A few hundred years ago, Native Americans had a rich, beautiful
culture that was almost completely destroyed by the insatiable white man and
his dreams of western expansion. Reading Life
among the Piutes by Sarah Winnemucca, opened my eyes to the grace and
purity of the Native Americans. In Winnemucca’s writing, the young Native
American girl speaks of loving others “without being told to” (Winnemucca 65). Their
way of life puts our society today to shame. I explored into the struggles and
pain that the Indians were forced to endure because of one sentence from the
Winnemucca piece. The sadness can be felt when the young girl talks of the
Festival of Flowers that was celebrated “many years ago when [her] people were
happier” (Winnemucca 66).
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For
many US Generals in the 19th century, the ultimate goal was
extermination. They had no respect for human life and only cared about their
white culture. When talking about the Apache Indian tribe, the Arizona Miner wrote, “Extermination is
our only hope, and the sooner the better” (Jacoby 252). That was written in
1864 and apparently the white man’s plan worked. Today it is rare to see Native
Americans because they are living on the reservations they were forced onto. I
found an article that details the horrors Native American tribes went through.
It was
common for American settlers to go about the way of a mob mentality and
terrorize Native American tribes. In one instance of doing so, a group of
settlers burned down an entire Apache camp, along with their supplies so that if
any happened to survive they would have no choice but to starve to death. If
that wasn’t bad enough, one particularly brutal settler named Sugarfoot Jack,
found an orphaned infant, “tossed him into one of the fires and watched him
burn alive” (Jacoby 257). It is upsetting to hear politicians put America up on
a pedestal as if the founders of this country accepted the culture that was
here first. The United States is not built upon the idea of equality, peace,
and acceptance. It is built on greed, hate, and wickedness.
Since
killing Native Americans was becoming too extreme, the government decided to
take matters into their own hands and passed laws could legally break up tribes.
The government wanted the Indians to
assimilate to the white culture and began sending young Indians to boarding
schools in the cities. The children would not see their parents or their tribe
for many years and were returned to their reservations around the age of 16. During
their time at the boarding schools, they were forbidden to speak any Indian
words and often times their native languages were forgotten. Many became out of
touch with their former lives, could no longer relate to their tribes and that
often led to alcoholism and many times, suicide.
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| http://www.racialicious.com/2008/05/13/npr-reports-on-the-strange-history-of-native-american-boarding-schools/ |
The sadness can be seen in this picture of Tom Torlino. Tom was sent to a boarding school and
when he was released his native culture was essentially eradicated. There are
many other stories and photos just like his. It is safe to say that the common
image of an elderly Indian tribesman weeping for the loss of his people is
quite accurate.
