Lies
My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
Just as Native
American societies changed when they encountered whites, so European societies
changed when they encountered natives. Indians gave the new settlers
directions, showed them water holes, sold them food and horses, bought cloth
and guns, and served as guides and interpreters. These activities are rarely
depicted in movies, novels, or our textbook. Inhaling the misinformation of the
popular culture, students have no idea that Natives considered European warfare
far more savage than their own. A number of settlers fled to Indian villages
rather than endure the rigors of life among the autocratic English.
As Benjamin Franklin
put it, “No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in
our societies. All their government is by Counsel of the Sages. There is no
Force; there are no Prisons, no officers to compel Obedience, or inflict
Punishment.” Probably foremost, the lack of hierarchy in the Native societies
in the eastern United States attracted the admiration of European observers.
Frontiersmen were taken with the extent to which Native Americans enjoyed
freedom as individuals. Women were also accorded more status and power in most
Native societies than in white societies of the time, which white women noted
with envy in captivity narratives. Most Indian societies north of Mexico were
much more democratic than Spain, France, or even England in seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
Hernando De Soto had
to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies.
The Pilgrims so feared Indianization that they made it a crime for men to wear
long hair. People who did run away to the Indians might expect very extreme
punishments, including the death penalty, if caught by whites. Nonetheless,
right up to the end of independent Indian nationhood in 1890, whites continued
to defect, and whites who lived an Indian lifestyle, such as Daniel Boone,
became cultural heroes in white society. African Americans frequently fled to
Indian societies to escape bondage.
No comments:
Post a Comment