The Life of Pretty Shield and Plenty Coups The lives of the Crow Indians were long a mysterious and little known area of information. When Pretty Shield was written in 1932 it gave greatly needed insight into the life of Native American women which had not been previously researched. However, Pretty Shield though it is a valuable source of information is not complete without its counterpart, a novel known as Plenty Coups Chief of the Crows which was written several years before. Frank Linderman wrote Plenty Coups Chief of the Crows to understand life from the perspective of a Crow chief. It begins by introducing both Plenty Coups, Coyote runs, and Braided Scalp Lock. Three of the elder men in the crow tribe who are all well into their eighties. Plenty Coups commences his story with many descriptions of the Crow lifestyle. His early life is full of play, but it also prepares him for life as an adult. …show more content…
Age, to the Indian, is a warrant of experience and wisdom and both Plenty Coups and Pretty Shield fit this mold. They also both maintain a frustrated attitude to the actions and mentality of the younger generation. Plenty Coups for example, states that, “Boys do not work today as we did. They do not appear to care if their bodies are strong"(Plenty Coups, 90). In addition, both Plenty Coups and Pretty Shield believe that young people marrying whomsoever they choose has led to deformities in children which they both claim never happened when they were young. Plenty Coups elaborates, claiming that in large part this is a result of the abandonment of counting coups. He declares that counting coups guaranteed only the strong had children because they had either proven their strength through action or living to the age of twenty-five. Furthermore, Pretty Shield and Plenty Coups are not the uninformed ‘stoic’ Indians that western society has stereotyped them as. They are instead natural and love to
Theda Perdue`s Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835, is a book that greatly depicts what life had been like for many Native Americans as they were under European Conquering. This book was published in 1998, Perdue was influenced by a Cherokee Stomp Dance in northeastern Oklahoma. She had admired the Cherokee society construction of gender which she used as the subject of this book. Though the title Cherokee Women infers that the book focuses on the lives of only Cherokee women, Perdue actually shines light upon the way women 's roles affected the Native cultures and Cherokee-American relations. In the book, there is a focus on the way that gender roles affected the way different tribes were run in the 1700 and 1800`s.
In the case of Japanese Americans, they were able to receive some levels of equality among whites. In the article, “No Jap Crow’: Japanese Americans Encounter the World War II South”, author Jason Morgan Ward looks at how Japanese Americans were treated during the Second World War in the American South, and how they were allowed to be considered semi-white. In his thesis Ward said, “This episode revealed the increasing inability of southern white leaders to defend the segregated status quo, even as it exposed their segregated society to comparisons with fascism. At the same time, in trying to make Japanese Americans behave according to the Jim Crow script, white leaders foreshadowed the ways they would later react to the protests of the civil
Nearing the end of the novel, Fools Crow written by James Welch, the rising tensions between the Napikwans, the American settlers, and the Pikunis, the Native Americans, leave difficult decisions for both sides. These politics between the Napikwans and the Pikunis started with a peace treaty but was broken by a Pikuni which left three options for the Pikunis: War, cultural assimilation, and migration to the north in Canada. Through consideration of all three options for the future of the Pikunis, migration to Canada arose to be the most acceptable option for what is to come. Migrating to the north, the Pikunis will not lose their culture and will not die from starvation and smallpox brought upon the Pikunis by the Napikwans, which will save
One of the most important aspects of “grit lit” is the violence that occurs in almost every novel. The violence that reoccurs throughout all of the “grit lit” novels allows for a more exciting plot and character conflict throughout the novel. One of the most influential and famous southern writers is Harry Crews. Crews is responsible for many different novels, short stories, and autobiographies, and almost all of his works include some type of violence. The main reason for violence in southern literature is due to the unordinary, low-life characters that the author includes to allow for a violent plot.
One of this week’s readings focused on Ch. 5, “Caged Birds,” in Professor Lytle Hernandez’s book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, and this chapter was particularly interesting because it further explained the development of immigration control in the United States. As a continuation from the last chapter, there was a huge emphasis in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Geary Act of 1892. This essentially prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, as well as eventually requiring these people to comply with regulations. “Caged Birds” encapsulates the events afterwards, as the book heads well into the early-1900’s. The disenfranchisement of immigrants develops towards further exclusivity because “[by] 1917, Congress had banned all Asian immigration to the Unites States and also categorically prohibited all prostitutes, convicts, anarchists, epileptics, ‘lunatics,’ ‘
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a text that describes the experiences of Mary Rowlandson during her captivity by the Native Americans in the King Phillips war. The details about the capture which took place in 1676 are recorded in her diary accounts which were written a few years after she was released. The captivity lasted about eleven weeks and is accounted in the diaries. Rowlandson specifically believes that her experiences were related to the Bible and that the capture was a trial from God which she had to endure in order to survive and remain a true Christian woman who is suitable for the then puritan society (Harris 12).
In the children’s book Lila and the Crow by Gabrielle Grimard, the theme is shown as a young indigenous girl named Lila learns to accept and praise her Indigenous features. On Lila’s first day at a new school filled with potential friends, a classmate points at her and shouts “A crow! A crow! The new girl's hair is black like a crow!” in a taunting manner.
Narrative point of view can express a different perspective to the reader by presenting experience, voice, and setting. Perspective is a particular way or attitude of considering events, by whatever character’s point of view the narrator takes. A character’s background and experiences in their life is a key to help the reader relate to the character. Culture may provide more insight about the circumstances, and can change a reader’s perspective, as well as the voice of the narrator - sophisticated or naive.
This passage from “A white Heron”, by Sarah Orne Jewett, details a short yet epic journey of a young girl, and it is done in an entertaining way. Jewett immediately familiarizes us with our protagonist, Sylvia, in the first paragraph, and our antagonist: the tree. However, this is a bit more creative, as the tree stands not only as an opponent, but as a surmountable object that can strengthen and inspire Sylvia as she climbs it. This “old pine” is described as massive, to the point where it, “towered above them all and made a landmark for sea and shore miles and miles away.” (Line 8).
To further explain, in the Girl Rising documentary, viewers are taken through the life of a young girl, Suma, in Nepal. She was only six-years-old when her parents exchanged her obedient working hand for money. She was then sent to a home where she would do chores such as washing the dishes, cut firewood and maintain the farm. At her next working home, Suma’s employer’s forced her to eat their scraps, and called her “unlucky girl”. At this home, she was sexually abused, but she did not let that define her.
The voices of Indigenous children are unheard and purposely ignored. This is portrayed through the literature of Birdie by Tracey Lindberg and Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese. Despite receiving apologies from Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, the government system to protect First Nations families appears to have detrimental effects on the native children. This is proven by young children turning to drugs in order to satisfy their growing pain, by family members who abuse their kids because of alcohol addictions, and the increasing discriminatory behaviour by surrounding communities. To begin with, young children are turning to drugs in order to satisfy their growing pain.
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard was published in September 2011. This novel is based on Biography on the life of President James Garfield’s assassination and the medical bungling that led to his death at the age of 49. It is a fascinating look at a period of neglected American history. The author explains the reality of the incidents that had occurred to James Garfield the struggles that he had faced throughout the time that he was alive. James A. Garfield may have been the most remarkable man ever elected president.
Flannery O’Connor’s The King of the Birds is a narrative explaining the narrator’s obsession with different kinds of fowl over time. The reader follows the narrator from her first experience with a chicken, which caught the attention of reporters due to its ability to walk both backward and forward, to her collection of peahens and peacocks. At the mere age of five, the narrator’s chicken was featured in the news and from that moment she began to build her family of fowl. The expansive collection began with chickens, but soon the narrator found a breed of bird that was even more intriguing; peacocks.
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
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.