American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION Stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs that attribute certain characteristics to a particular group. Persons who hold these beliefs tend to perceive others on the basis of their group membership or ethnic identity. “Personal” stereotypes are perceptions of individual traits (such as “lazy”) associated with membership in a particular group. “Cultural” stereotypes are beliefs about the way of life associated with the group as a whole (e.g., “migratory”). The stereotypes of American Indians that are held by non-Indians are deeply embedded in American history; these attitudes reflect an historically competitive relationship between Euro-Americans and American Indians. Stereotypes about American Indians have tended to be negative and self-serving. For example, in Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny, Segal and Stineback demonstrate how the Puritan view of Indians as a morally and spiritually inferior people living outside the domain of God and civilization served to justlfy the economic expansion of New England colonies and the expropriation of Indian lands. Further, Roy Pearce and, more recently, Robert Berkhofer have shown how notions of the Indian and the “savage” (whether viewed as noble or ignoble) were intellectual conveniences created by whites to map their own alleged superiority and progress. Even among American social scientists, crude evolutionary schemes and racial determinism were not rejected until the pioneering efforts of anthropologist Franz Boas and his program of cultural relativism pluralism in the early 1900s Berkhofer believes that the influence of the Boasian program has caused the racist and negative stereotypes held by non-Indians to give way in favor of more positive attitude. However, pockets of prejudice and ethnic racial stereotyping of American Indians still exist, particularly, Daniel Boxberger suggests, in areas where there is competition over economic resources.