Cowboys and Indians: The United States and the Lasting Legacy of its History of Conquest Ned Blackhawk is a Western Shoshone professor of history and American studies at Yale University. His works have focused primarily on post-Columbian Native American history. Within his work, Blackhawk has argued that ‘the history of conquest has an important though largely ignored legacy in the modern United States’. This essay will be an analytical evaluation of the validity and implications of that argument from a historical perspective. This central argument of this essay is that the legacy of the United States’ history of conquest can be seen on a political, sociological and culture level in the modern United States. This essay will be structured
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Native American characters and themes were popular inclusions in films throughout the 20th century; there were films that to a degree romanticized Native American culture and there were films that made a mockery of Natives. Important was that these films were very popular, as a result they were largely responsible for establishing the public’s concept of the Native American and of their culture, even for some young Natives. In a way, they were taking the culture of the Native American people again by defining it for the world; in inaccuracy there was a tragedy, in that they were misrepresenting a culture that they had earlier helped to …show more content…
The history of conquest has shaped this nation for better and for worse. Its legacy is that it has helped to define its vast boundaries and it is that it has robbed a people of their culture. Its legacy finds expression in the attitudes of the modern American people in whom it lives on. Conquest is not a term closely associated with Americans’ own patriotic retelling of the tale of their country, and even with regards to Western Expansion the term conquest often, wrongly, goes unused. The importance of conquest is one that should be more often included in the retelling of the American story, for although ignored, its continuing legacy looms large for its victims and its beneficiaries
Native American characters and themes were popular inclusions in films throughout the 20th century; there were films that to a degree romanticized Native American culture and there were films that made a mockery of Natives. Important was that these films were very popular, as a result they were largely responsible for establishing the public’s concept of the Native American and of their culture, even for some young Natives. In a way, they were taking the culture of the Native American people again by defining it for the world; in inaccuracy there was a tragedy, in that they were misrepresenting a culture that they had earlier helped to …show more content…
The history of conquest has shaped this nation for better and for worse. Its legacy is that it has helped to define its vast boundaries and it is that it has robbed a people of their culture. Its legacy finds expression in the attitudes of the modern American people in whom it lives on. Conquest is not a term closely associated with Americans’ own patriotic retelling of the tale of their country, and even with regards to Western Expansion the term conquest often, wrongly, goes unused. The importance of conquest is one that should be more often included in the retelling of the American story, for although ignored, its continuing legacy looms large for its victims and its beneficiaries