Were American Indians and African Americans Passive Victims of Exploitation or Did They Resist - Essay Example

Question: On balance, were American Indians and African Americans passive victims of annihilation and/or exploitation or did they actively resist? Thesis? In accordance to Howard zinn, The American Indians and African Indians at some point resisted the harsh condition imposed to them by the white such conditions include taking their land (American Indians did not like how they were displaced from their ancestral land), cruelty, hard labour for the Africans who worked as slaves and also breaking of treaties with the American Indian nations but at some point the Indians grew weaker and couldn’t resist anymore. 1. In most of the instances the slaves led resistance and rebellion. This is seen when the blacks started to unite themselves in order to fight their freedom from the claws of slavery and also the Indians did not welcome the white in their land. 2. They were exploited in a very cruel manner at some point killed because they were defenceless and naïve. “Violence had escalated on the frontier before the rebellion. Some Doeg Indians took a few hogs to redress a debt, and whites, retrieving the hogs, murdered two Indians. The Doegs then sent out a war party to kill a white herdsman, after which a white militia company killed twenty-four Indians. This led to a series of Indian raids, with the Indians, outnumbered, turning to guerrilla warfare.” (38) “The resistance included stealing property, sabotage and slowness, killing overseers and masters, burning down plantation buildings, running away. Even the accommodation "breathed a critical spirit and disguised subversive actions." Most of this resistance, Genovese stresses, fell short of organized insurrection, but its significance for masters and slaves was enormous.” (Roll, Jordan 158) “Several witnesses said thousands of blacks were implicated in one way or another. Blacks had made about 250 pike heads and bayonets and over three hundred daggers, But the plan was betrayed, and thirty-five blacks, including Vesey, were hanged. The trial record itself, published in Charleston, was ordered destroyed soon after publication, as too dangerous for slaves to see.” (Herbert Aptheker, 157) “The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys." The Indians attempts to defend themselves failed.” (Zinn,8) “The white invaders seized land and stock, forced Indians to sign leases, heat up Indians who protested, sold alcohol to weaken resistance, killed frame which Indians needed for food. But to put all the blame on white mobs, Rogin says, would be to ignore "the essential roles played by planter interests and government policy decisions." Food shortages, whiskey, and military attacks began a process of tribal disintegration. Violence by Indians upon other Indians increased.”(123) “Then they were packed aboard the slave ships, in spaces not much bigger than coffins, chained together in the dark, wet slime of the ships bottom, choking in the stench of their own excrement. Documents of the time describe the conditions”(28) 3. Eventually the American Indians surrender because they had no choice left but to remain exploited by the whites because they were tired of fighting and also lack of medical attention,shelter,food and they were outnumbered. “The army would now force it to migrate west. Fewer than a hundred Creeks had been involved in the "war,1 but a thousand had fled into the woods, afraid of white reprisals. An army of eleven thousand was sent after them. The Creeks did not resist, no shots were fired, and they surrendered. Those Creeks presumed by the army to be rebels or sympathizers were assembled, the men manacled and chained together to inarch westward under military guard, their women and children trailing after them.”(131) “Without enough support to hold out against the white troops, with his men starving, hunted, pursued across the Mississippi, Black Hawk raised the white flag. The American commander later explained: "As we neared them they raised a white flag and endeavoured to decoy us”(120) CONCLUSION: It is broadly seen that the African Americans and Indian Americans were exploited and lived their lives through suffering and pain brought by the Spanish, the French, Portuguese and English. It then led to resistance that increased the loss of property and surrender that brought slavery among the native. 1. In some way the Indians got themselves into the capitalism way of life when they acquired land and abide by the Americans state laws and rights. They even welcomed Christianity. 2.The Africans mixed with the Indians thus creating mixed Indian black communities mostly in the Seminole villages. This changed their ways of living. A civilization also grew among the Africans as they had to adapt to their new environment. 3.The Indians were forced to comply with the laws of the white although they followed strictly the laws of their fathers.ie not to leave their ancestral land making the Indians to divide from each other. The Spaniards also led to the decline of Aztec civilization. “It granted Indians individual ownership of land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out-introducing the competition and conniving that marked the spirit of Western capitalism.”(pg. 118) “The proper tactic had now been found. The Indians would not be "forced" to go West. But if they chose to stay they would have to abide by state laws, which destroyed their tribal and personal rights and made them subject to endless harassment and invasion by white settlers coveting their land.”(page 122) “Now, surrounded by white society, all this began to change. The Cherokees even started to emulate the slave society around them: they owned more than a thousand slaves. They were beginning; to resemble that civilization the white men spoke about, making what Van Every calls "a stupendous effort" to win the good will of Americans. They even welcomed missionaries and Christianity.”(126) “Another Seminole provocation: escaped black slaves took refuge in Seminole villages. Some Seminoles bought or captured black slaves, but their form of slavery was more like African slavery than cotton plantation slavery. The slaves often lived in their own villages, their children often became free, there was much intermarriage between Indians and blacks, and soon there were mixed Indian-black villages-all of which aroused southern slave-owners who saw this as a lure to their own slaves seeking freedom”(page 118) “We have pioneered civilization here; we have built up your country; we have worked in your fields, and garnered your harvests, for two hundred and fifty years!”(184) “Laws to extend the states rule over the Indians in their territory. These laws did away with the tribe as a legal unit, outlawed tribal meetings, took away the chiefs powers, made the Indians subject to militia duty and state taxes, but denied them the right to vote, to bring suits, or to testify in court. Indian territory was divided up, to be distributed by state lottery. Whites were encouraged to settle on Indian land.”(122) “When their cavalcade of murder was over they were in Mexico City, Montezuma was dead, and the Aztec civilization, shattered, was in the hands of the Spaniards.”(13) Question 2. Apart from physical and homicidal abuses by the dominant culture, in what ways were American Indians and African Americans victims of cultural suppression (or even cultural genocide)? Conclusion: The Indian Americans and Africans had their heritage but due to mixing they got new ideas from the whites and also from themselves and came up with a different custom that united all the races and made them one but still their original culture still remained in some instances. Read More