Page 88 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

CHAPTER Two

Indian was Karl May, widely known fo r his 1892 novel W i nnetou. May
deplored the f a ct that Indians had not been given adequate time to evolve
from hunter to f a rmer to city dweller. Instead, May argued, Indians were
expected to make a great leap. When unable to do so, they were killed
off by whites. "What could the race have achieved given a chance?"
he asked. I25
Meanwhile, sympathetic observers challenged the widespread use of
the term savage to describe Native Americans. This objection was not
new.As early as the I790S, Louis Philippe of France said that he preferred
to call natives "Indians" rather than "savages." He did not believe "that
these people merit that epithet in any way."I26 Subsequently, others sug­
gested that white settlers deserved the term savage more than Indians.
Half-civilized and brutal in their actions toward American Indians, they
were often considered less desirable acquaintances than "the genuine
uncontaminated Indian." I27
T o their credit, some Europeans were so outraged by the degrada­
tion and destruction of America's native peoples that they fe lt compelled
to lay the blame f o r it on someone. Arguing that Indians were basically
good, Chateaubriand put the responsibility on white Europeans and
Americans fo r debasing and destroying Indian cultures and societies.
According to him, "the right of f o rce took independence" f r om
America's original inhabitants. 128 Pulszky also condemned Anglo-Saxons
fo r being great colonizers but ineffective civilizers, who swept native
races away in their settlement process. I29 Others indicted arrogant
American fr ontier people fo r decimating "unhappy savages" and driving
the remnants across the land. I3 0 Still others blamed the U.S. government
f o r the harm done to American Indians by its unenlightened policies. I3I
These apologists were in the minority , however, and the fe eling that
whites were accountable f o r the plight of the American Indian was f a r
from unanimous.Von Raumer charged that the Indians themselves were
at f a ult. Their own idleness, he said, had made their assimilation into an
industrious white society impossible. He added that their claim to land
simply because they hunted on it was invalid. I32 In 8 37, English observer
1
Francis Grund supported von Raumer on both counts. Since they
possessed little in the way of tradition or moral character, Indians could
never be civilized. Because they had not cultivated the land, they had no

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