Native Americans were first referred to as Indians by Christopher Columbus, who landed in the Bahama Islands in the Caribbean while searching for India. Columbus found indigenous Americans to be passive and
20 peaceful (Matthiessen, 1984; Sale, 1990). Such attitudes clashed with those of Europeans, whose way of life was more competitive and aggressive. Even as Europeans seized the land of Native Americans, the invaders demeaned their victims as thieves and murderers in an attempt to justify their actions (Unruh,
25
1979; Josephy, 1982).
After the Revolutionary War, the new United States government adopted a
pluralistic approach to Native-American societies, seeking to gain more land through treaties. Payment for land was far from fair, however, and when Native Americans resisted demands to surrender their homelands, superior military power was brought in to evict them. Thousands of Cherokees, for example, died
30 on a forced march-the Trail of Tears-from their homes in the southeastern United States to segregated reservations in the Midwest. By the early 18OOs, few Native Americans remained east of the Mississippi River.
After 1871, the United States made Native Americans wards of the government and tried to resolve “the Indian problem” through forced 35 assimilation. Native Americans continued to lose their land, and were well on their way to losing their culture as well. Reservation life fostered dependency,
teaching English in place of ancestral languages and eroding traditional religion in favor of Christianity. Many children were taken from their parents and placed in boarding schools, operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to be resocialized
40 as “Americans.” Local control of reservations was placed in the hands of the few Native Americans who supported government policies, and reservation land-
Native Americans were first referred to as Indians by Christopher Columbus, who landed in the Bahama Islands in the Caribbean while searching for India. Columbus found indigenous Americans to be passive and
20 peaceful (Matthiessen, 1984; Sale, 1990). Such attitudes clashed with those of Europeans, whose way of life was more competitive and aggressive. Even as Europeans seized the land of Native Americans, the invaders demeaned their victims as thieves and murderers in an attempt to justify their actions (Unruh,
25
1979; Josephy, 1982).
After the Revolutionary War, the new United States government adopted a
pluralistic approach to Native-American societies, seeking to gain more land through treaties. Payment for land was far from fair, however, and when Native Americans resisted demands to surrender their homelands, superior military power was brought in to evict them. Thousands of Cherokees, for example, died
30 on a forced march-the Trail of Tears-from their homes in the southeastern United States to segregated reservations in the Midwest. By the early 18OOs, few Native Americans remained east of the Mississippi River.
After 1871, the United States made Native Americans wards of the government and tried to resolve “the Indian problem” through forced 35 assimilation. Native Americans continued to lose their land, and were well on their way to losing their culture as well. Reservation life fostered dependency,
teaching English in place of ancestral languages and eroding traditional religion in favor of Christianity. Many children were taken from their parents and placed in boarding schools, operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to be resocialized
40 as “Americans.” Local control of reservations was placed in the hands of the few Native Americans who supported government policies, and reservation land-
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