Major American Writers has been much more interesting in these first two weeks than I would ever have thought. I like the historical aspect of the class and how we’ve been focusing on what “really” happened when Europeans discovered America. Specifically, I enjoy the two pieces we read about the Native Americans’ experiences with the Europeans. The Momaday and James’ pieces do a phenomenal job of illustrating the Native American experience among the new settlers. A recurring theme I have taken from the stories is that the Europeans have caused the Native Americans to have a poor image of them. This is mainly due to the Europeans considering the “new world” as an uninhabited place in which they were entitled to settle. The Native Americans felt invaded and soon their way of life would be changed dramatically. Nomaday speaks specifically about an instance where a Native American shoots a white man through the heart. The problem, however, was not that the Native American felt under attack, but that the white man did not know his language. In the James piece, he is speaking about how the white man has done things that cannot be taken back. These two pieces have changed my perception of how the United States came to be. While I love my country dearly, I do wish that we incorporated the Native American ways of life into the development of the U.S. At the very least this would have been a more humane way to deal with the Native Americans.
