Both of the films Stagecoach and Pocahontas have overall well-meanings and positive messages. Stagecoach highly scrutinizes how social prejudices are harmful and misleading, while Pocahontas criticizes the idea of judging others based on their differences. However, these positive lessons shadow the problematic representations of Native Americans displayed in these films. Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, is a 1939 American Western film that explores a multitude of themes, but a major portion of the film focuses on a negative portrayal of Native Americans. From the very beginning, the passengers in the stagecoach are frantic with worry about being attacked by Native Americans, even though Native Americans do not appear in the film until the …show more content…
However, the women left to alert her tribe of the stagecoach’s location, so they could kill the passengers. In doing so, the film confirms the passenger’s initial racist impressions. This act gives the audience an invalid prejudice that all Native Americans present an imminent threat. No matter the context in the film, the Native Americans are still considered savages. In an instance where the stagecoach passengers are traveling, one of the passengers refers to Geronimo as “that Apache butcher.” At this point in the film the audience has not seen Geronimo and the Apache tribe on screen, so it already feels like the Native Americans are the villains. By being described as butchers, the audience can dehumanize Native Americans because they assume that they ride along and kill people. One more issue with the portrayal of Native Americans in Stagecoach is that it perpetuates the idea of Native Americans as stoic and voiceless individuals. An example of this can be seen in a scene where three high ranked officers discuss the whereabouts of the Apache leader, Geronimo. Rather than asking the Native American man in the room, the officer asks his peers for an
armed forces drove the Indians into reservations, the change was troublesome and difficult. Zesch sees himself both to be a relative of whites and, through the experience of his predecessor Adolph Korn, to be an assenting relative of the Comanche. He recounts to the two sides' accounts with equalization and compassion. He additionally investigates his very own family's conflicted relationship to its ancestors, and strips back the layers of history, so one feels not just the truth of the 1860s and 1870s, yet the resulting manners by which the encounters of officers, Indians, prisoners, and others were later spoken to in the mid-twentieth century, through books, Wild West shows, reunions between previous White and Indian and previous hostages and their previous individual warriors. The author states, “ By the fall of 1872, Adolph Korn, Clinton Smith, Herman Lehmann, Rudolph Fischer, and Temple Friend were living with the Indians as Indians, fighting their battles and taking part in their raids, prepared to die in defense of the tribe if necessary” (Zesch 139).
Throughout the book The Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie the Indians were always treated as minorities. For example, when the narrator walked into the 7-Eleven, the clerk “looked me over so he could describe me to the police later. I knew the look.” (Alexie 182) The clerk kept watching him, thinking he was about to steal something.
In his novel Fools Crow, James Welch depicts the historical conflict in ideals and territory between the native Pikuni tribes and the Napikwans, or whites, in the Montana plains. Through perspectives of different members of the Lone Eaters and their personal progression, Welch presents the dichotomy of acting for the good of the community versus acting for personal gain and wealth. No narratives more accurately describe this internal struggle than the ones provided through Fools Crow’s and Fast Horse’s experiences. Since both start from the same relatively low status, each of their trajectories through the novel explicitly show how different
In the documentary, Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian, directed by Neil Diamond, he investigates the progression of how cinema has portrayed the Native American. They begin with the early classic films that first were made up until recent times. The image of the Indian has been portrayed in several ways and films had typically created misleading depictions of the Indians. What was created in these films are often stereotypical and what many people today believe to be true. Throughout the documentary, we see many themes being presented and these are themes of how the image of Native Americans were viewed as the “bad guys” during some early films and how they evolved to show how they were really just human beings.
Ripped from the fabric of American history, the truth of the Old West is far darker and less heroic than depicted when the fresh wounds from the American Civil War were still fresh and the expansion of the railroads encroached on the eroding territory of Native Americans in the name of “progress” and manifest destiny. The slaughtering grounds of Little Bighorn where General Armstrong Custer valiantly fought to the last man deflates into an ignorant move that Lakota warriors, led by Crazy Horse of the Lakota tribe, took advantage of to fight assimilation in the form of constricting reservations. The lawless land of the West where notorious criminals robbed banks and trains, while the heroic sheriffs ignited
This is an example of how biased and prejudiced people were against the Plains Indians since they only believed that the Americans should truly have victory. This is also an example of hatred caused by the Indian Wars. The Massacre at Wounded Knee for example was another bloody battle which resulted in many deaths of both sides but mostly Americans. In all, the Americans wanted to show revenge towards the Native Americans since the government was not dealing with them more strictly, which is why the government has negatively affected the Plains Indians due to the creation of
The white people view the indians as “savages” and instead of trying to see eye to eye with them , they just think they are better than them as humans. But the funny part is the Indians helped the white settlers when they first came to the land, and the indians just wanted peace between the two sides, but all they got in return was an order telling them that they had to leave because the whites needed their land so they can expand their community and further more better their lives and their children’s
There are significant historical contextual factors underlying the tensions between these groups. Culturally, Natives and settlers held very different worldviews, values, and ways of life, which led to prejudice, misunderstandings, and miscommunications. (Vevier, 4) They also competed for resources and land, causing violent confrontations that shaped the development of Western society. Some characters exhibited deeply prejudiced and antagonistic views of Natives, seeing them as savage and untrustworthy, while other characters possessed a more understanding and open-minded perspective.
Even today, movies and cartoons that depict Native Americans in any way are most often being portrayed in the same fashion as they have been for hundreds of years: through the eyes of the earliest white settlers. When Disney’s Pocahontas came out, the brutal song “Savages!” devastated Native American children.
Native Americans who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show used the press to make social and political statements as well as communicate their opinions of white society. According to memoirs, some Native Americans accepted to travel with a show that portrayed them stereotypically in order to understand “‘the white man’s beliefs about God’s will, and how they act according to it.”’ Although the only way for this goal to be achieved was through the noble savage stereotype, the performance of the stereotype gave Native Americans some control over the ways in which tourism and religion intersect. The tourist gaze is therefore symbiotic because the tourist gains access to the authenticity he or she desires while the Native Americans gather knowledge to better protect their religion and culture against the encroaching white world. Thus, self-commodification can be utilized as a method to adapt but not necessarily resolve a problematic history of colonialism.
Stereotypes can be harmful to those they pertain to, as they can contain false negative connotations that have the power to demonize entire groups of people. The formation of a negative stereotype could result from the events at the powwow near the novel’s conclusion, as the acts of violence and robbery committed by Native people against other Native people could reflect negatively on the entire community. The acts committed by a small number of the population could make the entire community appear to be unsympathetic and violent to an outsider who will not take the time to understand the community as a whole. Evidence of this lack of interest in other cultures can be seen when Tony talks to a white woman on the train. He invites her to attend the powwow, but she makes an excuse, and he stops listening to her speak because he knows that, “People don’t want any more than a little story they can bring back with them, to tell their friends and family around the dinner table, to talk about how they saw a real Native American boy on a train, that they still exist” (Orange 235).
Science journalist, Charles C. Mann, had successfully achieved his argumentative purpose about the “Coming of Age in the Dawnland.” Mann’s overall purpose of writing this argumentative was to show readers that there’s more to than just being called or being stereotyped as a savage- a cynical being. These beings are stereotyped into being called Indians, or Native Americans (as they are shorthand names), but they would rather be identified by their own tribe name. Charles Mann had talked about only one person in general but others as well without naming them. Mann had talked about an Indian named Tisquantum, but he, himself, does not want to be recognized as one; to be more recognized as the “first and foremost as a citizen of Patuxet,”(Mann 24).
Petalesharo’s writing reflected the treatment of Native Americans during the 1800s. Being a Native American himself, Petalesharo was able to give perspective on a point in history typically viewed from a white man’s opinion. The excerpt “Petalesharo” explains how the Native American was able “to prevent young women captured by other tribes from being sacrificed”, making Petalesharo well liked by the Americans (588). Petalesharo gave the “Speech of the Pawnee Chief” infront of Americans to convey the differences between Native Americans and Americans through emotion, logic, and credibility, which showed how the two groups will never be the same, but still can coexist in the world together.
In Life Among the Piutes, sarah winnemucca hopkins describes what happens when soldiers came to their reservation based off what white settlers tell the government. The most shocking instance of this happened when Winnemucca encountered a group of soldier who told her the white settlers accused the natives of stealing cattle, “the soldiers rode up to their [meaning the Piute’s] encampment and fired into it, and killed almost all the people that were there… after the soldiers had killed but all bur some little children and babies… the soldiers took them too… and set the camp on fire and threw them into the flames to see them burned alive”(78). This is an abhorrent act that is unthinkable in a functioning society. The natives had done nothing but want to hold some shred of land from the settlers who had taken everything from them and are exterminated like vermin. This was something that stayed hidden from many white settlers because of its barbarism and by exposing it Winnemucca truly educates the reader, past and present, on how natives are
In all the different tribes, none of the women are seen as less than the men, however in European culture at the time, the women were seen as weak and lesser beings. Gunn Allen tackles this issue using ethos logos and pathos by appealing to the readers through logic, emotion and her personal experiences. With Ethos Gunn Allen makes herself a credible source by mentioning that she is a “half breed American Indian woman. ”(83) making her story worth paying attention to rather than if it were a story by an outsider who truly has nothing to do with the American Indian women.