The Foreshadowing of the Native American’s Near Decimation
When I was young, in grade school we were taught how righteous and civilized the English culture was and still is. They were glorified, while the Native Americans were the aggressive and uncultured. Yes, there were times in our history lessons were the teacher would touch upon the aggressive expansionism of the colonists and we’d read about the Trail of Tears with empathy, but in all my grade school years I never once remembered hearing the actual account of a native American in their own words. I read about the justifications for manifest destiny, why it was a valid excuse to push the natives off their lands. We learned that this expansionism gave us the great United States that we value today and that the dwindling of the Indian population was just an unexpected side effect. Yes, we heard all these euphemisms for the plight of the natives, but really didn’t the colonists just instigate a slow-paced genocide?
Red Jacket tells the point of view from the Native Americans. From the first encounter with the colonists to Red Jacket’s present day. He tells of the kindness always showed to the English and how they’ve always shared their bounty without expecting anything in return, but they never were shown the same kindness by the white people. Here he says, “We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.” (Red Jacket, 1805). The English also introduced alcohol, which also killed scores of Indians. The American’s wars had enlisted many natives to fight for them, which has also taken many more native lives. The American’s have become greedy. They continue to want and take more and more from the Indian’s. Red Jacket feels betrayed by the white men. He notes that the Natives treated them with kindness and honored the colonists’ requests for more and more, yet they became too greedy and treated the Indians worse. “They wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened and our minds became uneasy.” (Red Jacket, 1805). Now the natives have very little land to occupy and are feeling squeezed out while the Europeans continue to take over America. The colonists even want the natives to adopt their religion. The Indians are losing their land and their culture due to the European’s conquest of America. The natives are not inflicting any harm or have ever tried to impose their culture nor religion onto the colonists.
This comes at a time when the natives are becoming more distrusting of the colonists. They believe the Indian’s are being cheated by the natives. This is mentioned by a native in the work by Ben Franklin titled “REMARKS concerning the savages of north-america.” The native in this writing speaks of attending a meeting in Albany, NY where the priest is angrily discussing lowering the bargaining price of beaver pelts. The colonists all conspire to create a price cap of 3 pounds and 6 shillings to drive the price down. Since the native cannot get more for the pelt since the colonists have all conspired to keep the price at or below this new price limit, the native is forced to sell his pelts at the undercut price. Red Jacket also carries on this sentiment of distrust from the natives’ point of view. He believes that now the Americans want their money. He argues that one of the main reasons the colonists want to convert the natives to their religion is to collect more money through the church collection basket from all the natives, fattening the colonists’ purses even more.
The natives feared the continued American’s aggression and expansion. Today, I believe, the Americans are not the more righteous or more superior culture. When the natives were kind and hospitable, the colonists took advantage and treated the natives with very little respect. The natives finally slowly begun to distrust them and fear they have given the colonists too much benefit of the doubt in the past. They realize attempting to coexist in America with the colonists has proved impossible. It’s almost as if Red Jacket is foretelling and foreshadowing the near decimation of his people in the coming two centuries.
