Irish and Native American Descrimination, American


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Back to Subjects - American History

Irish and Native American Descrimination

Irish and Native American Descrimination Racism is a problem with roots reaching as far back as biblical times, and it is questionable as to whether or not racial discrimination will ever vanish. Many different groups of people have been subject to racism over time. Two historical examples of people who were discriminated against because of their nationality are Native Americans and Irish-American immigrants. Although the situations they faced are not quite identical, they have an abundance of similarities. The Native Americans and the Irish citizens who immigrated to the United States suffered a similar plight in the sense that both peoples were persecuted for their cultural differences as well as exiled from their own homelands. Before all others, varying tribes of Native Americans inhabited North America. The eleventh-century Norse seaman Leif Eriksson glimpsed very small portions of the continent, yet his discoveries never became public knowledge.(Brinkley, 8) It was not until Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of North America that Europeans began to develop an interest in the so-called New World. British, French, and Spanish colonies sprouted up along the eastern coast of America soon after Columbus’s expedition. Once the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain and formed the United States of America in 1776, the westward expansion of the white settlers inflated tremendously. This intrusion upon the lands of the Native Americans produced many conflicts between the two groups. The Americans began to repeatedly intrude upon Native American property, and force the Indians off of their rightfully owned land. One person who is often associated with the poor treatment of the Native Americans is Andrew Jackson. A wealthy planter and general in the Tennessee state militia, “Jackson’s fortunes, both economic and political, were tied to what happened to the Indians.“(Brinkley, 84) Jackson led his troops of the Tennessee militia against the Creek Indians in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend on March 27, 1814. In this bloody encounter, Jackson’s forces slaughtered nearly eight hundred Indians, including many women and children. “His soldiers made bridle reins from strips of skin taken from the corpses; they also cut off the tip of each dead Indian’s nose for body count.“(Brinkley, 85) The Creeks were forced westward, off their homelands, and Jackson won a commission as major general in the United States Army.(Brinkley, 212) Andrew Jackson fueled his troops by describing the Native Americans as “savage bloodhounds” and “blood thirsty barbarians.”(Brinkley, 212) The General made every attempt to depict the Indians as the enemy, who should be suppressed for the benefit of the white man. After the triumph at Horse Shoe Bend, Jackson told his troops: The fiends of the Tallapoosa will no longer murder our women and children, or disturb the quiet of our borders . . . . They have disappeared from the face of the Earth. In their places a new generation will arise who will know their duties better . . . . How lamentable it is that the path to peace should lead through blood, and over the carcasses of the slain!! But it is in the dispensation of that providence, which inflicts partial evil to produce general good.(Takaki, 85-86) Jackson’s euphemistic portrayal of the battle had strong influence upon his troops. It reflected the way that many white Americans viewed their relationship with the Native Americans. The United States took a somewhat imperialistic approach towards the Indians, making it their duty to “civilize” them. As the Americans push the Indians westward, people began to flow into the United States from Europe. One large group to immigrate to the New World were the Irish. The Irish were suffering from a problem not too different from the Native Americans’ situation. University of California, Berkeley professor Ronald Takaki states: The Irish viewed themselves as a people driven from their beloved homeland by ‘English tyranny,’ the British ‘yoke’ ‘enslaving’ Ireland. The British were . . . ‘savage tyrants’ and ‘cursed intruders.’ [and the] ‘Foul British laws’ . . . were the ‘whole cause’ of their emigration. British oppression was defrauding them of the fruits of their hard labor.(140) The British had been imposing upon the Irish since the early 12th century, when King Henry II took control of the country. The Irish’s laws, religion, and customs dissolved as the British installed their own ideals. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Irish legally owned a mere 14 percent of their own country. Soon thereafter, the British landlords began to switch from agriculture to livestock production. Irish families were evicted from their homes, only to have their land capitalized upon by the British as pastures. While visiting Ireland in 1771, Benjamin Franklin commented “that British colonialism and its emphasis on exports had reduced the Irish people to ‘extremely poor’ tenants, ‘living in the most sordid wretchedness, in dirty Hovels of Mud and Straw, and cloatheed only in Rags.” “The Irish had been forced to survive on ‘Potatoes and Buttermilk, without Shirts,’ so that the ‘Merchants’ could export ‘Beef, Butter, and Linnen’ to England.”(Takaki, 141) The Irish were soon to begin their mass movement to the New World across the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly half a century earlier, the Native Americans had already undergone a similar transformation. As he paved the “path to peace . . . through blood,” Andrew Jackson further attempted to justify he and his government’s actions by proposing the Native Americans a somewhat of a compromise. He offered to reserve a section of western Mississippi “to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it,” and that they would be left to live free “as long as the grass grows, or water runs.”(Takaki, 87) These statement eventually proved to be empty promises. In 1829, the Georgia legislature passed a law giving the state power over the Cherokee Nation. Their lands were “legally” moved into the market for white settlers to buy.(Takaki, 95) Then, in 1838, Cherokee Chief John Ross presented a petition signed by 15,665 Cherokees protesting the sale of Cherokee lands. However, the resistance was overlooked by the United States government, and the entire Cherokee nation slowly began its move to lands west of the Mississippi River under the pressure of General Winfield Scott and his troops. This movement, plagued by mass deaths of Cherokee Indians caused by disease, famine, and hypothermia, became known as the Cherokee Trail of Tears. The Plains Indians--such as the Kiowa, Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Arapaho--were also under intense pressure from the advance of the United States government and its citizens. The sacred cultural icon of the buffalo hunt became hindered as white pioneers took up the practice of hunting the animals--which the Indians so dearly needed in order to survive--for mere sport and fun. The white settlers brought with them diseases which were previously alien to the Native Americans such as smallpox. Smallpox reduced the Pawnee population from ten thousand in the 1830’s to four thousand in 1845.(Takaki, 100) Not long after that, railroad track in the United States exploded from 73 miles to 3,328 miles in ten years, as the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific strived to build the transcontinental railroad. Slowly but surely, the Native Americans were bullied out of their own homes. Between 1815 and 1920, five and a half million Irish emigrated to America.(Takaki, 140) Just as the Native Americans were forced west of their homelands by the Americans, the British were forcing the Irish west, across the Atlantic to the United States. An Irish folk song tells the story in brief: My father holds 5 acres of land, it was not enough to support us all, Which banished me from my native land, to old Ireland dear I bid farewell. My holdings here I can’t endure since here no longer I can stay. I take my lot and leave this spot and try the land of liberty.(Takaki, 142) One of the major incidents leading to the Irish immigration to America was the Great Famine, also known as the “Potato Famine.” Many Irish citizens who refused to leave their country obtained small lots of land to grow potatoes. Many Irish existed in poverty and existed on a diet based almost solely on potatoes. However, in 1845, a new blight destroyed about 40 percent of the potato crop in Ireland.(Takaki, 143) The potato disease reappeared annually and led to the eventual death of approximately one million people. As a result of the famine, many Irish families were unable to come up with the money to pay their rents and they were evicted, giving the landlords more area for livestock production. The famine continued, and the death rate increased. Professor Takaki states “So many people died that corpses were placed in reusable ‘trap-coffins’ with hinged bottoms. For the living, the choice became clear: emigrate or suffer destitution and death.”(144) Between 1855 and 1920, three million Irish immigrated to America.(Takaki, 146) The Irish immigrants joined in the competition with the immigrants from other various countries for jobs in the New World. They had been promised a land of opportunity, yet they had a long road ahead of them. The Irish were responsible for working on projects such as the National road in Pennsylvania, and waterways such as the Enfield Canal, the Blackstone Canal, and the famous Erie Canal in New York. While the Irish helped to construct the young United States, the Americans labeled the immigrants as inferior and discriminated against them often. They were continuously given jobs which had been proven to be the most dangerous, simply so that a white American would not have to perform the task. Irish women and girls had no choice but to find jobs in cluttered, windowless factories. They worked in vile conditions, leading to thousands of deaths resulting from everything from lung disease to fires. Reverend Theodore Parker of Boston identified the “inferior peoples in the world” in a sermon as “inferior in nature . . . behind [whites] in development” on “ a lower form in the great school of Providence--Negroes, Indians, Mexicans, Irish, and the like.”(Takaki, 149). Although not quite identical in all aspects, the trials that the Irish and the Native Americans encountered in their confrontations with whites resemble one another quite a great deal. Both groups were persecuted horribly and viewed as inferior, and as belonging to a lower level in the social order. The Irish’s subservience was influenced mainly by ideological apparatuses, while the Indians were restrained mostly by repressive forces, such as military action. Yet, both methods were effective in lowering the people in the social rankings, so that they were frequently overlooked and wronged morally and legally. While we can not take back what has happened, we can use what has happened in the past to try to prevent such injustices in the future. The first step in the solution to racism is understanding one another. Bibliography: Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, 3rd ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Boston, MA: Bay Back Books, 1993.

Word Count: 1799