Ideas of the American Indian in Twain, Harte and Yellow Bird - Report Example

Ideas of the American Indian in Twain, Harte and Yellow Bird The ideas we have of the old west are frequently based upon the images we received on television and the general impressions of the ‘official’ written accounts. These images have traditionally linked the American Indian with concepts of murdering savages, with little to no concept of true culture, art or human dignity. The revised version that has been presented in more recent years has attempted to make up for some of the false impressions that have been long-established, painting the American Indian as a lost hero of the plains, a sympathetic character with a centuries old culture that has been lost through the savage murdering agenda of the colonizing white man. Somewhere between these two extremes lies the truth of the American Indian – sometimes savage, sometimes brutal, sometimes deeply spiritual and cultural, sometimes more humane than any white man ever dreamed. To get an idea of the true vision of the American Indian when they still roamed freely upon the plains, it is helpful to look at some of the accounts that have been written with little to no concern for the ‘official’ language of academia. Some of these voices can be found in the works of Mark Twain, Bret Harte and John Rollin Ridge, also known as Yellow Bird. Looking at Roughing It by Mark Twain, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta by John Rollin Ridge and “The Luck of Roaring Camp” by Bret Harte, it can be seen that the American Indian had the same fierce reputation we’ve gained from 1950s movies and television, but the experience of the American Indian first-hand presented a very different image. In Roughing It, Mark Twain writes about his adventures in the far west. It is written in a strong vernacular style that retains much of his cutting humor and allows space for tangents and characteristic tall-tales interspersed among the narrative. Necessarily, Twain came into contact with, or heard stories about, the American Indians, frequently calling into question the assumptions being made. By carefully reading his text, it is possible to see a sympathetic treatment of the Indians that acknowledges their ruthless reputation yet presents the fallacies as such. For example, bringing up the story of the ‘Meadows Massacre’, Twain manages to include a strongly cynical tone when he says “We were told, for instance, that the dreadful ‘Meadows Massacre’ was the work of the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried to fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told, likewise, that the Indians were to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we were told, likewise, and just as positively, that the Mormons were almost if not wholly and completely responsible for that most treacherous and pitiless butchery” (120). In presenting the case this way, Twain immediately draws a question on whether or not the Indians committed the crime, primarily through his flippant remark about the Gentiles while weighting the probability that the Mormons were to blame through the more violent language he associates with them. As the very next statement indicates the courts found the Mormons to blame, this interpretation is proved correct. A similar presentation occurs earlier in the novel when Twain and his companions are traveling through hostile Indian country. He describes the nervous way in which they travel, with curtains buttoned down and weapons at the ready, but when they are attacked, it is at night and no one gets a clear look at the attackers. As they “lay there in the dark, listening to each other’s story of how he first felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselves upon us … And we theorized, too, but there was never a theory that would account for our driver’s voice being out there, nor yet account for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were Indians” (60). It turns out that the attackers were outlaws, not Indians. However, the idea that the men in the coach never created a theory of the night attackers that did not include Indians when the truth was it had been a band of outlaws again illustrates the dual image of the American Indian, both savage and wrongfully accused. This same sort of dual image of the Indian, at once savage and brutal as well as misunderstood and misused, appears in John Ridge’s fictional story of Joaquin Murieta. Ridge himself speaks from the Indian perspective, having been born Yellow Bird and experienced violence first-hand from an early age. However, the story he tells is of a Mexican-Californian bandit. Within this tale, he indicates that the Indians of one of the more remote regions in which his anti-hero hides find employment stealing horses for the band. However savage this might seem to the white men who were robbed, Ridge presents it as more of a business arrangement, “a laudable purpose, and so efficiently did these simple people render their assistance that the rancheros of that region loaded the very air with their curses of the ‘naked devils,’ who tormented them to such an intolerable degree” (26). By labeling them ‘simple’, Ridge indicates that they had been deceived into helping the band, believing they were working for a good, humanitarian cause. This idea of the Indians working more as employees of the band is then supported by the further description of a failed raid in which a Mexican bandit is acknowledged to have been the leader. “This tall Mexican was, without a doubt, a member of Joaquin’s band, who had led the Indians in that very unsuccessful thieving expedition” (27). The Indian’s reputation as a brutal race is further acknowledged as well as disputed by the description of the condition of many of the skeletons found in the region. “The ignorant Indians suffered for many a deed which had been perpetrated by civilized hands. It will be recollected … how many were found dead, supposed to have been killed by the Indians, and yet bearing upon their bodies the marks of knives and bullets quite as frequently as arrows” (27). While Ridge is explaining that much of the brutality associated with the Indians is improperly credited, he also acknowledges, by the equality of corpses marked by ‘civilized’ weapons as those marked by arrows, that the Indians could be fierce when incited. Bret Harte presents the dual concept of the Indian in a slightly different manner. Rather than focusing on the brutality of the race, in his short story “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” Harte compares the base nature of the Indian as epitomized in his characterization of Cherokee Sal with the beautiful and magical effects of Tommy Luck. The story opens with Cherokee Sal in labor, a woman alone in a camp full of rough miners, “perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman” (1). Even for one of her alluded occupation, Cherokee Sal is determined to be of a particularly vile nature, somehow less redeemable than others of her profession while the men she conducted business described only with difficulty as well: “The term ‘roughs’ applied to them was a distinction rather than a definition” (2). This is not only illustrated in her typical clientele and the fact that she is the only woman remaining in the camp presumably because of its extreme unwholesomeness, but also in the lack of any form of sympathy the struggling mother experiences as she suffers a difficult delivery. By contrast, her infant son, deprived of his mother at birth, is given an even wilder nature in the fact that he is sustained on ass’s milk and raised by the rough men of the camp, yet is depicted as a sweet child who brought about tremendous change for the better. The camp almost immediately banded together to provide for the child not only materially, but attempted to reform as a means of caring for his soul. “Almost imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to Tommy Luck – or ‘The Luck’ as he was more frequently called – first showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and white-washed. Then it was boarded, clothed and papered” (8). The rest of the camp soon followed suit, cleaning up exteriors as well as interiors, within their structures and within their persons. In the more civilizing changes that Tommy Luck brings about in the camp, Harte seems to be suggesting that the American Indian was not so much an uncivilized beast, but rather a natural wonder that was naturally a civilizing being but that could easily fall to lower means. Within these three novels, then, it becomes clear that the American Indian has retained a dual persona from its earliest days. While reports continued to filter back describing the horrible atrocities committed by these peoples, those who wrote from the perspective of first-hand experiences describe a stronger sensitivity and understanding of the American Indian that did not quickly translate to television and film. These images portray the Indian as a formidable fighter and protector when incited and capable of committing base acts when offered little other choice, but also as misunderstood and purposely erroneously maligned. In each story, instances in which the American Indian is either completely misunderstood or is demonstrated as being naturally beneficial to society outweigh the instances in which they are associated with negative actions. This indicates that the lived experience of the Indian was much different from the reported and generally accepted version of the angry savages of the wilderness. Works Cited Harte, Bret. “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” The Works of Bret Harte. New York: Black’s Readers Service Company, 1932. Ridge, John Rollin. The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955. Twain, Mark. Roughing It. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1817. Read More