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The Meaning of Progress

Whites and Native Americans differed greatly in their view of the meaning of progress. The white settlers were from a capitalistic system, while the Native Americans had a more communal economic system. This alone gave the two groups differing perspectives. The white settlers saw progress in terms of manifest Destiny, as stated by thomas Jefferson, the idea that as a people they were fated to expand their dominion from one ocean to the next and so to dominate the continent. The Native Americans were in their own way just as warlike, but they directed their hostility to neighboring tribes without ever forgetting that they were indeed neighbors, with their own regions, their own beliefs, and their own attitudes. The Native Americans tended to see other beliefs as manifestations of a central truth, and so they were better able to accommodate different ideas. The Ghost Dance shows this clearly, for the native Americans adopted ideas from the new religion to which they were exposed by the whites and combined Christian beliefs with their own nativist beliefs. White settlers adapted some Native American ideas but tended to see their role as conquerors and supplanters rather than as adapting to what they found already entrenched in the New World.

These two tendencies clashed around the development of the Ghost Dance, creating fears in the white power structure that not only were the Native Americans not being made into Christians but that Christians were being seduced into pagan ways with the spread of the new religion. This is evident in the Letters from Reservations: "These ghost dances have assumed such proportions that they become very serious" (51). White settlers feared the Native American and called for their government to protect them or else they would "kill off every Indian that presents his face in this county" (57). White settlers saw the Native American culture itself as a threat.

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The Meaning of Progress. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 22:17, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704614.html