Our hearts fell to the ground Essay

Colin Calloway has d wizard a masterful job of selecting and presenting an array of speeches, letters, documents, and drawings that describe compelling stories ab protrude the Plain Indians in the 1800s. His introduction alone has that the right level of information and links basic themes and events to the documents presented in the text. In short, a model of how an introduction should be done.Colin Calloways intentions were to focus on the humanistic study of the Plain Indians views on how the West was lost. It provides us with the unfeigned persuasions of Indian people who lived through those times of proveation and assimilation. From the Lewis and Clark expedition to the grammatical construction of railroads, he attempts to explain the traumatic changes of the Native Americans during the nineteenth century. He opens our look from what earlier historians whose work seems now outdated, preferring to rescue elements of their work.The narratives are divided into 14 chapters, w hich supply historical document and secondary essays placing these documents within their historical context. each(prenominal) chapter unfolds 1 OUR HEARTS wild TO THE GROUND to show the tragedy the Plains Indian had to endure from the white settlers and their greed for land and prosperity.From the slaughter of whole tribes, the out break of the unseen killer, and the forced assimilation through the reservation systems were tho a few explanations for why the Indians numbers dwindled in the 1800s. It was not until the oculus of the twentieth century that the reality of their suffering showed up in accounting books. Any writings prior only portrayed the Native American as savages and rebellious people, almost to a romance climax. Unlike the books in the past, Calloway used tribal customs as a means to manifest the actual torment the Plains Indians encountered.The Native Americans were regarded as people without history, when in fact the Indians recorded their history by songs, da nces, stories, legends, and visual records on buffalo robes known as winter counts. Calloway reveals to the reader the Ways the Native American used the winter counts as a mnemonicdevice passed from one generation to another marked with pictographs that recorded noteworthy events in tribal life that took place each year. It was these customs that enabled 2 OUR HEARTS FELL TO THE GROUND elders to chronologically pass on their heritage to ensure the natural selection of their tribe.Calloway disclosed through speeches of the Native American that they were generally peaceful and friendly people who cute peace and not war with the white man. about speeches contained disagreement but acceptance of the white man ways, from the breaking of treaties to the impossible slaughter of their buffalo. The American Native hoping to maintain their hold on what lilliputian land and culture remained to them tried to accept the ways of their new neighbors. afterwards reading this book I have a new perspective about the Native American. Unlike before, when I heard the word Indian I thought of them as savages of the Wild West for the most part. I now think of them as intelligent, prideful, and humane people who just wanted to be left alone to live the life they were accustomed to. poop line, if it was not for the white settlers forcing their way of life onto the Native Americans, they would not of reacted as they did. The settlers left them no choice