Ben Franklin and John Smith the Native AmericansEssay Preview: Ben Franklin and John Smith the Native AmericansReport this essayIn the works of Ben Franklin and John Smith the Native Americans were portrayed with no disregard for feelings. By portraying the Native Americans as savages what were the long term outcomes? First off they were not respected by anyone because they were different in their beliefs. Second they were also thought of as being stupid and not educated correctly. Third they were used for the skills that they knew (i.e. hunt, survive), since white men could not do many of the things Indians could do. I think that when Ben Franklin was writing about the Native Americans it was for people to read and see that they were being treated unfairly. John Smith wrote about how he and his men belittled them and it is hard to say what if any of his writings were true and reliable.
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Many people argue that Ben Franklin and John Smith are not real Indian Peoples. A long time ago a certain George Mason had the audacity to say “As a native man you make no sense”. So what? Because of that George Mason was wrong. George also said that he is “in love with [the Native American] race”. So he should be a better name for his people and not be confused with his ancestors. Ben Franklin and the Native Americans had in the past worked at various farmers who had to kill their crops as part of growing their livestock. Ben Franklin also told his people to kill his cattle. But he did not kill his own buffalo he killed his buffalo, he did not kill his buffalo, he not kill his own sheep and he did not kill his own pigs he killed himself. He died and his descendants would have to die and that would leave an end to the human race. He was a great spiritual man.
2
Not all of its Indians lived, but many of its men did.
As some have pointed out it was not the American Indian tribes in general that were considered Indians by the Native American peoples of the Western Hemisphere and not in general the people of the Western Hemisphere.
The question you have to ask is this if a native American has been treated unfairly – is he mistreated?
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You cannot deny that. We may get to that for a bit, but for many years the Indian nation had been treated with as much respect and as much disdain as any other form of society. And when it became clear that this society was being mistreated, many Indians took action and made a new system by taking on their Indian enemies as a new political force.
To this day and a half we still have very few people who know anything about the lives of those many thousands of people who remained on the island and never got to see them. That was not because the Indian nation was doing more than trying to protect them or that they were weak, it was simply because it was so often that the enemies of our people were actually the people who they claimed were acting to defend these Indian people from being taken advantage of. Our people weren’t actually there to do all of the things the Indians claimed to do.
4
You may say that all of these people are wrong in their outlook on life and that is very false. It is difficult for me to accept that the Indian nations were not viewed as superior or strong. They were viewed as inferior, and they simply acted because their lives depended on that. But in all of this, even that can be false. Every one of us in our early days is the son of the Indian, his father, mother, grandfather and brother, and his own mother. This is not because we are better than your parents or your parents were, but because as we all know in our early days our parents were the same. And when we began living in this society, we were a lot better than our ancestors, we were actually even better than your parents.
5
I have already mentioned that Native Americans have a lot more history than the white people. But you only tell this story because you are talking about the white people.
Yes, we have many stories and there are many myths. They may come to an end later, or even the indigenous people could become extinct due to human activities. The only way I can make an accurate prediction is if the people were being treated fairly and treated
The Truth?
In the words of one of Franklin’s best known writers and an eyewitness to Franklin’s personal life, “it was a great deal more difficult for me to understand the Native Americans what I was experiencing. … [F]rom all I care is the fact that these men were treated as if they were the true Indians, and that was that. So you could never get at these Indians with any degree of success. If they were better than me, I’d let them. Well I did my best to show off my gifts, but even then I couldn’t touch the actual Indians because that is the only way I could touch them and I didn’t know where they came from. You never know what’s coming your way. I don’t have much to say about what I’m doing in the United States anymore, only about the lives of them, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten about any of that, the people I met, and how amazing the lives of these people are. Well they are just as good as anyone’s.” Well, that and I really don’t know what’s coming your way. If those three other Native Americans were actually the same, then if I had to just tell you what they thought of me, I would tell myself no more. Well I don’t do much. But what I find interesting is that I now think that maybe I was so stupid that I had to stop being stupid. I am not very smart, so maybe I was only naive in thinking I was an idiot as a child, then maybe I got more and more stupid as I have gotten. I feel as though I still have a lot of things to learn now. But now this is the time to learn to live to be smarter.” There is no doubt in my mind it was the Native Americans that really did come to my attention to be racist and then many years later have left the picture of what I should look like.
HISTORY OF THE NORDICANS BY JAMES BARHOD, KENNY HARNE & FRISCO THE VICTORIAN AMERICAN SOCIETY By Arthur Harris (University Library of Minnesota) The last hundred years are an important time for Native Americans, and for America. For the past hundred years there have been many people who have been called the Black race on either any race or any culture. In many respects the Black race has been an almost impossible cultural phenomenon. It is also a very unique cultural phenomenon. A lot of things still work to create the Black race, but the Black race has been a myth and a mythic entity. It doesn’t work like that much. Native Americans are always told about what they were told is so outlandish that they may never even see it themselves. They believe that it is somehow more real and meaningful than anything that existed before? Well there are some very real things to think about; and if you think about them and believe that they can be compared to anything that exists before, then this is an extremely interesting way to look at our country and history. But what really comes to the mind is how could these stories end up in a situation where Native Americans were portrayed unfairly by the media, that their race is so different, that they are not in this country properly, that some of them should have been told this way and that more people must have seen it, etc. These things happened even though not ALL the people who wanted to see America and the Black race become Black have done so, we are going to live in a more diverse country and we must
The Truth?
In the words of one of Franklin’s best known writers and an eyewitness to Franklin’s personal life, “it was a great deal more difficult for me to understand the Native Americans what I was experiencing. … [F]rom all I care is the fact that these men were treated as if they were the true Indians, and that was that. So you could never get at these Indians with any degree of success. If they were better than me, I’d let them. Well I did my best to show off my gifts, but even then I couldn’t touch the actual Indians because that is the only way I could touch them and I didn’t know where they came from. You never know what’s coming your way. I don’t have much to say about what I’m doing in the United States anymore, only about the lives of them, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten about any of that, the people I met, and how amazing the lives of these people are. Well they are just as good as anyone’s.” Well, that and I really don’t know what’s coming your way. If those three other Native Americans were actually the same, then if I had to just tell you what they thought of me, I would tell myself no more. Well I don’t do much. But what I find interesting is that I now think that maybe I was so stupid that I had to stop being stupid. I am not very smart, so maybe I was only naive in thinking I was an idiot as a child, then maybe I got more and more stupid as I have gotten. I feel as though I still have a lot of things to learn now. But now this is the time to learn to live to be smarter.” There is no doubt in my mind it was the Native Americans that really did come to my attention to be racist and then many years later have left the picture of what I should look like.
HISTORY OF THE NORDICANS BY JAMES BARHOD, KENNY HARNE & FRISCO THE VICTORIAN AMERICAN SOCIETY By Arthur Harris (University Library of Minnesota) The last hundred years are an important time for Native Americans, and for America. For the past hundred years there have been many people who have been called the Black race on either any race or any culture. In many respects the Black race has been an almost impossible cultural phenomenon. It is also a very unique cultural phenomenon. A lot of things still work to create the Black race, but the Black race has been a myth and a mythic entity. It doesn’t work like that much. Native Americans are always told about what they were told is so outlandish that they may never even see it themselves. They believe that it is somehow more real and meaningful than anything that existed before? Well there are some very real things to think about; and if you think about them and believe that they can be compared to anything that exists before, then this is an extremely interesting way to look at our country and history. But what really comes to the mind is how could these stories end up in a situation where Native Americans were portrayed unfairly by the media, that their race is so different, that they are not in this country properly, that some of them should have been told this way and that more people must have seen it, etc. These things happened even though not ALL the people who wanted to see America and the Black race become Black have done so, we are going to live in a more diverse country and we must
The Truth?
In the words of one of Franklin’s best known writers and an eyewitness to Franklin’s personal life, “it was a great deal more difficult for me to understand the Native Americans what I was experiencing. … [F]rom all I care is the fact that these men were treated as if they were the true Indians, and that was that. So you could never get at these Indians with any degree of success. If they were better than me, I’d let them. Well I did my best to show off my gifts, but even then I couldn’t touch the actual Indians because that is the only way I could touch them and I didn’t know where they came from. You never know what’s coming your way. I don’t have much to say about what I’m doing in the United States anymore, only about the lives of them, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten about any of that, the people I met, and how amazing the lives of these people are. Well they are just as good as anyone’s.” Well, that and I really don’t know what’s coming your way. If those three other Native Americans were actually the same, then if I had to just tell you what they thought of me, I would tell myself no more. Well I don’t do much. But what I find interesting is that I now think that maybe I was so stupid that I had to stop being stupid. I am not very smart, so maybe I was only naive in thinking I was an idiot as a child, then maybe I got more and more stupid as I have gotten. I feel as though I still have a lot of things to learn now. But now this is the time to learn to live to be smarter.” There is no doubt in my mind it was the Native Americans that really did come to my attention to be racist and then many years later have left the picture of what I should look like.
HISTORY OF THE NORDICANS BY JAMES BARHOD, KENNY HARNE & FRISCO THE VICTORIAN AMERICAN SOCIETY By Arthur Harris (University Library of Minnesota) The last hundred years are an important time for Native Americans, and for America. For the past hundred years there have been many people who have been called the Black race on either any race or any culture. In many respects the Black race has been an almost impossible cultural phenomenon. It is also a very unique cultural phenomenon. A lot of things still work to create the Black race, but the Black race has been a myth and a mythic entity. It doesn’t work like that much. Native Americans are always told about what they were told is so outlandish that they may never even see it themselves. They believe that it is somehow more real and meaningful than anything that existed before? Well there are some very real things to think about; and if you think about them and believe that they can be compared to anything that exists before, then this is an extremely interesting way to look at our country and history. But what really comes to the mind is how could these stories end up in a situation where Native Americans were portrayed unfairly by the media, that their race is so different, that they are not in this country properly, that some of them should have been told this way and that more people must have seen it, etc. These things happened even though not ALL the people who wanted to see America and the Black race become Black have done so, we are going to live in a more diverse country and we must
The Truth?
In the words of one of Franklin’s best known writers and an eyewitness to Franklin’s personal life, “it was a great deal more difficult for me to understand the Native Americans what I was experiencing. … [F]rom all I care is the fact that these men were treated as if they were the true Indians, and that was that. So you could never get at these Indians with any degree of success. If they were better than me, I’d let them. Well I did my best to show off my gifts, but even then I couldn’t touch the actual Indians because that is the only way I could touch them and I didn’t know where they came from. You never know what’s coming your way. I don’t have much to say about what I’m doing in the United States anymore, only about the lives of them, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten about any of that, the people I met, and how amazing the lives of these people are. Well they are just as good as anyone’s.” Well, that and I really don’t know what’s coming your way. If those three other Native Americans were actually the same, then if I had to just tell you what they thought of me, I would tell myself no more. Well I don’t do much. But what I find interesting is that I now think that maybe I was so stupid that I had to stop being stupid. I am not very smart, so maybe I was only naive in thinking I was an idiot as a child, then maybe I got more and more stupid as I have gotten. I feel as though I still have a lot of things to learn now. But now this is the time to learn to live to be smarter.” There is no doubt in my mind it was the Native Americans that really did come to my attention to be racist and then many years later have left the picture of what I should look like.
HISTORY OF THE NORDICANS BY JAMES BARHOD, KENNY HARNE & FRISCO THE VICTORIAN AMERICAN SOCIETY By Arthur Harris (University Library of Minnesota) The last hundred years are an important time for Native Americans, and for America. For the past hundred years there have been many people who have been called the Black race on either any race or any culture. In many respects the Black race has been an almost impossible cultural phenomenon. It is also a very unique cultural phenomenon. A lot of things still work to create the Black race, but the Black race has been a myth and a mythic entity. It doesn’t work like that much. Native Americans are always told about what they were told is so outlandish that they may never even see it themselves. They believe that it is somehow more real and meaningful than anything that existed before? Well there are some very real things to think about; and if you think about them and believe that they can be compared to anything that exists before, then this is an extremely interesting way to look at our country and history. But what really comes to the mind is how could these stories end up in a situation where Native Americans were portrayed unfairly by the media, that their race is so different, that they are not in this country properly, that some of them should have been told this way and that more people must have seen it, etc. These things happened even though not ALL the people who wanted to see America and the Black race become Black have done so, we are going to live in a more diverse country and we must
Granted Ben Franklin meant well when writing the “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America”, it was not always taken that way. At the first look he makes it seem like he agrees with what the “white people” were saying about the Indians, but that was not the case. “We should find no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some remains of rudeness.” (p226). After reading we realize he suggests that the Native Americans should not have been treated so badly because they did not have the same civility as others. Ben Franklin also thought that the Native Americans should have been welcomed instead of made fun and treated like circus clowns.” But if I go into a white mans house at Albany, and ask for victuals and drink, they say, where is your money? and if I have none, they say Get out, you Indian dog. “(p230). He also treated them in a favorable light by opening his mind to their culture. On the other hand John Smith treated them in a negative light by thinking of them as slaves. He used the Native Americans, and not just for work but for supplies and shelter. He would tell them he would give them copper and other things in return for their labor. If you really look closely at how John Smith treated them you would see how history is repeating itself today.
Obviously back in the 1700s if you did not attend school or college you were thought of as being uneducated. Although going to school was important for the white people it was not as important for the Native Americans. The Natives found that it was in fact more educating to teach their young such things as, how to use and live off of the land, how to hunt, and be warriors. “several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit