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Getting To the Core Of Assimilation

The Native Americans Journey into a New White Mans World

By Leighann Marsh

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Professor Mary Jayne Davis English 2010 February 24, 2014

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It is a cold morning and getting water from the creek seemed like a wearisome task as the air burned his lungs from the crisp dew. The boy is admiring the sunrise coming to greet him and his village, a rumble is heard across the range, what is the sound he is hearing? Could it be buffalo this time of year and so early? He runs to tell his father but sees the entire village is standing outside their tepees with the knowledge that something more than buffalo are on their way. Many white men on horses with bright clothing and large bright banners flying in the air are coming towards the boys village and the Great Spirit inside them all says this is danger coming to their village, they can do nothing, even as their warriors prepare to defend, they are vastly outnumbered.
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Chaos and fear permeates the village as they are rounded up like the cattle in the white mans world. With no understanding their houses are ransacked and the entire village is herded off, White mans greed for more has the prerogative of taking the lands that these Native Americans have known as home for as long as the sky is blue and indoctrinating them into their religious systems. Along with this greed comes a sense of needing to change these savages to be more white-like, and the children are taken by force or trickery to Indian Boarding schools in hopes to assimilate the Native Americans to become more like the white man they are learning to despise.

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For some of these children their spirits are weakened and the forcible cultural genocide begins with the white mans taunts, while others fight to keep whatever way of life they knew alive, in secret and in a place the white man could not always touch or break and that was in their minds. Like an apple, the core is white while the outside skin is red, this appearance can never change and no matter how much someone tries an apple will always be an apple same as an Native American will always look Native American no matter what is forced on to them, therefore equality will never be reached no matter what they are taught (Indian Country Diaries, online).

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The book Lakota Woman depicts this view and referrers to these children as Apple Children in Mary Crow Dogs view she sees the

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children as red on the outside, white on the inside, unable to assimilate into either culture, loss of their cultural identity and cast into a world they were not accustom to by harsh treatment verbally and physically, the loss of life as young or old would be inevitable. Native Americans were simple, not in the sense that the white man saw but in the fact that they worshipped all forms of the earth, not looking at it as a means to get rich like the white man had so heartedly possessed but to protect and nourish the environment in which they lived (Mary Crow Dog 1991, online). Chief Smoholla of the Wanapun tribe illustrated this by the words he spoke in 1885: You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my mothers bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone! Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it, and be rich like white men! But how dare I cut off my mothers hair? (Chief Smoholla, online). Image 5 To ask these individuals to not be who they are and take away what is and was most sacred to them was a blasphemy among everything the white man held dear

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to their own hearts. Not seeing that by trying to change an entire culture into what they felt was right and proper was no more being a hypocrite in why the white man came to North America in the first place, to get away from tyranny in their own country, to be free to pursue ones own freedom of religions and not be persecuted for their own views and traditions. To reflect back to the boy at the beginning of this story, what became of him, his family and to the possible family he would have for his own? Was he like Samuel Cloud that recalled the loss of not only his father but his mother as well on the horrifying walk of Trail of Tears, where the legend is told of the Cherokee rose that is Georgias state flower and came about from all the tears shed on that horrific walk. Did this boy go on to a boarding school and lose his identity forever or did he remain strong and stayed true to his culture and in a way avenge the death of his parents? This boy etched in our minds will forever be of wonder and in the unknown, the same as the reasoning behind the white mans need to change a beautiful people into something they could never achieve and that is to become white (AngelFire, online). Many Native American people lost more than just their culture, many still to this day struggle with whom they are as a person, unable to fit in even on their own reservations because the ability to assimilate back to their own culture has vanished and caused them to be more of an outsider. The past has stripped

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something that Native Americans hold dear, language, language has significant meaning to different tribes, people in the Navajo tribes have a creation story in which it is said to have been thought than spoken in to existence, first boy and girl are metaphors for thought and speech and as the words were formed the world was built. The death of these tribal languages has been devastating to ceremonies as well, ceremonies that are no longer performed because the loss of the key component to the story which is the language it was told in. As tribes try to regain any type of culture many in the white mans world feel this to be a threat and continue to try and put their white thumb on them to hold the Native Americans in their proper place as they see it. This seems old fashion or something that happened long ago but this still continues in our world today, to get to the core of this situation it is important to take a stand and not allow for others to stifle cultures that seem strange to them, embrace new knowledge, embrace new love and embrace the idea that being white doesnt guarantee a passage to heaven, but an acceptance of all things living.
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Bibliography
Dog, Mary Crow, and Richard Erdoes. Lakota Woman. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. Print. "History." PBS. Indian Country Diaries. PBS, n.d. http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/boarding2.html. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. "Native American Genocide." The Espresso Stalinist. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. http://espressostalinist.com/genocide/native-american-genocide/. The Trail of Tears: The memories of Samuel Cloud who was nine years old at the time of the Cherokee removal; told by his great-great grandson. http://www.angelfire.com/ny4/HOMEPAGE/writings/tearsmemory.html. (Web, Feb. 20, 2014).

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Image Glossary
Alchin, Linda. Native American Warrior Shield. N.d. Photograph. N.p. Apple Skull. 2010. Photograph. Paris. Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 1879. Photograph. Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Cherokee Rose Stamp. N.d. Photograph. Postal Services, Georgia. Dog, Mary C. Lakota Woman Book. 2009. Photograph. N.p. "Native American Voices 3rd Edition." Native American Voices 3rd Edition by Lobo. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014. Sharpe, Sharon. River Tipi Camp. N.d. Photograph. Eatonville, WA.