Native Americans (Indians) had territory, whaled, hunted animals to extinction, had wars, and overall had a negative effect on their environment (AFAIU).
Yet for a long time there was this idea put around that they were tree-huggers who lived at peace with nature till the White Man came along and shot up Eden.
Where did this come from?
For a long time? The idea is still commonplace today. I would go so far as to say that it is the prevalent view of Indians.
Noble savages, maybe. At least some of them. Hippies? Not remotely similar in my mind, although Navajos and Hopis have an attitude toward competitive activities similar to the hippie ethic.
I don’t recall ever seeing any Native Americans at the 37 Grateful Dead concerts I was at.
You just didn’t see them. Those Noble Savage types are masters of stealth, you know.
Something that doesn’t get talked about very much is that the image of Indians in the movies started to change in the 1950s.
True, the images of Indians were all over the place earlier in the century, but for the most part Indians were either generic bad guys who existed solely to give cowboys something to shoot or inferior grunting sidekicks, who might have been as nice as Tonto, but who had no history or culture of their own.
Fifties’ movies slowly bought into the idea that their was something more to Indians than savages who scalped people. I think this was part of the larger image change forced by WWII as a reaction to Nazi inferiority theories. Also, there weren’t really any Indians around to make demands to integrate, like those pesky Negroes. They were a safe minority to praise.
Westerns were the dominant type of dramatic tv in the 50s, which slowed down the change, because 50s tv was incredibly retro. It brought back vaudeville, for Pete’s sakes. By the end of the 60s, though, westerns were almost finished as popular programming. The tiny number of super-hard-core hippies, the ones the press loved to write about although they were in no way representative, had a vision of pre-corporate America that included living off the land and being one with it and the universe. This seemed to accord with Native American religions and presumed practices. Hippies weren’t big on research and the Dope wasn’t around. The backlash against Indians as scalpers hit at just the right time to turn them into ecological symbols. They cried at pollution and littering [YouTube link].
It was just as false as the previous version but a heck of a lot nicer and more useful politically.
The years since have seen Indians trying to regain public awareness of their true histories, cultures, and diversities. But that’s too much like school. Much easier to tag them with one simple identifier.
Right. The one thing a Native American absolutely cannot be is a human being. No, they are symbols. They can be savages, bogeymen, sidekicks, souls to be saved, proto-hippies, victims, or whatever. But the important thing about them is what function they serve in white people’s psychology.
Blame Chief Seattle. Or not…
The OP *asked *about the symbolic use of Native Americans. Of course it’s bullshit.
The crying Indian commercial may have affected public perception.
Oh hell, guys, this idea goes back to before the United States.
The “noble savage” concept dates back to at least the early seventeenth century, and possibly before. From the moment Europeans started encountering Amerindian people, you had folks who thought of Amerindians are subhuman, and you also had folks who used them as a symbol of people who weren’t like the evil bastards who lived in Europe.
The precise nature of the noble savage has changed over time, but it’s always been an imaginary person/society that doesn’t have whatever nasty habits Western society is alleged to have at the time. So today, it’s that they don’t wreck the environment.
The irony is, the crying Indian was a fake. Iron Eyes Cody was an Italian that made a good living playing Indians.
The actual speech, so far as it was recorded about thirty years later, was, briefly paraphrased:
The original version of the speech as recorded is actually a lot better than the 1970s tv version (and certainly better than my brief summary), and worth reading.
Name one large land mammal the natives hunted to extinction.
Mind you, your basic point is right. Amerinds were perfectly capable of hunting to excess and waste. Some tribes faiths did seem to go along with the “freind of the earth” idea, but that seems to be more of an exception, not a rule.
False (wiki): "*There is a controversy about a speech by Si’ahl concerning the concession of native lands to the settlers.
Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed,[8] but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Si’ahl gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers. Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.[3]
Si’ahl then rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook jargon, and a third person translated that into English.
Some years later, Dr. Henry A. Smith wrote down an English version of the speech, based on Smith’s notes. It was a flowery text in which Si’ahl purportedly thanked the white people for their generosity, demanded that any treaty guarantee access to Native burial grounds, and made a contrast between the God of the white people and that of his own. Smith noted that he had recorded “…but a fragment of his [Sealth’s] speech”. Recent scholarship questions the authenticity of Smith’s supposed translation."*
Let me repeat that "No one alive today knows what he said…" However, the translated speech- even given doubts as to the translators skill- is not anything close to what is posted here.
I always linked it, as TriPolar and the Chief Seattle thing has, to the environmentalism movement of the, what, late 60’s and 70s? Perhaps NA’s were epitomized as “proof” man could live in harmony with nature, a phrase, which IIRC was thrown around quite a bit at the time. The Noble Savage archetype must certainly bear heavily on that phenomenon also. Just my opinion.
I find it a bit ironic that in later years NA’s have complained of non-NA woo-woo types performing ceremonies or whatnot around NA sites, and then we have such examples as the use of sweat lodges in self-actualization retreats, as in the deaths that were in the news recently.
You should hear my history professor fiance lecture about the torture methods they used. Wow.
I recall reading the Buffalo herds were thinning before the Europeans arrived. I’m not sure if they were near extinction. But, the thinning herds were responsible for wars between tribes. The Europeans made the situation a hundred times worse.
Not quite a fake- he married a native American, lived his life as a Indian, adopted Indian children, and was honored by the Native American community. In fact, I had heard one tribe “adopted” him, which could make him legally a Native American. (“Native American” is the only ethnic lable which has a legal defintion under uS Law, but each Tribe may decide who is or is not a Member. Some Tribe’s laws allow for adoptions or marrying into a tribe as being a “legal Tribe member”)
I used the translated Smith speech as a template for my paraphrase. I think I got all the highlights…Seattle wants peace, US President promises protection, different gods, white god hates Indians, American expansion wiping out Indians, death common legacy of mankind, demand that they be allowed to visit burial grounds, land haunted by Duwamish ghosts, treat the Duwamish fairly or the ghosts will take revenge.
You didn’t think that what I quoted was the actual translation of the speech, right? I mean, I did make clear that I was paraphrasing.
Some paleontologists believe the mammoth (or possibly mastodon, sorry about my memory) was hunted to extinction. I attended a talk by a professor using data from Michigan to show that the extinction there was not natural. I agree that the topic is “hotly” debated as all the popsci reports have it.