Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
I'm so sorry - we had this cottage up in Lake Maxinkuckee, in Culver. I've thought so often of the poor Pottawattomies we took this land away from. They must have loved it so.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage. Delacorte Press, 1981.
Wayne played so many parts depicting whites in the process of expanding Westward that many people saw him as an expert on the history of the Westward Expansion. He did not comment on the whites who then kept huge ranches “selfishly” for themselves or those who selfishly would not share the mineral rich land that they had taken with anyone including the original Indian owners. So in this view, the Indians should have not been capitalists but they should have been socialists and shared their resources.
Brant had an English style Missionary education and was an Anglican, belonging to the Church of England. During the American Revolution, he persuaded most of the Iroquois tribes to fight for the British against the revolutionary colonists. However, the Oneida tribe was not persuaded and joined the rebel side. A few New England Presbyterian missionaries had targeted the Oneida people, and when that tribe chose the “wrong” side, Brant believed that the reason was their different religious point of view. After the Revolution, Brant and his Iroquois followers were driven out of their American lands and escaped to Canada, while the Oneida were given complete title to their lands by George Washington.
The century to which he was referring was the 19th century---1800-1899.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. Twain was one of the few whites who realized that success in assimilating American Indians would destroy their culture and identity. Even today, whites and Indians alike constantly debate the desirability of assimilation policies and supporting independent reservations.
The Iroquois were among the most sophisticated of the North American Indian Tribes. They also were highly assimilated into the American society. In the next decades, they would switch their political position when New York State provided better legal guarantees for Iroquois land than the Federal Government. By the end of the 20th Century, led by the Iroquois, the Indian residents of New York State had the same level of earnings as the white man—and that was with NO INDIAN GAMING.
This is an important quotations for two reasons. First, one of the white Europan myths in the colonial era was that the Native America had not concept of land ownership and title. This quotation clearly refutes that/ Second, this shows that some Europeans coming to the new world opposed the view that the white Christians and a moral right to the Native American “heathen” land. A few like Williams did not.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works, with further collections being published after his death.
