Squanto

I didn't know alot about the indian named Squanto before this blog. All I had known was that he arrived at the English settlement where William Bradford had landed, and  could speak very good english. How is this possible? An indian able to speak almost flawless english when they didn't know of any prior settlements in the area?
Squanto had actually been to England before the settlers came. He went there with John Wheymouth, an explorer. Over the years he was brought back to his home, taken as slave by the Spanish, and somehow brought back. His entire village was killed from disease left behind by the slavetraders from the time he was taken.
Squanto was key in the fact that he could help the pilgrims communicate with the surrounding indian people. He helped the pilgrims when they were starving and in bad conditions. Squanto taught them how to use thier resources for food, cultivate land, and build indian styled wigwams. This relationship helped make "the first Thanksgiving" what it was. I think that without Squanto's help, that colony would be just another failed attempt.

Settlers Relationship to the Native Americans

The writings of the settlers had always showed the indians to be crazy savages and that they were a worse level of human. In John Smith's journal about Jamestown, they were always a threat and never any help. The indians helped them to survive the terrible conditions they were in, not because they were savages, but because they were reaching out. It has been proven that over the years of settlers taking over the continent, that they took the land with no respect for those who already owned it. I thought about if the settlers of Jamestown to find native americans with a written language, would things be different? When it comes to the issue of lad ownership and who had rights to the resources, the indians were there first. Yet, the new invaders believed they were entitled to everything they wanted. If the natives would have had a written language to prove in document form that they owned that land, do you think things would have been different? Or do you believe that they would have taken the land they wanted anyway? Do you think the indians would have been less "savage" if they had ways to prove civilized documentations of land ownership?

http://www1.webng.com/InteractiveLearning/NAIndians/what_was_the_attitude_of_the_whi.htm

Native American Culture- 9/8

"You can find an article on the internet about how modern Native Americans still revere their root culture. Provide a link to the article and post a reflection about it."

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/03/14/20100314native-american-teachers.html

 This article is about a young woman who became a teacher to Native American children on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, near Tucson. Her name is Shannon Begaye and she is a member of the Navajo tribe. Shannon had never planned on becoming a teacher, because she wanted to be a lawyer. She tried to move away and start life in other places, but she found it very hard because of the culture and the way she was raised. When she lived in Hawaii she loved the people but would always have to remember her religion in everything she did. Shannon says her father upholds all the old Navajo traditions. For example, she was raised that she could not enter the water of the ocean without prayer first,m because the ocean is a powerful life force. I personally think that this would b redundant after awhile, because living in Hawaii tends to deal with its water a lot. The Navajo also believe that shellfish is bad for the spirit, so she wasn't able to eat shellfish. I wouldn't mind this, because i don't eat shellfish or any other fish anyway.
   When she moved back to the reservation, her mother had known she would come back. In my opinion, Shannon was raised almost if to never leave. I know that all people have a right to live how they want to and where they want to, but i think she was raised in a way that made it too hard for her to move away.
  On the reverse of that point, the culture of the Navajo is slowly dying. So when Shannon went back to the reservation, she was doing her tribe somewhat of a favor. They are in such need of teachers to teach the native children, because any non-native does not understand the children and the ways they live. Its so much harder to teach a person a culture and make them understand it, than to just find a teacher who was raised with it. It talks about this in the article, and how outside teachers tend to block themselves off from the culture and the tribe. This of course gets them no where with the kids.
  This article made me think alittle about how these people live and how they raise their children. So here is my question, is it better to raise your child to stay in the tribe and live in a way that is hard to part with, or fall away from your culture to make life easier to mesh with the outside world?