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

Stereotyping of the Native Americans in the 1820's and 1830's For Americans moving west in the 1820's and 30's there was little firsthand knowledge of what the frontier would be like when they arrived. There was a lot of presumption about the Indians. Many felt, through the stories they heard and read, that they had sufficient information to know what the Indians would truly be like and how to respond to them. Unfortunately, as is described in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, white settlers stereotyped the Native Americans as savage, heartless beasts. There was a rushing out of men, women, and children, with the cracking of rifles, the crashing of hatchets, the lunge of knives, with yells and shrieks such as would turn the spirit into ice and water to hearI saw the weakest of them all- 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. Then friend, he snatched the poor babe from the dying woman's arms and struck it with the same bloody hatchet. (qtd in Myers 48) Cooper's romanticizing of the Old West, created an inaccurate picture of Native Americans, but he was not the only one. Eighteenth 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 encounter 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 California in 1852. New York: New York Public Library, 1915. LeBeau, Sebastian (Bronco). "The Good River Reservation." April 2002. The Great Sioux Nation Website. Myres, Sandra L. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience 1800-1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. "Noble savage." Webster's New World College Dictionary. 4th 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 Division of the University, 1992. Shaw, Anna H. The Story of a Pioneer. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1915.