Stereotyping of the Native Americans in the 1820s and 1830s Essay

Stereotyping of the primordial Americans in the 1820s and 1830s For Americans moving western hemisphere in the 1820s and 30s there was little at first hand knowledge of what the frontier would be like when they arrived. There was a mass of presumption about the Indians. Many felt, through the stories they heard and read, that they had sufficient data to know what the Indians would truly be like and how to respond to them. Unfortunately, as is exposit in James Fenimore Coopers Leatherstocking Tales, white settlers stereotyped the native Americans as savage, unfeeling beasts. There was a rushing out of men, women, and children, with the cracking of rifles, the crashing of hatchets, the lunge of knives, with yells and shrieks such as would turn the spirit into ice and water to hearI saw the weakest of them all- the grey grandma, with the youngest babe in her arms, come flying into the cornwhen the pursuercaught up with her and smitten her rarify with his tomahawk. Then frien d, he snatched the poor babe from the dying womans arms and struck it with the same bloody hatchet. (qtd in Myers 48) Coopers romanticizing of the Old West, created an inaccurate picture of Native Americans, but he was not the only one. Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century literature shows us many incorrect representations of Native Americans. With passages like the one above, captivity narratives, and the descriptions of Indian wars, is it any wonder that people were afraid of the Indians they would encounter out west? When people moved out into the frontier all the biased opinions they had been feed went with them. They took the mental pictures that the media of the day proposed and made them real in their minds eye. But the business concern they took with them was almos... ... Shoe String Press Inc., 1977. Frizzell, Lodisa. Across the Plains to California in 1852. in the raw York New York Public Library, 1915. LeBeau, Sebastian (Bronco). The Good River Reservation. April 2002. T he Great Sioux Nation Website. Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier get it on 1800-1915. Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press, 1982. Noble savage. Websters New World College Dictionary. 4th ed. 1999. Scheckel, Susan. Desert, Garden, Margin, Range Chpt. 6 Mary Jemison and the Domestication of the American Frontier. Ed. Eric Heyne. New York, NY Twayne Publishers, 1992. Seaver, James E. A tarradiddle of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. ed. June Namias. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University, 1992. Shaw, Anna H. The Story of a Pioneer. New York, NY Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1915.