Native Americans: Before and After European Settlement
Nothing but a small strip of land stood amidst the seemingly endless sea. Here stood the eagle and the coyote. Coming briefly to the surface, the turtle was quickly sent back down to touch the earth beneath miles of water. He came back up again to see the earth in a pitiful washed out state. The coyote dug where he stood, finding a grain of earth, planting it once again and stretching the earth to the size it is today. The three together created six men and six women, sending them off in pairs in different directions to populate the earth. Some time passed and the coyote went to check on the people, only to find that they were eating the earth he had just created; it was half gone! We …show more content…
Those from Europe believed that American Indians were savages with ridiculous customs and needed to be assimilated into American society if they were going to share the land. This was mostly done through education of young children who were taken away from their families and put into government run boarding schools. They were kept away from their families to prevent them from picking back up their traditional values. Once at these schools, their hair was cut and they were put in typical American clothing to make them look more civilized. Mission schools also came about in this same time to teach young boys and girls about the Christian religion and to denounce their own traditional ideas. (Marr) This mass Americanization caused many young Indians to lose their ability to speak their native tongue, forget their spirituality and be able to pass down anything uniquely …show more content…
The once hunter gathers who roamed the entire country freely were forced onto reservations and into lives of poverty. These people had to give up their beliefs and traditions in order to stay in a country that was rightfully theirs, and any of the attempts at reconciliation with American Indians seemed half-hearted at best. Let us take this as a lesson to all when we encounter unfamiliar people in a land that does not belong to us. Let them be; and let us only hope that history does not repeat
Nothing but a small strip of land stood amidst the seemingly endless sea. Here stood the eagle and the coyote. Coming briefly to the surface, the turtle was quickly sent back down to touch the earth beneath miles of water. He came back up again to see the earth in a pitiful washed out state. The coyote dug where he stood, finding a grain of earth, planting it once again and stretching the earth to the size it is today. The three together created six men and six women, sending them off in pairs in different directions to populate the earth. Some time passed and the coyote went to check on the people, only to find that they were eating the earth he had just created; it was half gone! We …show more content…
Those from Europe believed that American Indians were savages with ridiculous customs and needed to be assimilated into American society if they were going to share the land. This was mostly done through education of young children who were taken away from their families and put into government run boarding schools. They were kept away from their families to prevent them from picking back up their traditional values. Once at these schools, their hair was cut and they were put in typical American clothing to make them look more civilized. Mission schools also came about in this same time to teach young boys and girls about the Christian religion and to denounce their own traditional ideas. (Marr) This mass Americanization caused many young Indians to lose their ability to speak their native tongue, forget their spirituality and be able to pass down anything uniquely …show more content…
The once hunter gathers who roamed the entire country freely were forced onto reservations and into lives of poverty. These people had to give up their beliefs and traditions in order to stay in a country that was rightfully theirs, and any of the attempts at reconciliation with American Indians seemed half-hearted at best. Let us take this as a lesson to all when we encounter unfamiliar people in a land that does not belong to us. Let them be; and let us only hope that history does not repeat