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Treatment of American Indians

y councils and the words of Indian leaders like Chief Joseph, Geronimo, and Crazy Horse. Previously, the history of the West and of the Indian Wars was told entirely from the point of view of white society. The book tells the story of the plains Indians over a 30 year period. Brown notes what happened during this period, the years from 1860 to 1890:

During that time the culture and civilization of the American Indian was destroyed, and out of that time came virtually all the great myths of the American West--tales of fur traders, mountain men, steamboat pilots, goldseekers, gamblers, gunmen, cavalrymen, cowboys, harlots, missionaries, schoolmarms. homesteaders. Only occasionally was the voice of an Indian heard, and then more often than not it was recorded by the pen of a white man (Brown xvii).

Brown brings to life the Indian voices that have for too long been ignored. Those voices tell a story of a minority on the frontier preyed upon by the growing white majority. The Indians had started out being the majority in the New World, but by the time of this book they were the minority, a minority that had been pushed steadily back as the frontier moved further and further west. In the course of this push west, the whites destroyed not only the Indians but the land, and the Indians in this book are portrayed as the first ecologically minded people. They see themselves as living in harmony with nature, while the intruders live to rape nature and to take her resources for their own use without giving anything back. The Indians see themselves as fighting back at these aggressors and as trying to protect their land from these ruinous intruders. Brown notes the relationships among the various Indian tribes of the West before the coming of the white man and the various leaders who would come to the fore during the 30 years covered by this book:

During the following thirty years these leaders and many more would enter into hist...

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Treatment of American Indians. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 21:57, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682920.html