen Native Americans as primitive savages, blood thirsty warriors, childlike, children of Satan, squaws, exotic, otherworldly and doomed. Not long ago a dualistic version of Indians became the norm. Indians came to be seen as evil or good and this dividing into two types of Indians came to construct how Americans today see Indians. (Lacroix, 2011 p. 3-4) An entire race of people is simplistically and unfairly put into either all good or all bad categories.
History has shown that the early Europeans that followed Columbus no more understood the Native Americans than the Indians understood the destruction of their entire way of life was soon coming. (Schaefer, 2012 p. 149) The White settlers saw the Indians as pagan inferior beings that needed to be taught how to be civilized and eventually forced to assimilate in to White Society.
In the early nineteenth century Quaker and missionary reformers tried new ways to 'civilize' the Indians. They were uncomfortable with extermination policies used by the US government and began to put together ideas of assimilation. (Landis 1996) The reformers tried a new experiment — reservation boarding schools. According to history, to assist the missionaries, Congress created the Civilization Fund, an annual appropriation of ten thousand dollars to pay for this forced assimilation of the Indians. (Adams 1995 p. 6) Researchers explain the Quakers plan that students would live all week in the boarding schools that were built a little farther away from the reservations; but as time went by, the families simply moved their tee pees closer to the schools. (Landis 1996) To the religious groups at the time it was very important to convert the Indians to the Christian doctrines and White culture. The cultural heritage of the Native people was of no importance to the dominate society.
In an article featured in the Indian Country Diaries on PBS.org (2006), in the 1870’s Army Lt. Richard Henry Pratt, who coined the phrase “Kill the Indian save the man” played a huge role in this...