Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:49 am Post subject: Due: 25 Feb
So, these two reading were very different. The supplementary packet made me feel so uncomfortable, since it started by mentioning "the First (NONEXISTENT!!!) Thanksgiving" and made a bigger deal about European deaths than Native American deaths. For example, "Roughly 1000 colonists died, or 5% of the total population-higher than the percentage who died during WWII." [pg 2] First off, that's not a fair comparison to WWII. Second, a whole 5% compared to 95% of the Native American population dying off? I'm not saying that the European deaths were less meaningful than the Native American deaths, I'm just upset that the reading didn't put that into context. It sort of reminds me of the Boston Massacre, where 5 people died... And on pg 4, "The request was ignored and the army killed far more people than was necessary." So there's an acceptable/necessary amount of people to kill? Especially when someone is asking for a truce? Ugh.
Although it's impossible to write unbiased history, I think Jake Page does a better job of putting things into context/writes more critically than the supplementary reading did.
On pg 246 of the Page reading, "the government's thought was that if the Indians' hunting ground was taken from them, they would have only two choices- get civilized or leave." In yesterday's post, I said that Europeans thought civilized=farming. A couple lines before the quote, Page says that the women would handle this sort of thing. Could this mean, to the Euopeans, that only the women were "civilized"? Or were they all "uncivilized" just because the men would hunt? Hm... This also reminds me of religious conversion. When the Natives couldn't "see the light", then it's brute force... I wonder, was this a pattern of basically everything that happened between the Natives and the Europeans?
Tecumseh is such a bro and I mean that in the best way possible. He can go up there with my idol Bear grylls. While the colonists were trying to force civilize and shit, or make treaties with them, Tecumseh was busy organizing the indians into a badass fighting squad under the pretense that all Native Americans shared land and that the land could not be owned, nullifying any treaty the US and a chief had made. This is such a genius idea and the ultimate way to unify a nation, if they can be called that. They were fine giving up some land in a Pan-Africanist sort of fashion but within their own land. I guess I also just feel like Tecumseh was the charasmatic leader we tend to see more in European society, in a wierd way proving the importance of charisma in leading a people, which is something that we have yet to see in the Native Americans yet. I mean of course that is probably because we dont know/have not read enough. His little bench example was sick too.
Like Celena, I found the packet it to be really annoying, and wanted to quit after the first two pages, but it got better. I think that though it was suckily written/presented I think the part where the author(s) just went through a bunc h of little wars in quick succession was pretty helpful, it was nice to just have a bunch of facts, for once.
My question though, adresses more the pan-indianism thing, is this ever a good idea, to self segregate?
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