Indigenous Nations of the Plains

IV - Why did white Americans Hate the Indigenous Peoples? [We Argue]

When you read Source A, it is difficult for us to understand the venom and hatred shown by a women who was an abolitionist and feminist.  Behind the white American hatred of the Indigenous People undoubtedly lay the racism and supremacism of Manifest Destiny (see below), but layered on top of that were cultural and behavioural differences which made accommodation, as it turned out, impossible:

1. Way of Life
   1. The nomadic hunting life, with its simple homes, leisure crafts and sports seemed to white Americans to 'belong to the very lowest ages of human existence.  Squalid and conceited, proud and worthless, lazy and lousy'. 
   2. The teepees were 'too full of smoke... and inconceivably filthy'.
2. Environment
   1. They could not accept the Indigenous preparedness to accept their environment and to adapt to it.  Greely, seeing Indigenous people 'sitting around the doors of their lodges at the height of the hunting season ...  I could not help saying: "These people must die out - God has given this earth to those who will subdue and cultivate it'. 
   2. White Americans felt that only THEY could make full use of the land.
3. Attitude towards the land
   1. The wašíču was a cultivator not a hunter; he actually wanted a fixed settlement - and he didn't want Indigenous people travelling across it. 
   2. He believed that God had given him the right to 'subdue the earth' (Genesis 1 verse 28). 
   3. He was profit-oriented: he wanted the land to make money.  He believed he could sell the land.  To him, ownership, cultivation and fences were natural. 
   4. He had given the Plains to the Indigenous Nations because he thought it was 'a land wholly unfit for cultivation' - but when he wanted it he thought he had a right to take it. 
   5. Compare the Indigenous attitude to the land to ALL the above.
4. Religion
   1. To Christian preachers it seemed that "the Indians have no religion, only ignorant superstition". 
   2. Indigenous rules on marriage, polygamy, divorce and exposure offended Christian morality.
5. Government
   1. The loose government of the Indigenous Peoples, based on 'influence' was incomprehensible to white Americans, whose government was based on laws and compulsion.  He could not understand how Indigenous government allowed bands to ignore it.  He claimed that the Indigenous Nations were 'without government', or that they had 'peculiar and eccentric ideas on the subject of government'. 
   2. He despised horse stealing, which was the aim of Indigenous warfare.  'Depriving a man of his hoss could mean life itself on the Plains'.
6. Understanding
1. Most white opposed the Indigenous Peoples because they were ignorant of their way of life - they had never met and Indigenous person.  In consequence they feared and distrusted them, or despised them as an inferior race. 
2. White Americans could believe anything (e.g.  torture, deceit, evil) of a people they knew nothing about.
7. Enemies and War
   1. Ambush and stealth (the Indigenous way of war) seemed to white Americans to be treachery and cowardice: 'there is ONE instance of a fair stand-up fight'. 
   2. Scalping seemed barbaric. 
   3. The Indigenous warrior's desire to save his life seemed like 'a total lack of courage'
   4. Also, as the two sides fought against each other, attitudes hardened and hatred grew.  White Americans WOULD NOT accept that there was ANY good in any Indigenous person. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

BBC Bitesize on White Americans' attitudes towards the Indigenous Peoples

Dr.  Chris Mato Nunpa on Christianity and the Native American Genocide