Native American Assimilation: A battle between Opinions

   The United States has a history of wanting its visitors to become more like its people.  Italians, Germans, Chinese, and Mexicans immigrants all have the same thing in common when it comes to reaching the U.S. These people can’t help but to change their “traditional” ways and Americanize their lives. Whether or not that is a good thing can be argued; but what happens when the great superpower of the world forces you to become like them? What if they told you that you could die if you don’t give up your home? What if they said that your ways of living and culture which you grew up on is a “savage” way of life?  These words were a daily reference to the Indians and there ways of living, and it was a very real situation during the mid 19^th century and early 20^th century.

  

  Ironically, the first people to demand Assimilation were the people that lived closest to them, the so called: “friends of the Indians.” They apparently were disgusted by the ways the Native Americans would handle things and affairs. For example, the fact that all the Indians shared the same piece of land among other things. So what did these “friends “do? They complained, complained and complained. These people told everyone how much they didn’t like Indian culture and how they should adapt to their own way of life. And what happens when you start saying mean things about someone for a long time? People start to believe it, and this is exactly what happened. People, which may or may have not seen the Indian way of life, started to believe and passed around bad sayings about them. Now this was pretty harmless, until the protestant church got to hear this, that when the true force for assimilation started. Many Protestants believed that changing their religion to Christianity would civilize them, so the missionaries started doing what they do best, change other people’s religion. During this time the Protestant church had a lot influence over the government during this time, mainly because President Grant was a protestant, so it was no surprise that the church got the government involved leading to all the treaties, the  policies and mostly, the rip offs.

   

  Now a mayor argument between many people is that whether or not the Whites really have the rights to force assimilation to the Indians. Some people believe that they were correct in being so forceful by wanting assimilation. Others, however, believe that the Whites were too cruel and had an ethnocentric attitude during this time. Honestly, one can look at both sides of the spectrum and see the reasoning for their opinions but at the same time you can see some faults. I personally believe that the Whites were being unfair, with all these faulty treaties and policies, but that’s just politics. The United States always had a mindset in which any action would see benefits for themselves, no matter how generous it would seem at the time. And I am almost certain that it was the same for the Indians. But that is no excuse for the unacceptable behavior they excised during this time. Besides when go right down to it, the Native American were first and the whites were the immigrants.

   

  Life for the Indians was not a very pleasant one as you can imagine. Most of them were forced to change their ways or die try to life how they thought was the best they could. The worst of these cases was the youth, children growing up in broad schools and not really knowing what was good or bad for them. These children had to cut their hair, because it was usually long, change their names, and basically live life as a white person. But were they treated as such? Of course they were not, they seen as a savage who looks like them, talks like them, but is not really a white person. The worst part of it is that these “hybrid” Indians were seen as traitors to other Indians. So they were respected by neither the people they were trying to hide nor the people they were trying to become. So you can imagine that it was hard for these to accept their life by what it really was and it kind of made me wonder. Were those the real benefits of being assimilated into White American culture?

  
  Although the attempts of assimilation have stopped, the effects are still visible to this very day, years after those times. The Indians are still trapped up in reservations and I believe that the government still owes the Indian a great amount of money. Are the Indians holding a grudge? Are the Whites ripping off the Indians yet again, like they have years before? Who knows? Only time and politics will tell. But until then, it does not seem like much is going to change.