Native Americans: Images in Popular Culture
Starting with the earliest contact between Europeans and American Indians, Europeans viewed native people through cultural blinders that often confused them about the realities of Native American life. Images of other peoples and places can play a dominant role in affecting how two (or more) societies interact, and decisions made on the basis of ethnocentric imagery usually lead to confusion, misunderstanding, and war between peoples. European views of Indians in early America rarely reflected the nuanced reality of life for native populations. Indigenous peoples came to symbolize many things for Europeans, depending on the background and motivations of the person discussing them, although popular conceptions of Indians followed a particular historical progression as Euro-American people experienced more contact with Indians. Indians were often portrayed in a negative light, although by the time of the American Revolution, if not before, some Europeans living in North America also began borrowing elements of what they considered Indian culture. For many Euro-Americans, Indians also came to symbolize America as a land different from Europe and the Euro-American populace sometimes portrayed themselves with Indian symbols to distinguish themselves from Europeans.
Initial Conceptions
The English adopted the term Indian from the Spanish to generically describe the native inhabitants of North America, even though Indian people almost never used such a collective term, instead preferring the actual tribal or community designation of an individual.
