Lewis, Clark, And Native American Conflicts And Differences Of Lewis And Clark
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First, white civil servants conducted semi-diplomatic relations with Native American delegates, offering American material goods to exact payments of vast territory that would ameliorate the inconvenient differences between white and native social structures. Secondly, indigenous translators humored white functionaries to gain prestige and influence through translation by preserving indigenous linguistic traditions. Thirdly, Southern slaves reworked their presence within spiritual spaces assigned to them by their white masters to layer African cosmology over Christian fundamentals and counter-hegemonically resist the white supremacy of slave society imperialism. As history shows, white hollow diplomacy, indigenous acts within the Eurocentric
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For example, less than forty-eight hours after arriving at Fort Clatsop, Clark judged that the entire Clatsop people with whom the expedition traded “resembled the...[Chinooks] in every respect except that of stealing, which we have not c[a]ught them at as yet.” In frustration that one Clatsop man did not accept his offering of valuable goods such as his watch and American money, Clark proceeded to generalize all Clatsops as stingy since they differed from his incoming hope that the people would defer to white interests out of respect. By the end of their stay, on Monday January 6th 1806, Lewis generalized that these three groups with whom the expedition traded “in common with other savage nations ma[d]e their women [and men] perform every species of domestic drudgery.” Echoing his colleague’s frustrations, Lewis complained that these peoples’ egalitarian economic practices did not match up with Anglo-American gendered divisions of labor, where men served as large-scale suppliers and producers of goods while women merely produced smaller quantities of goods of lesser importance to male leaders, and their unorthodox egalitarianism would complicate his trade objectives. In the early nineteenth century, white officials like Lewis would not speak to women as equals in business deals, much less would they listen to women of color. In other words, Lewis and Clark’s lack of time to develop more comfortable relations with indigenous ethnic cultures led them to harshly criticize the local peoples as disrespectful of their diplomatic material
For example, less than forty-eight hours after arriving at Fort Clatsop, Clark judged that the entire Clatsop people with whom the expedition traded “resembled the...[Chinooks] in every respect except that of stealing, which we have not c[a]ught them at as yet.” In frustration that one Clatsop man did not accept his offering of valuable goods such as his watch and American money, Clark proceeded to generalize all Clatsops as stingy since they differed from his incoming hope that the people would defer to white interests out of respect. By the end of their stay, on Monday January 6th 1806, Lewis generalized that these three groups with whom the expedition traded “in common with other savage nations ma[d]e their women [and men] perform every species of domestic drudgery.” Echoing his colleague’s frustrations, Lewis complained that these peoples’ egalitarian economic practices did not match up with Anglo-American gendered divisions of labor, where men served as large-scale suppliers and producers of goods while women merely produced smaller quantities of goods of lesser importance to male leaders, and their unorthodox egalitarianism would complicate his trade objectives. In the early nineteenth century, white officials like Lewis would not speak to women as equals in business deals, much less would they listen to women of color. In other words, Lewis and Clark’s lack of time to develop more comfortable relations with indigenous ethnic cultures led them to harshly criticize the local peoples as disrespectful of their diplomatic material