Native Indians during the colonization of U.S.
The United States from the beginning of their existence were supposed to be the land of freedom and free people. The United States have also become the special place for the people from all over the Europe where they could find their new life in a country that offered the great opportunities for them. However, the history also states that not all the people were equal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the problems of racial inequality, the problem of the Native Americans or the Native Indians is also of the highest importance, as they were the ones who were resettled from their own lands and oppressed despite the previous treaties with federal Government. Therefore, an analysis of this injustice from two separate points of view should be given with the different scholar sources, proving them.
The first one is “Letters from an American farmer”, which was written by Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and published in 1782. In one of these letters, he described the life of the emigrants in this new country. The author tells that a new nation began to rise in the United States, which was so different from the nations of Europe. People that emigrated from Europe in their search of better life have created the new nation with a new racial mixture; moreover, it was the first nation without any prejudices. The inhabitants of this land gave life to their children, expecting for the prosperous life and protection for their families, as they didn`t want to put up with the former tyranny anymore. On these lands they have started to live with their new laws and new principles of freedom and justice. However, their bright and wonderful life was designed only for the “white people”.
Another scholar, Ronald Takaki with his “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America” provides the readers with another point of view on this question, as in this work, we can see the life in the US described from the side of Native Indians. There are several examples of the oppression of Native Americans. The oppression of Native Americans began during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, when he had advised Andrew Jackson to persuade the Native Indians to sell their “useless forests”. In Chapter 4, the author described the President Andrew Jackson, as a symbol of a new Age - the Age of the violated treaties. Moreover, Andrew Jackson had much profit on the Indians before his Presidency, as he had made a fortune on the speculations of the lands of Native Indians.
Andrew Jackson was obviously disrespectful to the Native Indians, discriminating and confining them, as the author often mentions that Jackson called them “barbarians” and “dogs”. In 1814, at the Battle of the Horse Shoe Band, Jackson and his troops killed hundreds of Indians, including women with their children. Moreover, their disrespect to the nation was described by a simple procedure of desecration of their corpses and cutting off the tip of each nose. The most cynical issue is that this was justified with the purposes of progress and an advance of the civilization. During his Presidency, the treaties with Indians tribes such as Choctaws of Mississippi were more than violated. Jackson guaranteed them that by the authority of the United States those tribes could live on their lands as long as they wanted, as this was guaranteed by the Choctaw treaty also.
However, in 1830, the Mississippi Government easily violated this treaty. The American Government bribed many chiefs of tribes to make divisions among them and pursued the policy based on the “divide and conquer” principle. Thus, in 1830, there was signed the Treaty of Dancing rabbit Creek. According to this treaty, the Choctaw should have resettled to the West of Mississippi. They should have left their lands with the graves of their ancestors and cede all of their 11 million acres to the federal government. Many Choctaws were good landowners and agriculture producers, but there were no place in Mississippi for Indians. This treaty with the allotment program helped to legitimize the white expansions of the farmers, land speculators and planters. During the resettlement, many of the Indians have died, because of the winter storms and different diseases like cholera. Furthermore, the majority of all the old Indians with their little children and grandchildren have died during the resettlement.
Another good example of injustice - is the treaties with Cherokees. In 1829, the Georgia’s government signed a law, by which their authority extended on the territory of the Cherokee nation. Chief John Ross protested against the new policy of Georgia; however, the opposition was quickly suppressed, ending with the imprisonment of the Chief John Ross. The new treaty was dishonest, as only the few of Cherokees were present to set it up. Therefore, the Cherokee leaders tried to boycott it, but the Congress was deaf on their complaints. In 1838, Chief Ross provided the petition signed by about fifteen thousand Cherokees, but the Congress dismissed it. Many Cherokees simply refused to resettle, however, the US Congress ordered the US Armed Forces to carry out their resettlement. The process of dispossession was also violate and unjust – Cherokees simply did not have any time to take their belongings with them. Thousands of Cherokees were removed from their native lands; moreover, many of them died during their winter march like the Choctaws did.
In the next decades the policy of the Native Americans resettlement didn`t change either. In the late 1860s, the racial discrimination of Native Indians found its place in the local newspapers. The majority of them wrote in their articles that Indians should be exterminated and their existence should have been put to a total end. The expansion of the white people ended with the First Transcontinental Railroad; moreover, with the construction of the Pacific Railroad an amount of the white population has increased rapidly. Thus, the Native Americans have become the racial minority on their lands. The end of their slavery in 1865 didn’t end the racial prejudice and oppression against the Native Americans, as the majority of the American people thought that they were barbarians, disrespected their culture and traditions, forcing them to leave from their sacral lands, where their ancestors have been living for ages.
Summarizing all the mentioned above, it should be stated that the problem of the Native Indians in America in the nineteenth century was described from two different points of view. The first one, described by Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, who was originally a French immigrant, states that the lands of the US were full of freedom and opportunities for the people from the old European world; however, not all the people had a chance to use these opportunities for their life to become free. Moreover, Ronald Takaki in his writings also confirms that the US was originally a land of the Indian ancestors, where they used to live by their own laws of freedom and justice; however, the white colonization of the West has not only put an end to a free life of every Indian, but also made the Indians` live unbearable and made them suffer from the moral and physical discriminations from the white people. The most important thing is that the end of slavery hasn`t put an end to a racial discrimination of the Indians, as they still were oppressed by the majority of the white people on the basis of their culture and the color of their skin. The land of the US that was initially the land of Indian freedom has become the embodiment of the European freedom and the racial injustice, from the consequences of which suffered not only the Native Indians, but all the non-white races like Black Americans and the Chinese, as well.
Works Cited
Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Letters from an American Farmer. New York: E. P.Dutton and Company, 1957.
Green, Len. "Choctaw Treaties." Bishinik 10 1978: 6-8.
Takaki, Ronald T. "Toward the Stony Mountain." Takaki, Ronald T. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. 84-105.
