Differences Between White And Native Americans

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 …show more content…
Technically, Thomas Jefferson’s two military liaisons-cum-explorers spent a few months at Fort Clatsop along the route towards the mythical Northwest Passage, where they believed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans connected, and the two white voyagers knew much about Eastern Native American groups by the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the brevity of this stop meant that the two white men did not stay there long enough to fully grasp the unique lifeways of local peoples including the Clatsops, Chinooks and Killamucks. Because Lewis and Clark did not have pre-existing knowledge of the specific lifeways of these groups, they instead relied on acquaintances with previously-encountered indigenous peoples to, as one scholar said, “make the strange familiar.” Lewis and Clark had to improvise their interactions with new peoples using ethnocentric presumptions to feel comfortable initiating trade in such a short period of time, yet simultaneously rejected these newfound peoples’ customs as conflicting with martial and manifest …show more content…
While Eliot and other mission leaders had ultimate say in community policy decisions, pious natives could elect chiefs, or sachems, who voiced tribal concerns within the framework of Puritan authority. In “praying towns,” indigenous parishioners of Puritan churches were allowed to “send for...sachem[s] and the rest of the old and wise men” to respectfully bring individual and group dissatisfactions to the attention of the mission. This opportunity to raise concerns with colonial leadership allowed local native peoples to advance and fight for their civil rights. Correspondingly, it is difficult to not see how the up-and-coming Sassamon viewed these opportunities to cross-culturally communicate and participate in the political