Journal #14 Sarah Winnemucca: Native Americans Are Just Like You!

QUOTE:

“Our children are very carefully taught to be good. Their parents tell them stories, traditions of old times…We are taught to love everybody. We don’t need to be taught to love our fathers and mothers” (Winnemucca 507).


SUMMARY:

In this chapter, Winnemucca describes the domestic and social morals of her tribe. The Piutes are very similar to Europeans (and basically everyone) in the way they raise their children, they just use different language to teach the same lessons.


RESPONSE:

While I was reading this chapter, I kept thinking to myself, “Well, duh!” Of course the Native Americans teach their children about the origins of humans, to love their parents, and to be good. However, after our class discussion, I realize that Winnemucca is most likely setting up her readers/listeners (listeners if she was giving this chapter as a speech) to view her tribe with more empathy. If she could get a sympathetic reaction towards the Piutes, it would be much easier for Winnemucca to then hit the audience with how “shameful” their Christian nation acts.

It’s pretty hard for me to stereotype any nation or race, but I guess I can understand how most of the Europeans coming to the West had a stereotypical idea of how Native Americans live. When I try to look at the history of this country from a completely objective point of view, I only rationalize the behavior of the white people by thinking that maybe the Europeans were too terrified to accept the Native Americans and their culture. A part of me doubts that this was always the case though. I tend to look at the whole situation as the Europeans taking advantage of very generous people, and then making themselves feel better by oversimplifying the nature of all Native Americans.

Without focusing so much on how this country was stolen and sold, it’s really cool to read how Winnemucca was dedicated to educating people about her culture. It would have been great if more people were affected, or if there weren’t as many people trying to take advantage of the “free” land. I think if the Europeans weren’t trying to get as much as they could out of the land for free, everyone would have been able to coexist.