Journal #13 Sarah Winnemucca: The Settlers Believe In Manifest Destiny!

QUOTE:

“[S]he said to my mother: ‘Let us bury our girls, or we shall all be killed and eaten up.” So they went to work and buried us, and told us if we heard any noise not to cry out, for if we did they would surely kill us and eat us” (505 Winnemucca).


SUMMARY:

The Piutes have heard about the Donner Party, who had to resort to cannibalism after being stuck in a storm, so they are terrified that their girls will be eaten. Since Sarah is too frightened to run, her mother buries her and her sister alive.


RESPONSE:

It’s ironic how the Piutes are frightened by savage, cannibalistic white people, since Native Americans are the ones who are supposed to be the “savages.” Throughout Life Among the Piutes, the theme of “mistaken identity” seems to come up as a main cause for the problems between settlers and Native Americans. However, the skewed views each group of people has for the other, causes the Native Americans to end up worse off. Native Americans such as Winnemucca’s grandfather were ready to welcome the white settlers, but that view was obviously not shared, and entire nations of indigenous people were displaced.

Maybe if these Native Americans were actually more ferocious, they wouldn’t have been defeated so easily. They were so ready to accept the settlers, but possibly because of certain tribes who were in fact hostile to the people trying to take their land, the white people were already expecting the worst from Native Americans. However, I do have a feeling that the settlers would have still kicked out the Native American tribes, even if it were completely obvious how kind and helpful they were, because the settlers believed in Manifest Destiny: that they had every right to possess all of North America.

This just would not fly nowadays, even though in a way it reminds me of when (for example) certain political figures think that they can go into any country and start changing things. It seems really tough to stay on track and accomplish anything when clashing cultures come into contact. That's usually why one culture is completely phased out, or becomes more of a subculture.