Native American History Summary & Analysis
Mascots and Stereotypes
In 1972, Stanford's president ordered the retirement of the university's Native American mascot.
Responding to student complaints that the mascot perpetuated offensive stereotypes, and that his halftime dances at football games made a mockery of Native American religious rituals, President Richard Lyman ordered that the "use of the Indian Symbol should be immediately disavowed and permanently stopped."8
Other colleges and high schools have since followed Stanford's example. Embracing the argument made by one Stanford official that "sensitivity and awareness do not come easily when childish misrepresentations in games, history books and motion pictures make up a large part of our experience," they moved to abandon the controversial imagery.9
But not every school or sports team followed suit. Many dug in their heels and refused to submit to what they labeled "political correctness."
Some claimed
that their mascots actually honored Native Americans. Others, like
Florida State University, pointed out that they had the blessings of the
local Seminole nation. Still, others asked what mascot would be next to
be deemed too offensive for modern sensibilities. The Fighting Irish? The Demon Deacons? The Vikings?
Whether or not you think
these mascots are appropriate, there's little denying the fact that
"the Indian" has been recklessly portrayed throughout American history.
The gross caricatures of Native Americans in Hollywood Westerns are only
the most familiar example. During the 19th century, dime novels
painted a similarly unreal and stereotypic portrait of Native Americans bloodthirsty savages.
More serious writers, like James Fenimore Cooper, sometimes portrayed the Native American as a "noble savage" rather than a barbaric warrior. But, perhaps, not unlike those schools claiming to honor Native Americans with their mascots, even these more positive portrayals were just as crude in their reduction of complex people to a simple and romantic image.
Chief Seattle
Some more recent attempts to construct more favorable representations of Native Americans have proven similarly flawed.
During the 1970s, environmental organizations
identified Native Americans as prototypical environmentalists. According
to these celebrants, Native Americans lived in intimate and respectful sympathy
with the land. They took from nature only what they needed and could
use, and they paid homage to every animal that they killed. This
characterization of Native Americans was typified in the canonization of
Chief Seattle, and his 1854 speech became a manifesto for many
environmentalists.
"Every part of this earth is sacred to my
people. [...] The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. [...] The air is precious to the red man for all things share the same
breath, the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. [...] [T]he white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. [...] What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man
would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to
the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are
connected."10
Eventually,
however, it was revealed that this speech never actually happened.
Say what?
Yeah. Apparently, it
was the fabrication of a 20th-century filmmaker, not the authentic
plea of a 19th-century Native American. And the more elaborate image of the
"ecological Indian" was challenged by anthropologists and historians
who argued that the hunting and farming techniques of Native Americans
were less environmentally sensitive than
portrayed.11
In
short, "the Indian" is still poorly understood. Native American people
and Native American history are still frequently subjected to crude
stereotypes and simplistic narratives. The polar simplicities of
bloodthirsty warrior versus noble savage don't begin to capture the
complexity and variety among Native American nations, and their interactions with
European immigrants can't be reduced to simple narratives of
inevitable and unthinking conquest.
A More Complicated Narrative
A more accurate historical narrative begins with the fact that two centuries after the first English settlers reached Virginia in 1607, the fate of the North American continent was still undetermined.
In 1763,
the British drew a line confining Anglo-American expansion to the east
side of the Appalachian Mountains. They acknowledged Native American rights to
the land as the continent's first occupants and they mandated that
Native American lands only be obtained by treaty and purchase.
After
the American Revolution, though, Britain ceded all of its North
American holdings south of Canada to the United States. The territorial
claims of Native Americans were implicitly repudiated by this action.
And for a few years, the newly founded United States operated under the
premise that the Native Americans were a defeated people, and so, a people with
no rights.
But during George Washington's presidency, Secretary of War
Henry Knox tried to place United State-Native American relations on a more just footing. He
believed that treating America's Native Americans with justice was the young
republic's first test. So, he attempted to negotiate treaties
rooted in the premise that the Native Americans possessed rights under natural
law as the original occupants of the land.
Knox's
policies weren't implemented with complete success, nor were they
followed by other administrations. President Andrew Jackson resolved
during the 1830s to remove all Eastern Native Americans to land west of the
Mississippi River. The efforts of this "Native American-hating" president have
been contrasted with the more humane attempts of judges, congressmen,
missionaries, and philanthropists to defend Native Americans and their
claims to the land. But the truth is more complex.
Similarly, the debate within the Cherokee nation over how to respond to
Jackson's removal plans is usually cast as a story about heroes and
villains, principled resistance versus cowardice and opportunism. In
truth, this story was also more complicated. Surprise, surprise.
For
two decades following the removal, United States-Native American relations were comparatively
calm. But as western expansion accelerated after 1860, frontier violence
increased. Homesteaders flocking west in pursuit of cheap public lands
and railroad companies laying tracks across the hunting grounds of the
Plains Indians incited a series of wars that lasted almost twenty years.
By
the end of the 19th century, the Native American "threat" against
America's frontier had been eliminated. You guessed it, mainly through violence.
Defeated in war and confined to reservations, the Native American nations that had once filled the continent had been reduced to about 250,000 people.12
But even within these distressed conditions, the complexity of Native Americans' condition defied oversimplification. For starters, the Native Americans that filled these reservations in 1900 weren't exactly the same as those of 1800—a century of Anglo-American contact had left its mark.
Within the
Ghost Dance, Western Native Americans combined traditional Native American spirituality
with Christian beliefs to forge a powerful religious-political movement
that revitalized communities and terrified white authorities. And the "civilizing" ambitions of educational reformers like Richard
Henry Pratt led to the formation of an identity that would
prove crucial during later 20th-century efforts to protect Native American nations from disruptive federal policies.
In short, the real
history of Native Americans through the United States' first century is a
complicated one. It can't be reduced to a simple tale of conquerors
and victims, bad presidents and greedy cowards, or the march of progress
versus unbending cultures.
We'll be honest, though: the real history is no less tragic.