Current Topics in Museum Studies:
Issues in Native American Representation
Larry J. Zimmerman
IUPUI Department of Anthropology

Savagery and the American Indian

Video Guide

When the massacre at Wounded Knee succeeded in finally closing America’s western frontier, it also closed the book on nearly 300 years of hostilities and atrocities against America’s original inhabitants. This classic two-part series uses expert analysis, reenactments, maps, period illustrations, and archival photos and film to document the history of the conquest of the U.S. from a Native American point of view—and the cultural persecution that has persisted since the guns and bugles fell silent.

Running Time 50 each, BBC (distributed by Films for the Humanities and Sciences), 1991

Part 1: Wilderness

(50 minutes, color)

Archaeological and historical evidence confirms that Native Americans lived in highly developed societies—and that vastly more tribe members died as a result of European settlement than had previously been suspected. In this program, historian William Cronon of Yale University, author Alvin Josephy, and others examine the physical, spiritual, and cultural destruction of the Native Americans, beginning with the 17th-century Puritan prejudices that helped generate the pernicious image of the "savage Indian" and ending with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.

Questions:

What were the initial ttitudes of Indians toward the newcomers?
What events and problems caused the greatest grief for Indians in the early years of Contact?
What is the Puritan ethic? How did it play out against the Indians?
In spite of what the whites thought, what were Indian cultures like at the time of Contact?

Part 2: Civilization

With the closing of the western frontier began the new Indian Wars: the systematic cultural persecution of the Native Americans. This program documents the struggle of the scattered indigenous nations to reclaim and retain their language, history, and identity in the face of historical revisionism, coercive evangelism, and forcible assimilation. Indian rights advocate Vine Deloria, Jr.; members of the Oglala, Hunkpapa, and Sans Arc Sioux; and others describe the misguided practices, unscrupulous dealings, and outright cruelties of the United States against them and their peoples—and reveal an indomitable will to be who they are.