Portrayal of Native Americans in the 1800s

Many types of literature and propaganda surrounding the topic of Native American culture from the 1800's is very disturbing and filed with blatant racism, and like our last post about orientalist, this propaganda serves as another example of othering and western domination.

Much of the art and literature produced on the 1800s with the subject of Native Americans portrayed the native people as savage or as animals rather than people. This idea can be seen in The Death of Jane McCrea (1804) posted below. This painting depicts two muscular Native American Men in the process or murdering a white woman. The men appear to be in complete control of the woman, and the woman is depicted as helpless. The woman in the picture has the expression of helplessness and fear and one of her breasts has fallen out of her dress to further the idea of helplessness. On the other hand the men in the painting have very wide eyes and furrowed brows showing anger or a lack of compassion and serve to further emphasize ideas of uncivilized behavior on the parts of the men.

Similar to this piece of art, there was a specific genre of literature dedicated to the “cruelty” and “horror” that was Native American culture. These novels were called Apache novels such as Apache Ransom and Apache Hostage. These kind of narratives generally followed the plot of having a white (civilized) person stolen out of their society by Native Americans. The Native Americans in these novels are often portrayed as eating raw food and lacking emotion.

While the majority of Native American literature in the 1800s debased and negatively portrayed Native Americans, some people did attempt to use literature as a way to bring social justice to the plight of Native Americans.  Unfortunately, this literature was not very popular nor was it considered to be very controversial. An example of this literature is Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor. The novel was clearly a critique of the way that the US dealt with the colonization of the US land and their treatment of Native Americans and highlights the atrocities of colonization. However, some theorize that because people in this time period were so used to viewing Native Americans as less than human, the book did not even read as a controversial issue because the readers weren’t able to relate to the Native American story at all.

In order to get the attention of readers at the time Helen Hunt Jackson ended up writing a novel called Romona in 1855 using many of the same details used in A Century of Dishonor, but formatted it as a romance novel, which were much more popular.

I would argue (probably mostly unopposed) that this anti native propaganda served to allow for easier western domination. I wish that we could be a society that aligns more closely to Helen Hunt Jackson in taking a stand agains social injustices. It is extremely unfortunate that the people of the time were unable to see past the artificial idea that Native people were less civilized than US citizens, and to connect these ideas to today's society, I would also argue that in many ways we as a society still uphold many of these stereotypes. One example is that I heard a person just yesterday say that Asian people can't help but drive poorly, and only earlier today I was told that it's okay that I didn't understand something because I was a woman. While these issues may be occurring on a much smaller scale than the oppression of Native American cultures, I believe that it is still very important that we self reflect and hold one another accountable to avoid othering people who belong to cultures that do not reflect our own ideas.

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/ximages/amerinds/CaptNarr/DeathJaneMcCreaVanderlyn1804.jpg

Citations:
Cotton, Lacy N. "American Indian Stereotypes in Early Western Literature and the Lasting Influence on American Culture." Baylor Beardocs. Baylor University, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.