For High School students or teachers who wish to study certain perceptions that have remained unchanged in the imagination of the American People using two stories from different points in American History.

1. The Unchanging Perceptions of
Indigenous Peoples in America’s
Imagination
REBECCA ASHURST
16 APRIL 2018

2. In the almost 300 years between colonialization of
what would become the United States of America and
the entrance of the United States into World War II, the
perception of Indigenous peoples had (and still have)
some aspects that did not change. In this presentation
we will explore a few of these perceptions through the
lens of two stories on opposite ends of those 300 years.

3. Three Important Unchanging Perceptions
– Indigenous people are associated with savagery and violence.
– Their perceived savagery is partly based on their close relationship to nature and the wild.
– It is important in the eyes of non-indigenous people to maintain the separation between the
uncivilized (indigenous people) and civilized (non-indigenous people).

4. We will use these two stories to analyze how these
three perceptions have not changed:
THE SOVEREIGNTY AND GOODNESS OF GOD
BY MARY ROWLANDSON
A narrative published in 1682 and written by a Puritan
woman who was captured by indigenous people in
colonial New England
WEEDFLOWER
BY CYNTHIA KADOHATA
A fiction novel detailing the experience of a young
Japanese girl that was interned on a Native American
reservation during WWII

5. The Savagery of Indigenous Peoples
In The Sovereignty and Goodness of God:
• Mary Rowlandson considered herself and her fellow Christians as the civilized ones and referred
to her captors as, “black creatures,” and, “heathens” among other things
• Rowlandson considered their transience as evidence as their uncivility, saying, “so unstable and
like mad men they were.” She also made this obvious in telling her story by notating each
“remove.”

6. The Savagery of Indigenous Peoples
In Weedflower:
• In line with the stereotypes of the time, the main character is warned about the Indians that
are living on the reservation where the interment camp is located: “If they catch us, we’ll get
scalped.”
• One of the Japanese boys picks a fight with an Indian boy because the Indian boy had been
talking with a Japanese girl and the Japanese boy felt he had to protect the girl from the Indian
boy, suggesting that the Indian boy was savage and needed to be protected against.

7. Association of Indigenous People With
Nature and the Wild
In The Sovereign and Goodness of God:
• Rowlandson continually refers to her and her children’s location as being in the wilderness as if
it is the synonymous with living with their Indigenous captors.
• Rowlandson compared the Indians to bears, lions, and hungry wolves.

8. Association of Indigenous People With
Nature and the Wild
In Weedflower:
• Meaning to strike fear into the main character of the book, one of the other characters refers to
the Indians and says, “They’re everywhere,” as if the Indians are meant to be as feared as the
brutal and unknown undeveloped land outside of the camp.

9. Wanting of a Barrier Between the
Civilized and the Uncivilized
In The Sovereignty and Goodness of God:
• Rowlandson constantly is assuring the reader that, although she had to do things like eat food in
the ways that the indigenous people did in order to survive, she was still better than the Indians.
•Rowlandson referred to “Christian children,” but the children of the Indians she strictly referred
to as, “papooses.”

10. Wanting of a Barrier Between the
Civilized and the Uncivilized
In Weedflower:
• Native Americans, at the time in which the novel was set, had been sent to reservations in order
to separate them from the rest of society.

11. While there have been many changes in the years since
the colonial settling of the current United States of
America, Indigenous peoples have faced some of the
same perceptions.