Native Americans in the United States Summary

Westward Expansion and Indian Culture It has long been argued that the process of western expansion helped form the American character. Such arguments hold that white Americans were hardened and stren... Read more

In the following essay, Hamilton presents an overview of fictional representations of Native Americans by Anglo writers. The problem in this research is to identify the changing attitudes of American ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Kroeber examines the idea of “writing Indians” in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper and John Rollin Ridge. Writing Indians What I have called the ethnologica... Read more

In the following essay, Jaskoski compares Native American accounts of the smallpox epidemic in the Great Lakes region to Francis Parkman's version of events. I Histories of North America have l... Read more

In the following essay, Frost examines Thoreau's romantic notion of Native Americans and the inevitable disappointment he felt when confronted with actual Indians who could not live up to his e... Read more

In the following essay, Howell discusses the attitude of William Gilmore Simms, the preeminent Southern writer of his time, toward the American Indian and compares it to that of James Fenimore Cooper.... Read more

In the following essay, Murphy contends that although Simms's treatment of the Indian in his short story “Lucas de Ayllon” focuses primarily on physical characteristics, it should... Read more

In the following essay, Byers discusses how Helen Hunt Jackson took the factual information from her report on the Mission Indians of California and fashioned it into the novel Ramona. In 1881 Helen H... Read more

In the following essay, Barnett provides an overview of Indian Hater fiction and discusses the conventions associated with the genre. I Pre-Civil War frontier fiction is predominantly concerned with t... Read more

In the following essay, Matterson discusses Melville's use of the Indian Hater character, claiming that Melville considered him a central figure in American attitudes toward Native Americans an... Read more

In the following essay, Gilmore suggests that Native Americans were represented in nineteenth-century museums as masculine and unsubmissive—which corresponds to Henry David Thoreau's myt... Read more

In the past, Native Americans have been victims of unjust actions by the United States government many times. Most of these actions were caused because of the United States government forcing the Nati... Read more

The cultures of the Northwest had a very unique way of developing an economic system and perspective on the attainment of personal wealth. Not much different from anywhere else, history has seen the e... Read more

Government policy toward Native Americans altered in several ways between the years of 1775 and 1825. The United States government gave false respect to the Native American policy. The government tol... Read more

Music is an important part of the Indian life. They use music in almost every activity from funerals, to babysitting, to weddings, it helps to control the weather, it is used in storytelling, it is u... Read more