California Joe

"Ho, stranger!" called out one of the number.

But no reply came, and neither horse or rider moved.

"Stranger, who are you?"

Again was the call unanswered (California Joe).

Little is known about California Joe at this point, so little that the party of campers never even caught his name. Instead they gave him one – the “Forest Phantom”. This is a fantastic example of the classic Western character. He is alone and perhaps lonely, he talks little and when he does his words are effective and to the point, and most importantly his identity is very foggy, mysterious. He is an outlaw, not necessarily because of any past transgressions but because the law has no place for a man full of so much obscurity and void of any definable distinctiveness. Donning black clothes and riding a white horse it seems that even California Joe may be confused about his identity, existentially speaking.

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Frank Baum - Editorials about Native Americans

Baum is ruthless, unmerciful and crude. Referring to the Native American population he asks “Why not annihilation?” (sounds like this dead guy named Adolf). He reasons stating that “their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.” According to this logic every civilization in the history of man and present day should be eradicated. At some point do we not all experience fleeting glory and a broken spirit? As for being “miserable wretches” it seems a man with so much hate in his soul as to condemn an entire population is the most miserable wretch of all.

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Charlot - He Has Filled Graves With Our Bones

This article is especially powerful because it was written by an Indian chief named Charlot, or Bear Claw. Here Charlot is speaking directly to his people and by using potent syntax engages the listener (or reader). Charlot makes use of questions throughout his tirade forcing his audience to be active readers and form opinions about the issue which is the oppression of his people.

Using pure logic Charlot exposes how irrational the commands of payment, made by the white men, are. Payment “for the things we have from our God and our forefathers; for things he never owned, and never gave us”. He emphasizes the ridiculous nature of these demands by, again, using questions asking “What law or right is that?”

This is no right and certainly no law. This is brutish bullying far more savage than anything the white men accused the Indians of doing. So who is the true savage?

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Zitkala Sa - Impressions of an Indian Childhood

This is an amazing first person account of an Indian daughter and her relationship with her mother. The mother had lost many things in life, most importantly a spouse and a daughter, to the Europeans. Sa utilizes emotional language when the daughter describes her distraught mother whose “full arched lips were compressed into hard and bitter lines, and shadows fell under her black eyes”. Seeing this the daughter yells “I hate the paleface that makes my mother cry!”

Later on the daughter is provided with an opportunity to go to Europe with palefaced missionaries to be educated. This obviously creates trepidation in the heart of her mother. This would mean that the same race, the same people who devastated her life would take away her daughter.

The conflict exists between the daughters infatuation with ideas of “a country more beautiful than [hers]… and big red apples” (all of which the mother says are “white men’s lies”) and the mothers protective nature.

Missionaries came to persuade the mother. Their objective was to take her daughter away with them to the East. “Alas! They came, they saw, they conquered!”

At first the daughter was elated. However, as she left she “saw the lonely figure of [her] mother vanish in the distance” and “a sense of regret settled heavily upon [her]”. In the last line the daughter expresses her feelings – “I was as frightened and bewildered as the captured young of a wild creature”.

Maybe mother does know best.

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Helen Hunt Jackson - from 'A Century of Dishonor'

The Poncas had enough to deal with before the pale faces of Europe began to rape their land and their women. Constantly in conflict with the more powerful Sioux they were forced to relocate and join forces with the Mahas tribe. After this relationship was established the Poncas were estimated to be about 600 strong in 1829. After a relationship was established with white men, who brought with them “whisky and small-pox” their numbers fell to about 120. It seems the former rapport was much more advantageous.

George Catlin, an artist who visited the Poncas around 1832, gives a deep account of the chief that illustrates him as an intellectual leader of a civil nation rather than a savage director of a barbaric, feral population. Describing the chief “who was wrapped in a buffalo-robe” he uses imagery that provokes a comparison to kings wrapped in royal garb. With descriptive language like “noble” and “dignified” he civilizes the man. After humanizing this man, who at the time, was thought by most to be bestial, Catlin then depicts his suffering and the suffering of his tribe with great sympathy. Catlin cries out and declares the “poor, noble chief, who was equal to and worthy of a greater empire” instead “overlook[s] the little cluster of his wigwams mingled among trees, and, like Caius Marius weeping over the ruins of Carthage, shed tears”.

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The Noble Savage -

The ‘Nobel Savage’ is a man, raw and real, without any confines of society to encumber him. A true Nobel Savage does not need these facades the same as a Noble Citizen. The two are both men, yes; but one more noble than the other.

They travel different paths to achieve the same goal, existence. To a Noble Savage the frills of governmental structure and religious dedication are not necessary to his objective. He is the purest form of the human soul, not tainted by the soot of industrialism or its capitalist patriarch. The Noble Savage is man in his elemental form, the way his creator fashioned him to be.

Shaftsbury describes this natural condition of life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. It seems most would agree with the Earl.

But why would we, as men, hold distaste for our natural form? It is because our natural form, our core, that we fear the Savage, noble or otherwise. We as humans are so unfamiliar with ourselves that we have created fear surrounding each level of self that is more elemental, more Savage than the next. We dislike (fear) the Savage for the same reason we fear the dark – uncertainty scares the hell out of us.

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