Native Americans Gregory E. Dowd- Term Paper

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' The path however was now blocked by a symbol 'representing the White people.' Along the side of the chart were many 'Strokes' representing the vices brought by the Europeans. " (Kupperman 2000, 431)

This spiritual resistance was blended with a political form of resistance as well: for them to preserve their identity as a people, as God had ordained it, the Indians had to be purified of all the vices of the Europeans, among which the drinking of alcohol was most often blamed.

But, Dowd makes it clear that it was not only the vices as such that the Delaware people wanted to give up, they actually wanted to renounce any kind of exchange of goods with the British and to rely exclusively on their own means of subsistence and on their own knowledge about the world.

This fact once more emphasizes the notion that the resistance of the Native Americans was not only a spiritual one, but also one based on the preservation of their identity as a people:

Neolin not only drew a cosmographic distinction between Anglo- Americans and Indians he preached a rejection of the dependence on the British through the avoidance of trade, the elaboration of ritual, and the gradual (not the immediate) abandonment of European-made goods. " (Kupperman 2000, 431)

Thus, the rituals of purification that the Indians adopted to avoid the British ways, some of them very drastic, like the habit adopted by the Native inhabitants of Wakatomica, which consisted of the special ritual of the consumption of a certain herbal tea that induced vomiting, all point to the desperate measures that the Indians took to maintain and assert their identity through the preservation of specific Native lore and traditions. Gregory Dowd also emphasizes that the Indians' conviction that they form one people is what actually made resistance possible, especially during the wars, such as the Pontiac war of 1763:

The nativist conviction that Indians were one people under God, at least equal to, but quite different from the Anglo-Americans, had serious diplomatic consequences.

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It certainly provided a measure of unity during Pontiac's war, and it continued to influence Indians even beyond their defeat in that struggle. For militants who sought to oppose Anglo- American expansion with armed resistance it provided justification in their struggle against the leaders who cooperated with the British." (Kupperman 200, 434)

Therefore, the most important argument made by Dowd's study is that the nativist movement had as its principal support the Natives belief that they are one people, and their search for identity. Their identity as a people had also to have a spiritual underpinning, so as to find its proper justification. Dowd differs in his argument from other Native American books treating of the same subject in that he offers a more pertinent description of the actual ways of thinking of the Indians and of their motivations during their resistance.

The text draws upon many sources dating from that period, from either the colonizers or the Natives, and this helps to build up the argument of the book and to reveal the Indians' struggle for identity.

This search for identity is based on the revival of the Indians' ancient rituals and traditions, therefore, and on the idea that reform is to be achieved by "recapturing the sacred power," that is by going back to the specific Indian belief in myths and the power of the sacred.

Reference List

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Major Problems in American Colonial History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000….....

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