Lesson 1 The Wild West’堀川敦厚s Legacy of Shame
By John Halford
1.THE LEGENDS of the Wild West still color many peopl中国临床研究杂志e’s impression of the United States of America. Unfortunately, the romanticized Hollywood cowboys and Indians have given a distorted picture of what really happened.
2.Certainly, America’s western expansion 十五从军征朗读was in many ways an epic of courage and endurance. Dogged pioneers opened up new territory and forged a nation from the wilderness. This is the stuff of legends. But there was a dark side to this story. For
the Indians it was a sad, bitter tale of misunderstanding, greed and betrayal — and we should know that too.
3.Before 1990 fades from memory, let’s pau to remember December 29 as the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Wounded Knee. This “battle” (it was more of a massacre)大福源超市 marked the completion of the conquest of the North American Indians by the United State
s government.
Not Enough Indians
4.In the early days of ttlement along the Atlantic shore the colonists and the Indians got along together. Their ways of life were different, but there was room for both.
5.The Indians were not unorganized hostile savages. The various tribes were often confederations or nations, and at first, the new tlers treated them as independent powers. But as兔子有关的成语 European ttlement gathered momentum, mistrust began to build.
6.It was not long before the newcomers outnumbered the native peoples (It has been estimated there were only about a million Amerindians in the continent north of what is now Mexico).
7.In the struggle between the French and the British猝死急救 for control of North America
(1689— 1763), and in the later Revolutionary War (1775—1783) between the British and the Colonists, the Europeans tried to win the support of the Indians.
8.They became pawns in the white man’s struggle to一年级画画简单又漂亮 control North America. Tho who found themlves on the losing side suffered reprisals by the victors.
9.By the end of the 18th century, the independence of the United States was established, and George Washington 余秋雨作品admonished Congress: We are more enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations. It behooves our honor to treat themwith kindness and even generosity.
10.But that’s not what happened. Might became right ①, and fromthe beginning
of nationhood of the United States, the native people were exploited, forced from their homelands by the relentless European expansion — usually after signing agreements
and treaties they did not really understand.
11.The white man’s concept of land ownership was alien to the Indians. They thought they had agreed to share, only to find that they had signed away the rights to live in their traditional territory.
12.Eventually, the government decided it would be in everyone’s best interest for the two peoples to live apart. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 gave the president power to relocate all the Eastern Indian tribes west of the Mississippi on land the new
Americans thought they would not need.
13.None were to be exempted even tho tribes who had made an effort to learn
the w hite man’s ways were forced to move. The Cherokees , for example, were ttled farmers, had developed an alphabet, and even published a newspaper in their own language.
14.But the Cherokees , along with the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles ②, were rounded up and herded off to “Indian Territory.” One in four Cherokees died during the forced winter migration along what became known as the
