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Amanda Griffin
History 1301.091
Textbooks and Bias

The reading for this week included three excerpts about European settlement in America.

These excerpts also dealt with the Native Americans who first inhabited the land that the

Europeans and Americans fought so ferociously over. One theme that I see woven throughout

each of these stories is of the enormous impact of John Smith. Though each story showed

different bias to the races concerned (which will be addressed later), they all seemed to echo that

John Smith was a crucial element in making sure that every colonist worked for what he had. A

huge difference in the selections, however, was the impact of Pocahontas. The first excerpt

never even mentions Pocahontas; the second gives her credit almost backhandedly as the text

points out that this “dusky” Indian never really saved John Smith’s life as he so “dramatically”

retells(14); the third gives full credit to Pocahontas, calling her an “intermediary(17) ” and

giving her credit for “saving” John Smith (16).

In reading these excerpts that are so spaced out in history (1927, 1966, and 200) it is

important to note that there are several “red flags,” or bias, in the authors’ writings. The first red

flag that stuck out to me was the terminology used to describe the Europeans and Native

Americans. It is interesting to look at these red flags while comparing them against the other

excerpts. The most drastic difference in this instance is between the first excerpt and the third. In

the first excerpt, the Indians are talked about in a very derogatory manner. They are referred to

as “copper-colored barbarians and savages (11)” and said to have “contributed almost nothing to

the making of America” while the European settlers are talked about as saviors of sorts, bringing

“civilization to the new world (11)” bringing tools and skills to the Indians. The third excerpt

actually tends to lean more on the side of the Native Americans as it states that the Europeans

arrived thinking that “humans had dominion of the earth and with technologies to alter the very
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face of the land (16).” Another red flag I see in the articles is the period of time in which the

authors’ were writing these selections. The two articles that must be looked at concerning this

point is the second excerpt (1966) and the third (2000). It is important to first note that the

second excerpt leans more towards the first as far as terminology goes. In this article the Indians

were thought of as “heathens” who needed to be “turned to Christianity.” The ‘60s and ‘70s

were a time of drastic change for this country in the area of race. 1966 was a very important year

in this effort because it was a year in which a man by the name of James S. Coleman published a

study called “Equality of Educational Opportunity” which led the way to forced integration and

bussing. Knowing this, it is easy to see that American’s were still, at this point, not able to see

beyond ourselves. We truly believed that we were the superior race—that we had it all right and

that anyone who looked or appeared different than us were “heathens.” If we look at the 2000

excerpt, however, we see that the Native Americans were given much respect (said to have

“endowed nature with spiritual properties (16).”) and victimized rather than and that the culprits

of the society—“They were blissfully unaware that the historic isolation of the Americas was

about to end forever (16).” Europeans were actually being criticized somewhat (John smith

“whipped the gold-hungry settlers into line (16).”) This shows that in the 21st our views of race

are very different. It seems as though we have gotten knocked on our backsides just enough

times (still not enough for some) to realize that we are not the superior race, and that everyone

has contributed and will continue to contribute to what America is today.