Compare And Contrast Momaday And De La Casas

Both N. Scott Momaday and Bartolome De la Casas respected the Natives’ culture; however, John Smith and Christopher Columbus viewed themselves superior to the ‘ignorant’ Natives. To start, Momaday and De la Casas appreciate the Native’s unique history and culture. Momaday illustrates his admiration for his family tribe the Kiowas for maintaining their culture despite the struggles and European influence in “The Rainy Mountain”. For instance, even though his grandmother became “a Christian in her later years… she never forgot her birthright”(np). Her memories of her culture of the Sun Dance and her language is still vivid to her, which then is passed to Momaday as stories to share. By sharing the tribe stories, it is preserving their culture and unites them together as the Kiowa. Beside Momaday’s admiration, De la Casas had respect for the Native’s culture. At this time, …show more content…
Smith describes the Native as “a devil than a man”(np). Unfortunately, he does not realize that in the Native’s perspective, the European may have been the devil taking their land from them. As a result, Smith narrating himself as the victim of his story when he counters the Natives and views that it was right for him to be superior to them. Similar to Smith, Columbus inhumanly lowers the Native’s status as a labor source. Columbus interprets the gift he received from the generous Native as a way for the Spaniards to utilize them to “search out and collect and deliver to [for the Spaniards] those things of which they had plenty, and which [the Spaniards] greatly need”(np). Instead of building a fair economic relationship with the Native tribes, Columbus positioned himself as the authority. As the authority, he enslaves the Natives to accumulate wealth for the Spanish Empire. Overall, Smith and Columbus eurocentrism perspective resulted in Native’s natural rights to be