Indians – U.S. to 1877

October 22, 2013

Westward Expansion

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In his writings, Turner talks about the frontier and its gradual expansion westward. I find this aspect of American history to be very interesting. It is fascinating to look at how the American’s at the time went about claiming new land. Turner mentions how the frontier was the “meeting point between savagery and civilization.” (Turner) This is very important because it shows how little they new of the land beyond the frontier, and how there were still “savages” there that needed to be conquered. In the years leading up to 1800, the newly formed government was focused on many things: making sure it didn’t collapse, the XYZ affair, pirate wars, and eventually the election of 1800 and all that Jefferson’s presidency would bring. The government was not focused on the native peoples west of the border. It seems while historians focus so intently on the formation of the nation that there is not much to be said about the frontiersmen until the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791. The frontier was not a safe place to live because as America stretched farther and farther west, the Indian’s land was once again being encroached upon. Wilentz devotes a portion of Chapter 5 to talk about the expropriation of Indian land. William Henry Harrison was a major character in the buying of Indian land. He completed the Greenville Treaty with nearly a dozen tribes which gave the US land rights to southern Indiana, most of Illinois and parts of Wisconsin and Missouri for “two and a half cents or less per acre.” (72) While they were buying this land from the natives, they were taking complete advantage of them and buying it for far less than its worth. Most natives were not happy, “‘The white people…,’ one Shawnee chief complained, ‘destroyed all that God had given us for our support'” (72) While the frontier was a means of expansion and “a steady movement from the influence of Europe” (Turner), the government did not care how detrimental of an action it was from the Indian’ point of view.

AJBeane spends a good amount of time talking about how Europe influenced the westward expansion of the United States and many of the points they make are quite pertinent to my post. They raise the point that what America really wanted at this time was to form their own identity and not be associated with Britain or Europe in any way. Americans didn’t want to be known as coming from German heritage or French or any other European nation, they wanted to be their own entity and by expanding westward they were happy to be moving farther away from Europe and its stretching, global influence.

September 25, 2013

Witchcraft Effected More than just the Colonists

While the recent blog posts make a compelling argument for the comparison of how the rise of evangelicalism influenced the witch-hunt trials in the years to come; a comparison I find more interesting is the fear of witchcraft between both the colonists and the Indians.

Witchcraft was something that took many of the colonists, mainly those in New England, by storm. The accusations and persecutions of those believed to be witches occurred significantly in the late seventeenth century. Fear led to accusations of any behavior that was remotely out of the ordinary and this led to a period where the colonists’ lives were consumed by the idea of witches that ran rampant. Yet, were the colonists the only ones affected by the idea of witchcraft?
After this week’s reading I felt compelled to write about a various aspect that stems from the collection of essays on American witch trials. Something that struck me was the undeniable similarity between the colonists’ and Indians’ beliefs in witchcraft. Although this may have not been a central argument to the essay it was definitely something that intrigued me and I felt the need to address it. Not only was it a matter of just believing in the presence of witchcraft but the certain reasons to believe in it and how certain accusations were carried out.

For so long the common conception was that the natives and the colonists were so very different. In fact, the colonists went as far as to call the Indians “savages” based on their lifestyles that varied from those of the colonists. Yet one thing that the colonists shared with these “savages” was their belief and fear of witchcraft. This concept or idea pertains to the essay titled American Indians, Witchcraft, and Witch-hunting. In this it is seen how the Indians, most specifically the Iroquois tribe, feared witches and often associated sickness with witchcraft. This is a practice that is carried out by the colonists as seen in the various other essays. Much of the time when someone would die of a simple cold or various illness the colonists were quick to blame witches and their practice of witchcraft. Much of this blame was due in part to the fact that during this time medicine was not very advanced and when a random death would occur the colonists didn’t know how to diagnose it other than it was an act of witchcraft.

Therefore, the colonists and Indians shared this fear of witchcraft and it was a big part of their lives for a short period of time where fears escalated as the popularity of this idea grew. This similarity between the colonists and the Indians is one among others and leaves me wondering how similar were these “savages” and colonists?

September 18, 2013

Bounty Hunting in the Chesapeake and Carolinas

In this week’s reading on the Chesapeake Colonies and the Carolinas, Taylor eloquently portrays a colonial image of agriculture and slavery. These colonies or rather areas at the time were founded right when slavery was beginning to take flight and become a prominent institution in the Southern part of the Atlantic seaboard. The Chesapeake colonies had a cash crop, which was the very profitable tobacco while the Carolinas found a cash crop of their own in rice and indigo. These very profitable cash crops in both colonies took many extensive methods for growing and extracting the final product for sale and thus proved to be very laborious activities.
First and foremost, I took a strong liking to the fact that Taylor talked about the rice market in the Carolinas with such detail as he did. Being a North Carolinian myself I never knew to what extent rice had on Carolina’s economic development and prosperity. As I mentioned before both of these chapters seemed to portray an image of colonial hardships or rather the grunt and grind of hard work. I feel the way Taylor emphasized this idea was with his choice of titles for each section. Taylor’s creative titles caught my attention upon reading the chapters and this interest was further expanded when it was introduced in our class discussion. An interesting point that Sarah Funderburg mentions in her post on September 16, was that the colonists looked to pit the Indians and African slaves against one another.
This idea of using the Indians to hunt the runaway slaves for bounty that Sarah brings up was part of the colonists search for security for they feared what could happen to them if the slaves and Indians formed an alliance against them. One thing Taylor does well is his use of detail with American history, rather than rewriting the typical formalities or the black and white of history; Taylor includes aspects such as this in order to better inform the reader. Therefore, I feel that his spin on the titles, most notably the ones in the chapter on the Carolinas such as Raiders and Terror, put some emphasis on the actions of the Indians. This emphasis on the Indians takes away from the stereotypical historical depiction of the white man coming over and wiping out everything in his path. These titles and details seem to put more blame on the Indians for some of the violence that took place in these colonies during this time.
Taylor provides us with an account of American history and specifically of the Chesapeake colonies and the Carolinas that is different from most accounts. Taylor touches on areas that many historians tend to go into short detail about or simply neglect altogether; and these chapters are another example of Taylor giving careful attention to the events that took place in the Chesapeake colonies and Carolinas.