Monday, January 22, 2007

Chapter 2- A Different Mirror

Brian Bates
Professor Altman
Ethnic Studies

Chapter two in the book A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki entails many different accounts of how the English took over lands and controlled the lives of both the Irish and Indians through means of violence that left their populations in ruins near extinction from the earth. This chapter lists the main reason why the English thought they should take other people’s land; they felt it was a God-given right because the other cultures were so called “savages” therefore they deserved the other people’s property.
The first accounts we read in the chapter are that the Indians are intrigued by the English settlers coming into the land. The appearance of these strange pale complexion men with hair growing from their face were foretold by Indian prophets who predicted the arrival of the English man. The book also describes in detail of how they thought the Irish people were “savages” as well. The English reduced the Irish population by more than half of the original number they had found them with. They did the same with the Indians except for these type incidents occurred at three different locations. The Indians were farming their land and doing very well, but in order to claim most of their lands the explorers would write various details about the Indian people being cannibals and the females doing improper things like prostituting themselves because they liked too. After hearing these type of descriptions the English people that it was only naturally right that they should be able to claim the Indians land and be able to drive them from it change their way of faith and what religion they believed in. The accounts that foretold of the Indians as civilized people were usually disregarded or not told to people, so that the English could send more to claim more of the land that the “savages” did not need.
In the stories throughout chapter two we learn that English think they are highly superior to everyone else they encounter in new lands because their culture was different their own. The settlers who were settling the land when John Smith came to Virginia were almost wiped out by winter that they were not prepared for, they were saved by the Indians who gave them provisions and helped them survive. After this had occurred the English settlers captured a few Indians and took them back to England to show people of their new discoveries. The work of cultivating land was so hard for them they thought that people beneath them should work as slaves and pay them with their crops for the land they were using.
The events in chapter two showed in many ways how the English were wrong for almost all the actions they performed against the Indians. They intruded upon other peoples land the Indians and Irish wiped them out and took it as their own. They should not be celebrated for discoveries and civilizations in these lands merely for the fact that they were already present, but the English destroyed them and expanded their own.

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