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Erin Orr

English / History

Cooper 6 / Whipple 7

May 22, 2017

One Outcome For Every Battle: Good Luck

Early in the year, we began learning about Native Americans, a central topic for our

studies this year. We began by learning basic background through our summer United

States History assignment, which required us to take notes on early history, essentially

Native Americans before colonization and during the early colonial times, and analyze

writings from or based on this time period. We also completed learning targets, or key

concepts, which were specific questions for each time period that allowed us to go in

depth on topics. The first few eras were based on the pre-colonial and early colonial

times, allowing us to go in greater depth on relations and conflicts between Natives and

Europeans. These conflicts had great effect on Native American lifestyles. American

wars led to weakened relations between natives and colonists and weakened culture

among the Natives. The relations were weakened through the loss of trust in and the

greed of Europeans. The wars weakened the culture by causing the Natives to adopt

European culture through acculturation, but also strengthened their culture by causing

them to defend it.

American wars weakened relations through loss of trust, and European greed. In

US History, we completed a project known as the Dakota-Uprising Mini Project, in

which we read and analyzed up to 13 pieces of work, creating a caption card for each,

with which, we would put them together and create a museum exhibit. This project
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allowed us to not only practice analysis of documents, but also analyze multiple

perspectives and sides of a situation and conflict. Through this, we found out the causes

and effects of the Dakota War. The war was caused by selfishness of settlers when they

no longer obeyed their prior agreement. This conflict was caused by the loss of trust in

Europeans and anger towards them, causing retaliation. The conflict caused bonds to be

broken between Natives and the Europeans. Also, in English, we watched The Mission, a

movie of Spanish Jesuit priests and their attempted relation and conversion of South

American Natives. While Father Gabriel takes steps to convert the Guanan, the local

Native tribe, a Spanish mercenary begins kidnapping and selling Natives as a source of

labor. Throughout the movie, the viewer sees the perspective of those who defend Native

people and those who fight against them. From this movie, I learned of greed being a

contributing factor to conflict among Natives and settlers and how these conflicts can

cause relationships to be weakened though the lack of trust in some, while gaining trust

and support from others. Finally, in US History, we wrote a Long Essay Question (LEQ)

in response to the prompt Evaluate the ways in which cultural interaction, cooperation

and competition and/or conflict between American Indians and European colonists

shaped relations in two of the following regions between 1500 and 1700 (the regions

being New England, Chesapeake, New Spain/Spanish Southwest and New France). This

allowed me to use prior knowledge to write a paper supporting my claim that Englands

relationships started out friendly due to trade, but soured due to greed and Frances

relations developed due to their respect for the Natives and their lack in desire to change

their lifestyles. This provides a perspective showing how American Indian-European

relations changed overtime. Through this I learned that Native Americans and European
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relations werent always tense for all members of European groups, showing that

disagreements brought conflict, leading to war.

American wars also weakened Native culture through lack in cultural

dominance. In English, we completed an Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) project in which

we, as a group of three students, created a question centered around Native Americans

and researched a developed an answer, then we had to come up with a creative piece to

inform an intended audience. My group developed the question of How do Native

Americans balance mainstream American culture with their traditional culture? with our

intended audience being UT students. Once researching the answer, we created a video

and visited UT campus, talking to people about and hanging up QR codes linking to it.

This allowed us to go deeper into Native Americans and the effect American culture has

had on them. Then, while in New Mexico, I attended a Navajo class at Thajiilee, a

Native American school. In this class we were able to see the third graders from the class

we were with introduce themselves and their clans in their Native tongue. The teacher

that was there normally taught higher levels of Navajo, allowing us to get insight on more

of the process as a whole. This allowed us to gain better perspective on the process of

cultural preservation of language. She told us about how they begin teaching them at a

young age that way by the time theyre graduating high school they will have sufficient

knowledge of the language. Through both of these projects I learned how difficult it is

for Natives to preserve their culture and more specifically, language, with European as

the dominant culture. Society makes it hard for Natives to keep up their traditional

culture off the reservation and in American community. Similarly, in Spanish class, we

completed an essay on immigration and the hardships faced by those minorities on their
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journey and once they arrive. This is similar to Native conflicts because both are

minority groups that face hardships due to societal struggles. Both groups have or have

had rough relations with Americans due to their lack in cultural dominance leading to loss

of culture.

While conflict does make it harder for Natives to keep their cultural and values, it

can also lead to them defending their culture, allowing them to better retain it. While in

New Mexico, we had a float trip down the Rio Grande, where a local Native informed us

of their history, society and lifestyle. Our guide was named Crystal from the Namb

Pueblo. One thing she said that I found extremely interesting was about the Pueblo

Revolt. The Pueblo Revolt was a revolt by Natives against the Spanish conquistadors.

This revolt caused the conquistadors to be pushed out of New Mexico until they returned

years later. Crystal said that without that revolt, their tribe and culture wouldnt still be in

existence to this day. This conflict allowed the Natives to retain their culture for a little

while longer allowing it to strengthen giving the culture a greater chance of survival.

This year I have learned a lot about Native Americans and how American wars

have affected them. Both relations and culture of these usually are weakened by the

conflict brought about by these wars. Acculturation favored the American culture, but

many modern day American Indians still strive to maintain their culture. Wars, while

causing increasing tensions and lessening culture are the reason our culture is like it is

today and although there are still conflicts with Native Americans, many of them

appeared accepting and happy with modern Americans and their society.
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Works Cited

The Mission. Directed by Roland Joff, performances by Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons.

Warner Bros., 1986.