Takaki Chap2

Thesis: “in their first encounters with Europeans, the Indians tried to relate the strangers to what was familiar in their world. The main idea of this chapter was to show how the English were out to install civilization in those countries that seemed to have none. They felt that it was their duty or Gods will to change the way people live and make them who aren’t more civilized. Also it showed how single minded the English were by labeling anybody who seemed to live barbarically in their eyes as “savages”. This chapter shows how they would stop at nothing even if it meant murder to create a “civilized” nation.
In the beginning of this selection it shows where the English started pushing this idea of civilization in three cites-Ireland, Virginia, and New England. It starts off first telling us about the way the Irish lived and where the “savage” name is introduced. It was known as a person or group of people that live on the outside of “civilization”. The Irish were seen as people who lacked the knowledge of God, no manners, nomadic/hunters, and no sense of private property. They were also called lazy and not willing to work for their own food, such as to harvest it. So then came along the brutality of the English, where they would try to use force to scare the Irish into accepting their way of life. They would murder families and destroy villages. In one case a man name Sir Humphrey Gilbert ordered that all the heads of people killed to be chopped off and brought to him. He would line the heads up parallel to each other creating a walk way to his tent that he hoped would scare the Irish into becoming civilized by seeing the heads of family and friends. Then this expansionism idea of civilization made its way to America. The Indians were compared to the Irish because they lived the same way but the difference was that they lived in peace where the Irish stole from each other and lived in turmoil. The Indians shared a “large dish” and everyone can eat and hunt together in peace and love. They did not care about boundaries or private property. In fact they would even share their food with the colonist that were dieing of starvation because the land did not live up to the expectations. They natives were not a hostile group and yet the English were extremely hostile to them. It was either join us or be exterminated. Like I have stated earlier they felt it was Gods will. It was even said that when the English brought over new diseases that wiped out close to half of the native population, they claimed that this was Gods way over making room. Some officers would even go to the extent of meeting with tribal leaders and poisoning their drinks killing them leaving no one to defend the rest of the tribe which were slaughtered. Thus begun a process of “cultural construction” which would create a national label, that we would have to live with for centuries to come.
My reaction to this article is that this is a subject that we see going on in our everyday life and will probably never stop. I mean it seems that if someone else’s country is having a problem we try to install our way of living thinking that it will fix everything. In some cases it works but in a lot more cases it fails because people do not want to be told how to live. It almost seems that we think of ourselves as better or at least the way we live is better. But what works for one nation may not be the solution for another. It just seems that when you start trying to help everyone else you ignore or push aside the problems that are going on in your own country.
1. Should it be our job or even a certain races job to decide how people live?
2. What does the word savage really mean and did the Indians fulfill that definition?