American Indian Culture and Research Journal

We are all prisoners of culture. Marston Bates noted: ”The outstanding peculiarity of man is the great control of custom, of culture, over behavior.”’ Small wonder that we are forced to judge people from other cultures by our own cultural standards. Western Civilization, in its twentieth-century form, prides itself on toleration. It has become, in effect, intolerant of intolerance. How then, can we accept the observations of sixteenth-century Europeans as they met, interacted with, and sometimes conquered the Indian peoples of North America? Western Civilization, in its sixteenth-century form, did not pride itself on toleration. Sectarian violence typified the century as Protestant battled Catholic and all Christians on the Continent were forced to confront a mighty invasion by the Islamic Turks. Historians had tended to be critical of sixteenth-century Europeans because they did not accept or fully appreciate North American cultures. William Graves reported that, “Ethnocentric European pride prejudiced his perceptions of other people. The ’uncivilized’ Red man . . . was a ‘barbarian’ and a ‘savage‘ both terms implying a moral judgment of culture and cultural status.” Gary B. Nash and James Axtell believe that European reaction to Indian cultures was somewhat more complex. Nash put forth the notion that Europeans quickly developed ”a split image of the natives of North America.” One stereotype portrayed Indians as noble and ”gentle people.’’ The other image “cast him as a savage, hostile, beastlike animal.” In the case of the English, James Axtell has implied that practical matters dictated which image would triumph. The Indians ”were noble as well as ignoble, depending on English needs and circumstance." Robert F. Berkhofer urges students of history to reject all European evaluations of Native Americans. ”Whether evaluated as noble or ignoble, whether seen as exotic or degraded, the Indian as an image was always alien to the white.”