Takaki journal 1

In our reading, chapter two of Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror, Takaki is comparing a Shakespeare play, The Tempest, to what actually happened with the colonists and Indians/natives in Virginia and New England.

Similarly to our first reading by Howard Zinn, Takaki uses the word stranger to describe the Europeans form the Indians’ point of view. Starting off Takaki talks about when the Europeans reached Massachusetts Bay. The natives were repulsed by what came off of the “walking island,” white men with hair all over them but still thought them godly.
Then Takaki begins his comparison with The Tempest and the real story of what happened in New England and Virginia. All the more intelligent audience members knew that this wasn’t just a play; but a “metaphor for English expansion into America”. Never before has an Indian character been utilized until The Tempest. The play is to help us understand more of what happened as it was set in the New World, and as timing may have it, The Tempest was first performed just after the English had gone to Ireland. A character in the play, Caliban, reminded them greatly of the Irish; savages. The English thought the Irish were lazy, slovenly bums, to put in more modern words. The Irish could not own land or wear English apparel and most certainly could not wed any of the colonizers. It was to be the “English over the Irish.” With in four years there were almost no Irish left which meant that the land was free for the English to settle on. With all the violence and prejudices the English forced upon the Irish, they even beheaded them and used their heads to, in way, line the paths to their tents, as we would with lights to our homes in today’s world. But, for the English all this horror was their right, so they could teach the Irish the ways of the English. With all the feelings of savagery towards them, the English really did think that the Irish could be taught to be civil.
Following the invasion of Ireland was the invasion of Virginia. Here there were Indians and like the Irish were “savages” to the English colonizers. However the colonizers have had seen Indians before, Christopher Columbus had brought them to England and they were sold as slaves. The colonizers themselves were non-too-ashamed of kidnapping the Indians just as Columbus had. Just as Caliban in The Tempest had been seen as “other” so were the Indians. Although Caliban was thought to be what Europeans were like when there was little development, he, and same as the Indians, lived his life for his passions, specifically sexuality. But, to the colonizers to be civilized meant to deny all of the “natural” things about themselves, seeing themselves as Prospero, of The Tempest did, a mind not a body. The colonizers were to be just like Prospero and teach Caliban, the Powhatan Indians, to be civilized and speak their language. The unprepared colonizers started dieing off but the Powhatans came to rescue and feed the remaining few. When more colonizers arrived and they too became famished, they started to steal the Indian’s food and began destroying their villages in violent rampages. After the colonizers took over the majority of the Powhatan land, because it was unused and wasted the Powhatans brought it upon them to kill the colonizers. It was the deaths of the colonizers that actually gave them the right to the land. Again, like the Irish, the English thought the Indians could be taught civilization.
When the colonizers had made it to New England they had decided that the Indians could no longer be taught to be civil and that they were just born that way. The colonizers basically dehumanized the Indians as devils. When disease had struck the Indians and killed them off by the thousands, the colonizers saw it as God was allowing them to take the land.
Soon the colonizers began to realize that the savagery from Ireland, Virginia and New England were all different; one simply of consent, another of culture and one of racism. Finally a slight relief for the Indians, Thomas Jefferson had decided that both white people and Indians, if born on the land, were Americans. But, Jefferson was not opposed to removing, by any means necessary, Indians that continued to be hostile. They were to be civilized or they would be removed/ killed. In order to be civil the Indians were forced to become farmers. Jefferson was very contradictory in his words, he said that we all are Americans but it was the Indians own fault for all the hardships they encountered and their land was legally transferred to the English. The acceptance that Jefferson had started for the Indians was really a way to get them to surrender their land to the English, but still wanted to save the Indians.
Takakis telling of this story kind of ridicules Thomas Jefferson because he was so contradictory. He wanted to save them, but he also wanted their land and ultimately wanted the Indian’s out of his territory. I pretty much agree with what Takaki is saying, because you can’t want freedom for someone just so they will forgo their land to you in the end. That is not freedom; it is just as bad as killing and then taking the land.
Actually after reading this I feel slightly disgusted, I am just in awe that all of this violence was the only way, or thought to be the only way for America to evolve. I knew of some of the violence and the prejudices but I have never had it all laid out in front of me like that. I am Irish and I realize what kinds of hardships my ancestors had to endure but I have never really read it before and it gave me a new perspective on the racism that still exists today.