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

Stereotyping of the primaeval Americans in the 1820s and 1830s For Americans moving west in the 1820s and 30s at that place was little firsthand knowledge of what the frontier would be like when they arrived. at that place was a lot of presumption about the Indians. Many felt, through the stories they hear and read, that they had sufficient information to know what the Indians would truly be like and how to answer to them. Unfortunately, as is described in crowd Fenimore Coopers Leatherstocking Tales, white settlers stereotyped the Native Americans as savage, heartless beasts. There was a rushing out of men, women, and children, with the crack cocaine of rifles, the crashing of hatchets, the lunge of knives, with yells and shrieks such as would turn the spirit into ice and pissing to hearI saw the weakest of them whole- the old grandma, with the youngest babe in her arms, come flying into the cornwhen the pursuercaught up with her and struck her down with his tomahawk. Th en friend, he snatched the poor babe from the destruction womans arms and struck it with the same bloody hatchet. (qtd in Myers 48) Coopers romanticizing of the Old West, created an incorrect picture of Native Americans, but he was not the only iodine. ordinal 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 resonate out west? When people moved out into the frontier all the biased opinions they had been fed 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 fear they took with them was almos... ... Shoe String Press Inc., 1977. Frizzell, Lodisa. Across the Plains to atomic number 20 in 1852. New York New York Public Library, 1915. LeBeau, Sebastian (Bronco). The Good River Reservation. April 2002. The Great Sioux country Website. Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience 1800-1915. Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press, 1982. Noble savage. Websters New World College Dictionary. fourth 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 Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. ed. June Namias. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing section of the University, 1992. Shaw, Anna H. The Story of a Pioneer. New York, NY Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1915.