Books about Indians in Literature - Essay Example

Apess and Seattle Both William Apess and Chief Seattle were known as powerful orators during the 19th century. Both speaking from a Native American standpoint and both speaking about the plight of the Native Americans in the wake of the increasing spread of white people, each of these men had similar concerns at heart at the time they made their more famous speeches. One of the common characteristics of each of these men’s speeches is the use of rhetorical questions asked throughout. In each case, the speaker used rhetorical questions to focus attention upon the point being made, whether it was the treatment of the Indians by the white men argued by Apess or the cultural differences that existed between the Indians and the white men illustrated by Seattle.

However, there were also some significant differences in the ways in which these men addressed their concerns. While Apess sought to point out the various ways in which Native Americans and white men were alike, including an appeal to a common religion in the form of Christianity, Seattle struggled to illustrate the differences, insisting that Indians and white men could never live together in peace on the same land because the differences in their religions was too vast. While Apess expressed hope in a future of some kind for the Indian in America, including the possibility of intermarriage and equal rights, Seattle expressed an almost doomed outlook upon all of the tribes in general, predicting only a ‘few moons’ or so before the entire race disappeared from the continent in favor of the white man.

While Apess argued that the use of reservations, throwing Indians together haphazardly and without benefit of white man’s education, was unjust and dangerous, Seattle indicated that this practice was the only true way of protecting the Indian as well as the white man from an unhealthy influence upon each other. Finally, Apess spoke directly against specific acts and other legislation being passed while Seattle spoke in favor of the same. The major themes found in the poetry of John Rollin Ridge echoes some of the major concerns of his day in his plea for the American Indian to assimilate into the white culture as a means of surviving into the new world.

In poems such as “The Atlantic Cable”, he celebrates the advances of science and technology in bringing the world closer together, illustrating the inevitable result of the world becoming a single race of men all striving toward the same goals as they become linked not by land but by the technological advances made. This is obvious in lines such as “Then, sea-divided nations nearer came, / Stood face to face, spake each the other’s name, / In friendship grew, and learned the truth sublime, / That Man is Man in every age and clime.

” His fervent hope at the end of the poem is simply that all instruments of war turn to rust and ruin while men of all races and nations live together in harmony. This concept is taken a step further in his poem “The Stolen White Girl” in which the horror story of the Indian man stealing a white woman away from her people is illustrated as a love story of deep mutual affection rather than a crime. “Though he stole her away from the land of the whites, / Pursuit is in vain, for her bosom delights / In the love that she bears the dark-eyed, the proud, / Whose glance is like starlight beneath a night-cloud.

” Even as the poet wishes the couple the eternal happiness they have found in the forest together, he echoes the words of other major Native American speakers in addressing the concept of intermarriages. Through his poetry, he indicates marriages of mutual respect and devotion are possible, obtainable, respectful and can be equally full of love and devotion when they occur between two people of different tribes, regardless of whether they be two tribes of Native Americans or the tribe generally classified as Indian and the tribe of the white man.