The Indians : Old West

Beskrivning:

Who were the Indians of the Old West? Everyone knows them - the hawk-faced men with braided hair and war feathers, their copper skin stretched over high cheekbones, their expressions penetrating and fearless. The tribal names are familiar too: Comanche, Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, and others - all resonant of fierce valour, calling up images of painted horsemen with lances and bows. These tribes and their warriors dwelt on the Great Plains. To most whites they represented the model of all Western Indians the men trained from birth to hunt and fight, measuring manhood by their boldness in battle; the women raised to sustain the warriors, sharing in celebrations of victory or slashing their bodies in moments of grief.
For some tribes these images were true, but only partly true. For the Western Indians as a whole they were only the most visible and spectacular manifestations of a broader, more complex story. From the Mississippi to the Great Basin on the far side of the Rockies lived more than 30 distinct tribes, each with its own language and way of life. Some were nomadic hunters who followed the buffalo. Some were primarily farmers who tended peach orchards or raised corn and melons in the fertile river valleys. Some were pirates of the plains, who raided other tribes for horses, corn and tobacco. The Indians' realm was culturally diverse, but the far-flung villages were connected by a network of trails over which flowed such goods as Pacific seashells in exchange for deerskins.
All of these Indians, whether they were warriors or farmers, shared a common destiny - to be forced aside by the white man. By the middle of the 19th Century they were being pushed from their lands by white farmers, miners, cattlemen and the U.S. Cavalry.
The outcome of the confrontation with the whites was never really in doubt. Although they won some key battles, including one as late as 1876, the Indians were too few, too fragmented and too poorly armed to fend off the waves of intruders. In 1840, before the onslaught had fairly begun, no more than 300,000 Indians roamed the West. Although their battle was hopeless, pride and defiance shone in their faces and rang in their words. As Kiowa Chief White Bear said in 1867, "I do not want to settle down in houses you would build for us. I love to roam over the wild prairie. There I am free and happy." Nine years later White Bear committed suicide in a prison hospital.

Indianer Amerika Antropologi