Indians

2 Pages 502 Words

In “Indians” by Jane Tompkins, she discusses the problems that follow the history of the real Indians that once inhabited this land before being ousted by the Europeans. She investigates how other famous authors perceived the life of the Indians and their problems with the Europeans. Her main issue is how the facts, which we think, are “true” facts should not be considered concrete. History has a way of changing information over time and different people have different perceptions on Indians. Interesting enough, the author uses quotation marks around the word Indians. This is done because we really do not know the truth about these so-called “Indians”. We attached a history and amore importantly a reputation to these groups of people just because we accept anybody’s facts.
Based on what she wrote, she concludes that she cannot accept other people’s facts as her own. She feels that she needs to piece together the life of the European-Indian relationship. She feels someone elses facts is the product of their own perspective and therefore piecing together the facts and seeing if everything goes hand and hand. She supports this by quoting over five different authors who wrote about the European-Indian relationship. Each author has a different version of the relationship between these two groups of people. One author goes on to say that America was uninhabited when the Europeans came over. That statement alone begins to question the integrity of the author’s words and what to really get out it. Reading that statement makes you question what is being said about the Indians and of its true or not.
Based on the author’s conclusion, I feel that she is right. I agree with the idea that we need to discover things for ourselves and make ourselves believe based on our own perspective. Interpretation, language and common sense are tools that we would need to create our own thoughts as to what really went on between ...