Historically, why did white Americans kill Indians?

Americans have a characteristic that they are good at flaunting and beautifying themselves. But there are also righteous Americans. The movie and Wolf Dance profoundly reveals this question, that is, who is more civilized and who is more barbaric?

When the British immigrants first arrived in America, they received enthusiastic help from the Indians. The Indians not only gave them land to settle down, but also provided them with food relief. However, the British colonists denied the Indians' actual ownership of North American land. After they established a foothold in Jamestown, the first colonial settlement, they began to attempt to expand the colony by seizing Indian land through deception, force, and other methods. In 1609, the English colonists captured the nearby Indian villages of Powhatan and Southmond, and attempted to take possession of Powhatan's more than 300 acres of cultivated land and more than 100 square miles of hunting grounds. However, due to a massive counterattack by the Powhatan tribe, the British eventually withdrew to Jamestown. This was the first attempt by British colonists to seize Indian land by force. Later, on the basis of plundering the Indian lands, the British North American colonies were gradually established.

Appalachia

After the Revolutionary War, according to the Treaty of Paris, Britain transferred the land west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi River to the United States. Here It is a place where Indians thrive. If Americans want to open up these places, they must seize the Indians' homes and drive a large number of Indians to the west. At this time, the westward movement received strong support from the government, and white immigrants also went west in large numbers. In order to maintain border security and protect the interests of white immigrants, the U.S. government launched more than 20 "legitimate and legal" wars against the Indians. After the 1850s, the Great Plains became the central battlefield for the confrontation between Indians and whites. The brave and fighting tribes of the Great Plains were erratic and elusive. They often raided immigrant teams and U.S. mail trains, and attacked nearby white settlements, which shocked frontier immigrants. In order to deal with the Indians, the U.S. government sent regular troops to patrol and defend the Great Plains. Some civil society groups adopted an offensive-defensive strategy and struck preemptively when encountering Indians. An official of an express company instructed his subordinates to shoot without mercy as long as the Indians were within range. In 1784, an Englishman traveling to the United States discovered that “the white Americans have a strong dislike for the Indian race as a whole, and one can hear talk everywhere that they must be eradicated from the face of the earth, both men and women, old and young.” Not a single child will be left behind.”

Driving and massacring the Indians

White people are accustomed to attribute the root cause of racial conflicts to the bloodthirsty and warlike Indians. The Indians have their own explanations for the Indian-White conflict. The Sioux frankly admitted that "we kill white people because white people kill us." An Indian leader once said: "I don't like war. I have never been an invader. I The fight is just to defend my women and children.” In a memorandum to the mayor of Chicago in 1927, the “Confederation of American Indian Tribes” also expressed the following views on hundreds of years of racial conflict: “Indians kill. White people, because white people took away their land, destroyed their hunting lands, burned their forests, and wiped out their bison." However, "white people who stood up to defend their property were called patriots, while the Indians. Anyone who does the same thing is called a murderer."

The root cause of the fierce conflict between whites and Indians lies in cultural differences and conflicts of actual interests. Henry Knox pointed out in his report to Congress in 1787: "deep-rooted prejudices, inner resentments, and The actions of the white man and the Indian on various occasions will never make them friendly neighbours, the one anxious to defend his land, the other greedy to acquire it. The heart has been enraged, and a small offense will bring death, and revenge will follow, and there will be no end. So the merciless war is ignited, and both the innocent and the responsible are involved. ”

In order to alleviate this conflict, in the 1850s, the federal government began to implement a reservation system for Indians. A reservation is land set aside by the U.S. government from the original land of an Indian tribe for all members of the tribe to continue to live in. Its boundaries are determined and its scope is limited. Indians are not allowed to leave at will, and non-Indians are not allowed to enter without authorization. Before and after the Civil War, more and more Indian tribes were forced to sign contracts with the government and were enclosed in reservations. By 1880, 141 reservations had been established in the United States. At this point, the reservation system was established nationwide. The Indians in the reservations were under the control and supervision of the military and federal officials. The reservation system not only caused the Indians to lose their original homes and native lands, but also deprived them of their freedom and independence, which had a huge impact on the social culture of the Indians. of harm.

The U.S. government began its large-scale military conquest in the 1860s. After about twenty years, it completely defeated all the indigenous tribes in the territory and forced them to sign contracts and enter the reservations. After the Indians moved into the reservations, they lost their freedom of movement and were unable to obtain traditional survival resources. Their social vitality was devastated and they were basically isolated from white society. The reservations became isolated islands in a sea of ??white people.

It is precisely because of the long-term conflicts between whites and Indians on land and other issues, as well as the long-term vilification of the image of Indians in white society, that each side has developed fear and hostility towards the other. This point has been carefully portrayed in "Dancing with Wolves". The protagonist Dunbar in the movie first arrived in the West and was wary of the local Indians, because among the group he lived in, the Indians were considered "savages" who did all kinds of evil, especially when several Indians tried to steal his The horse intensifies his worries, so he hides his equipment to prevent it from falling into "enemy" hands. The Sioux people were full of hostility towards Dunbar at first. When they first learned of Dunbar's arrival, the Sioux tribe even held a general meeting to discuss how to "deal with" the white man. They were worried that more white people would invade their homeland later. So when Dunbar sent the injured "Fist Stand" (Indian name) back to the Sioux tribe, the women in the tribe fled when they saw him, and the indigenous people in the tribe gathered to drive away this uninvited guest. But when the Sioux people learned that Dunbar had saved "Standing with a Clenched Fist", they visited Dunbar back to learn his true purpose. During the return visit, they found that Dunbar was friendly and welcoming and was not trying to invade their home. Dunbar also worked hard to change his image. Despite the language barrier, he still tried to communicate with the Sioux people, and the Sioux people, especially "Scattered in the Wind" (an Indian name), were also happy to communicate with Dunbar. On the Sioux's second visit, Dunbar entertained them with sugar and coffee. As Dunbar had more and more contact with the Sioux people, the two sides began to understand and accept each other. The Sioux people tried to let "Fist Standing" regain English as a bridge to communicate with Dunbar, and Dunbar also worked hard to learn the Sioux language and often He went to the tribe as a guest, helped the Sioux hunt buffalo, and helped take care of the families who stayed in the tribe when the Sioux fought with the Pawnee. He even got his own Indian name - "Dancing with the Wolves", which was related to the Sioux tribe. The white people adopted by the Sioux people married "with fists in their hands" and integrated into the life of the Sioux people. Dunbar's example shows that it is possible for different civilizations to get rid of their inherent prejudices and values ??and achieve harmonious existence through dialogue and exchanges.

But this ideal friendship will eventually be tested by reality. At that time, the mainstream attitude of white people towards Indians was hostility and confrontation. In order to resist this mainstream understanding, Dunbar willingly assimilated into the Sioux people. Wearing the buffalo horn breast ornament and waist knife of the Sioux people, putting on the straw sandals and clothes of the Sioux people, growing long hair and decorating it with feathers, using his new name "Dancing with the Wolf", and even When being attacked by American soldiers, he still stubbornly retorted in Sioux language, "My name is 'Dance with the Wolf,' and you are not qualified to talk to me." When "Dance with the Wolf" was captured and imprisoned by the soldiers, While at the military camp, the Sioux tried their best to rescue him. This kind of friendship between white people and Indians reflects the reflection of white people on the historical relations between India and White in the 1990s. Through Dunbar, he conveys the good wishes of harmonious coexistence between different races.

The unique chest ornaments of Indians

The conflict of cultural values ??between white people and Indians

Due to the different living environments of white people and Indians, the values ??they formed are also different. are different, so differences in concepts also occur from time to time. White people generally have prejudice and discrimination against Indians. The words they usually use to describe Indians and their culture include "barbaric", "primitive", "evil", "slaves of the devil", "superstitious", "ignorant", etc. The general judgment The orientation is that the Indians are in the lower form of human culture and have not yet been "civilized". They do not have the cultural relics and customs of a civilized society. Compared with the "civilized" Europeans, they are really living in darkness and misfortune. White society usually uses its own social and cultural standards to measure Indians, believing that they lack the technology, customs and systems of a civilized society. They are "naked, uncivilized, and some even eat human flesh." They do not understand knowledge and have no History and writing. Starting from religious prejudice, the church regarded the Indians' lack of belief in God as a manifestation of being controlled by the devil, and accused them of being full of evil. "They are bad guys who love lying, and they are very lazy bad guys."

Colonial officials often took a more unfair view. William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, once wrote that Plymouth is "a vast, uninhabited land in America, very fertile and suitable for settlement, with no civilized inhabitants to be found, only some savage and cruel people." These people are not much different from the wild beasts that roam here.” Later, as the colonization process accelerated, fierce racial conflicts broke out with the Indians. The white people's hatred of the Indians deepened day by day. Some white people who were kidnapped during the conflict published their experiences in the tribe after their return. Some Deliberately exaggerating the barbaric horror of the Indian lifestyle made more people believe that the Indians were bloodthirsty. American history textbooks also deliberately exaggerate and distort facts, exacerbating white people's misunderstandings about Indians.

This "stigma" is caused by mutual understanding and estrangement between the two parties. For example, in the movie, after Dunbar gained the trust of the tribe, he accidentally lost his hat while helping the tribe hunt buffalo. At the family banquet in the evening, Dunbar discovered that the Sioux warriors "scattered in the wind" without any scruples. He showed up wearing his own hat, but when he asked for his hat back, he was refused, almost causing a conflict.

In Dunbar's view, the hat belongs to him. After it is lost, the person who finds it should return what belongs to him. This is a typical Western thinking, rooted in the civil legal spirit of the economic life of the Western world. "Spreading in the Wind" believes that this is what he picked up. As a "trophy", not only should it belong to him, but any question about the ownership of the "trophy" is regarded as a "challenge" to him. Because in the Sioux society, brave and skilled warriors have a high social status. These "warriors" are also the best hunters. The honor and status of the warriors are reflected in the "trophies" they possess. Any desire for "trophies" All questions are challenges to the warrior's own status. From this incident, we can see that people from different cultural types also have different values, and recognizing and respecting this difference is an important condition for harmonious coexistence of different cultures.

The social culture of the Indians

The movie "Dance with the Wolf" used the camera to record fragments of the social life of the Sioux Indians, including animal skin tents and simple production tools made of bone. , smoking, collective life in tribal units, etc. As indigenous residents of North America, the social life of indigenous Indians is characterized by the use of stone tools and direct occupation of resources. North America has a vast territory and rich resources. Indians mainly focus on fishing, hunting, gathering and extensive agriculture. Their food sources are in the east and southwest corn in the region, wild rice in the Great Lakes, and bison in the Great Plains. The tools for obtaining survival resources are mainly polished stones, or bone and wooden tools. From the film, you can also see women from the Sioux Indian tribe using stone tools to process animal skins. The clothes of Indians are mostly made of animal skins, and a few tribes with textile technology can wear cloth clothes. Just like the Sioux in the movie, the Indians in the Great Plains mainly lived in animal skin tents.

In line with this way of survival, the social structure of the Indians is based on blood, and the tribe is the core social and cultural unit, responsible for organizing daily hunting, tribal wars and religious activities. These are reflected in the film. One plot in the film is that Dunbar helps the Sioux people fight with the Pawnee people. An important feature of Indian civilization is the frequent wars between tribes. This is also the reason why the native Indians in the entire Americas have not formed a The important reason for the sovereign entity was that it was later unable to resist the invasion of white people. The Sioux people have to hold traditional religious ceremonies before wars and hunting. The religious activities of the Indians are of the nature of worshiping gods. They have not yet formed a formal religion with doctrines, laws and churches, but they are an important part of tribal life and an important part of the Indians. An important part of national identity, even today's Indians who have moved to cities will return to the reservation to participate in traditional religious ceremonies held by the tribe every year. As recorded in the movie, there is a clear division of labor in Indian families. Men are responsible for hunting and fighting, while women are engaged in planting and gathering, running housework, giving birth to children or serving their husbands.

Indians have their own value system, which produces corresponding behavioral patterns. The core of their values ??lies in the mutual equality and harmony between humans and nature. They believe in animism and believe that all things in nature, like humans, have divinity and belong to a big, equal family. Human beings do not have the privilege of ravaging nature. Any activities that occupy resources other than meeting survival needs are against God's will and will inevitably lead to the revenge of nature. One of the most spectacular scenes in the movie is the Sioux hunting bison. The Indians in the Great Plains usually hunted bison to provide food for the tribe. The Sioux hunted bison just to meet their survival needs. They knew how to control the number of bison. After the arrival of white people, they hunted bison crazily. Leather furniture, floors, leather carriages, belts, leather shoes, etc. made of bison skins entered the market in large quantities. Between 1872 and 1883, millions or even tens of millions of bison were slaughtered by white people. In 1883, a museum expedition went to the West to search for bison specimens. As a result, less than 200 bison were found in the entire West. By 1903, the number of bison in the Great Plains was reduced to 34. The main wild animals on the Great Plains were eliminated. The bison was closely related to the survival of the Indians. The Indians and other related cultures that lost their livelihood were also eliminated and destroyed.

Human relationships are characterized by friendship, mutual assistance and sharing of flesh and blood based on blood relatives. Just like the heroine in the movie who "stands with her fists clenched", many white people who were adopted by tribes were later unwilling to return to white society. One of the reasons is that they felt that people in the Indian tribes were full of love. At the same time, Indians have many praiseworthy qualities: courage, integrity, honesty, self-respect, love of freedom, sense of responsibility and compassion. In the movie, Dunbar wrote in his diary after contacting the Sioux people: "This is a nation that loves to laugh. They love their families and care about each other. The harmony of this nation is unmatched by any other nation." Most of the white Europeans in North America were the beneficiaries of these excellent qualities. When the British immigrants first arrived in the Americas, they received enthusiastic help from the Indians. The Indians not only gave them land to live in, but also provided them with food relief, so much so that some colonists lamented , many Christians are not as kind and honest as them.

However, the development of indigenous culture faces many obstacles. Due to the shortcomings of Indian culture itself, the level of agriculture is very low, tools and technology are backward, and the various Indian tribes speak many languages ??and communication is inconvenient, and transportation between tribes is difficult. Inconvenient, isolated and independent from each other. This has kept Indian culture in a state of stagnation or even regression for a long time. After the white culture, dominated by Anglo-Saxons, arrived in the Americas, it had a fierce collision with the primitive Indian culture.