reading and answering questions.

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Q1. Based on your reading of Richter’s Chapter 6, describe in detail how race came to be a defining element of American identity. For full credit, be sure to address Pontiac, Ohio Country, the Paxton Boys, and President Andrew Jackson.

According to Richter’s, when the British attempted to grasp eastern North America using the peace treaty signed in 1763, events began to turn bloody in the backcountry. The near-simultaneous rise of the nativist movement led by Pontiac of the Ohio Country and the barbarous attacks on Natives perpetrated by the Paxton Boys in Pennsylvania made 1763 a turning point in American history. From that moment on, Natives and colonists began increasingly to understand themselves as two fundamentally different groups of people (Richter, 2009). Eventually, this belief would crystallize in the doctrine of racial distinction hence the idea that the indigenous peoples of the Americas sprang from different origins than those of the Old World. More to the point, Richter’s argument traces President Andrew Jackson’s loathsome ethnic cleansing from the east to the Mississippi but does not follow this logic further by exploring what the indigenous peoples of modern-day Oklahoma and Kansas thought of the migrants who moved into their territory.

Q2. In the Epilogue, Richter explains that Native peoples were an integral part of the formation of the United States, but that the narrative of American identity required the removal of that reality. He offers a number of examples of “appropriation” – ways in which Native history was taken and used by White Americans. Choose at least two examples of this from the text to describe and explain, and then include at least one contemporary example of this “appropriation” in current American culture.

Richter offers various imaginative narrations of the American identity as it needed some removal of its reality. He presents the lives of seventeenth-century canonical figures such as the Virginia Algonquian Pocahontas which was prominently made famous by Captain John Smith. There was also the Mohawk Kateri who was described in details and made interesting to hear of by Pope John Paul II. Again, another appropriation made by Richter was that of the Wampanoag known to the English as “King Philip” who, as according to the traditional history, inspired the bloody war against Puritan New England (Richter, 2010). Richter convincingly argues that each of all of these sought cooperation rather than conflict, coexistence on shared regional patches of the ground rather than arms-length contact across distant frontiers. In the current American culture, individuals tend to appropriate the idea of making America great again by the administrative government of the present.

Q3. Based on the mini-lectures, who was Buffalo Bill? What were his background and experience?

Buffalo Bill Cody was one of the true legends of the American West. During his time, he was one of the most popular and well-known man alive. He was a huge celebrity was and still is vital due to his contributions at his time. He was responsible for the construction of the ideas and structures of the prominent Wild West. Besides, he carefully guarded and created the ways through which he was being portrayed in the vast number of distinctive images produced of him (Saad Al, 2019). He was born in 1846 and died in about 1917 where during his time, he was highly energetic and captivating individual where he served in various tasks such as being an actor, a writer, served as an army scout, pop culture hero, and a promoter.

Q4. Based on the mini-lectures, why did Buffalo Bill matter? What was his impact on thinking about the American West?

The most outstanding feature of Buffalo Bill Coby was the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World which had a lot of impact through the Wild West. Through a story presented during his show, it raised the concerns about wild, racially biased, and conquest. It had an effect on the culture throughout America to Europe which led the show to be marketed as a historical fact (Saad Al, 2019). Furthermore, he mixed fact and truths with fantasy to create interesting stories which he claimed were the real events by humans. It had a lot of impact with regard to the American West since the main theme of the show was the violence and brutality of native Americans, the victimization of wild immigrants, and the triumph of Euro-Americans over the native people.

References

Richter, D. K. (2009). Facing east from Indian country: a native history of early America. Harvard University Press.

Richter, D. K., & Merrell, J. H. (Eds.). (2010). Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600-1800. Penn State Press.

Saad Al, (2019). 2 1, Buffalo Bill, Part I 436. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/u3Bd7NhgdnY

Saad Al, (2019). 2 2, Buffalo Bill, Part I 436. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Yn2uY47pVtY