in reality, but only how people perceived them to be. “It is not the Indian’s belief that is the issue here, but the whites’ belief of the Indians’ beliefs”(Taussig, 197). This image that was created by the colonizer was often used to justify the spread of imperialism and domination, as well as used to further develop economic and political causes. “In thus using the Indians, the company objectified its fantasies concerning the people of the forest, creating very real savages from its mythology of savagery in order to coerce the people of the forest into collecting rubber for them”(Taussig, 391). The rubber industry boom is a demonstration of this technique and all of the atrocities that developed from it. The historical myths involving Indians as positive figures in the dominant white man’s life is a manipulative task to gain positive social relations for their own material advantage. The South Amerindian was the slave of the colonist, but these colonists were able to manipulate it so that there was no uproar or reaction from the conquered. They were made to feel no matter what that this was in their best interests and some of it could have been. It is important to note that the South American Indians were not the only ones to synthesize new customs into their culture. In many situations, whites would rely on the Indian shamans for healing illnesses, curing famine and crop problems and even for wisdom in helping to solve problems. The white man’s perceived concept of “Indian” is illustrated in the following quote: “As with their manual labor, skills and land, this power of the primitive can be appropriated, in this case by grafting it onto the mythology of conquest so that illness can be healed, the future defined, farms exorcised, wealth gained, wealth maintained, and, above all, envious neighbors held at bay. But unlike land and labor, this power did no...
