When you think of Native Americans (Indians) you think of people who were savages, inimical, and barbaric that fought the “cowboys” in watching movies and television shows. While, some can argue about their way of life as being barbaric you cannot argue that they were badly mistreated and taken advantage of. I will be comparing and contrasting documents from Red Clouds and Flying Hawks Speech and Helen Hunt Jacksons “A Century of Dishonor.” These documents will show that at the time Native Americans weren’t treated equal. That not everyone had equal rights and that white settlers and government were greedy.
The documents have a lot of similarities: the major idea of both documents is that the Native American’s were mistreated, lied to and taken advantage of. The Native’s had their lands, way of living, beliefs, and property stripped from them. For example, Helen says that one of the Indian Affairs Superintendent stated, “so long as they are not citizens of the United States, their rights of property must remain insecure against invasion.” (Helen Jackson, pg2). Also, that the Indian Department was belie, they did little or nothing to help the natives and were basically nugatory. Another similarity is the time period. Red Cloud’s speech was in 1890 and Helen Jackson’s book was in 1881 with the exception of Flying Hawk whose speech was in 1936.Which shows that when all this was going on both parties had a strong opinion and were involved. Finally, they wrote these documents to tell their story, to share their feelings toward the situation and to share the wrong doings to Native Americans by the government and white settlers.
While the majority of the documents have the same ideas and topic, they have differences. Red Cloud and Flying Hawk were actually there and experienced the events. They were the Natives that were mistreated, and robbed of their lands and rights. They saw their families die of starvation and get murdered. Helen Jackson witnessed only what she saw or was told because she was a white woman. She never actually experienced what the Natives did like, murder of family members. Also, Red Cloud and Flying Hawk for most of the part spoke about a specific tragedy which was the Wounded Knee Massacre. Helen talks more about the government and how they are the ones who are lying by breaking promises, treating the Native Americans like there just animals with no sense of humanity.
These documents reveal that at the time Indians weren’t treated equal and that white settlers and government were selfish and greedy. The government wanted to expand and create profit and didn’t care who got in the way and they felt that the natives were peripheral. It shows how ignorant Americans were about cultural awareness. The Reservation Policy is an example of the government being hypocritical of the laws they were supposed to enforce. Under this policy the Natives would agree to live within a defined zone, in exchange Indian Affairs would provide guidance...
