Chapter Four Q&A

Toward The Stony Mountain

 

Question One:  Government played a large role in how the Indians were portrayed to the people, why do they have to show the natives in such a negative light?

 

            The government showed the Indians as ruthless and animalistic for a few reasons.  The first being support, the government needed the support of the people to take the land away from the Indians and learned the effectiveness of striking fear in the people.  One example of this is how they call the Indians cannibals, and they do not honor women.  This causes the battles fought to appear less than about land and more about honor.  It all comes down to monetary gain.  The government needed the support of the people and this was easily attained by instilling fear in them.  Many things said about the Indians are true.  When in battle Indians are ruthless murderers, but outside of that they are environmentally conscious.  I think that Indians were instrumental in the success of the colonies because without the generosity and giving nature of the Indians the whites would have had trouble growing crops and feeding their families.  They had to show the natives in a negative light in order to get what they wanted, which was land.  If they had not shown them in only this way then their plans would not have been nearly as effective.

 

Question Two:  On page 90, it said that some Choctaw Indians were allowed to stay but had to register with an agent but received land in return.  What does this show you about how Indians are seen in White society?

 

            This showed me that in this instance, white people understood the value of the Indians.  These people were farmers and had been farming the land for a long time and knew it well.  The people who they allowed to stay were the ones who were willing to assimilate into the new white culture and change their ways to some degree.  After saying that, this also shows a great division because of their two very different cultures.  When you think about the people today who have to consult with an ‘agent’, I think of criminals!  They do this because they want to keep tabs on what these people are doing and when.  This was a way to further monitor the Indians while ‘accepting’ them into their culture.  I found this to be surprising but at the same time a little expected.  This is because the white people still feared the Indians and obviously saw them as a threat because they insisted on them checking in with agents.  The Indians were ‘accepted’ but only under certain conditions which were hard to hold up for them.  This was a way for the government to look like they were humanitarians yet still discriminate and take land away from the Indians. 

 

Question Three:  After reading about the Pawnees, the Choctaws, and the Cherokees, could there have been a way to please both parties of the Whites and the Indians? 

 

            I think that if initially they had both worked together to live in peace something could have been worked out, but to try after all the things that had happened I think there were only bad choices.  People became greedy of the land, and saw the weakness in the Indians.  The Indians initially only really cared about the state of their environment.  The Pawnees were careful not to overhunt the buffalo, and developed proper forms of agriculture to keep the land fertile.  So when their way of life was totally disrupted by being moved, and the railroads, they had nothing left to find sanctuary in.  I think that the government definitely made some bad choices when deciding what to do with the Indians.  Putting the Cherokees into internment camps was an extreme and fearful way of dealing with their problems.  I think that by the time other people got into office, the relations between the two parties were so severed that there was nearly nothing to be done.  The spirit of the Indians had been lost already and those who fought for their rights were silenced.  I think that the issue should have been dealt with initially and that by removing the rights of the Indians so severely that it cannot be fixed even today.