The irony in,"Life among the Piutes".

Gustavo Quintero
English 48B
February 14, 2008
Journal #21 Winnemucca


Quote:
"You call my people bloodseeking. My people did not seek to kill them, nor did they steal their horses,-no,no,far from it.During the winter my people helped them"(Winnemucca 504).


Summary:
Winnemucca is defending her people by showing how the whites are the "savages", not the Native Americans.


Response:
The irony behind the above quote is that the real savages are the white people themselves, not the Native Americans. When the European's came and saw the way the Native American communities lives and ate they titled them all savages or beasts. The Europeans could not have been more grosely wrong. The Native Americans were the much more civilized of the were societies. They knew how to plant and harvest their land, they knew how to hunt efficiently and their general hgeine was of a much higher standard. The European's are the real savages because they never bathed, enslaved people and killed and ran the Native Americans off their land. This irony that Winnemucca brings up helps sway the public opinion because it shows just how brutal and barbaric the Europeans were compared to the Native Americans. I just find it hard to believe that the Native Americans would have to defend themselves against such ugly name calling.A lot of times, especially in the winter,if the Native American's had not taken care of the Whites than many of them would have perished. The whites would have perished because they did not know how to work the land or how to build shelters in the cold enviroment. This helps to shape the public's opinion by pointing out who the real "savage" was. Although I do think that it took the public a long time to accept this new view of the Native American.