American National Identity
Colonial America, settled by Western Europeans, initially displayed social and cultural characteristics similar to the group by which it was founded. As America grew, population density increased, government was established, and a notion of 'civilization' was embedded into the American mindset. The previous influences, in combination with other factors, such as America's distance from Europe, helped the United States wage and win the Revolutionary war. The US, gaining it's Independence, inevitably was to evolve it's own unique cultural traits. Early America portrayed the wild frontier as part of their national identity, while common colonial American ideology stigmatized the associated Native American culture as less civilized, as savage, and as subordinate to 'modern' eighteenth and nineteenth century societies. Factors such as Western European influence, racist ideology, subjective sciences, and speculative theories all contributed to a prejudiced judgment passed on Native Americans.Throughout the eighteenth century, Europeans, and arguably colonial Americans too, were seen as the most prone to "the principles of popular government, freedom, and liberty (Horsman, pg.18)." A creationist view, popularized throughout Europ
As Agassiz never attempted empirical measurements to prove his beliefs of Native Americans and other minorities as inclined more for work than thought, he taught his partial theories at one of America's most prestigious learning institutions, seriously contributing to a racist ideology extending well beyond his time. Morton, one of America's most distinguished scientists, used his own personal collection of over six hundred human skulls to perform the experiment. As Jefferson believed blacks inferior to whites he did not claim to know whether it was from environmental circumstance or biological determinism (Gould, pg. Concurrently, Americans condemned North American Natives for being savage, untamed, uncivilized, and living a different way of life. Polygeny, a theory corresponding with biological determinism, also used to classify and rank humans, was becoming increasingly popular in the nineteenth century. European eighteenth century naturalists, such as Buffon and Blumenbach, claimed the argument that inferior races had undergone environmental degeneration (Gould, pgs. 93) quotes Buffon as writing:Although the savage of the new world is about the same height as man in our world, this does not suffice for him to constitute an exception to the general fact that all living nature has become smaller on that continent. America had racism so deeply embedded into their ideology that scientific frauds and educational theorists attempted to justify Anglo-Saxon as the supernatural race in what they claimed was the pursuit of good government and freedom. Clearer examples of a racist American ideology are present throughout Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. e and the United States, suggested that people were the products of their environment and thus differences in people could be explained by differences in their environments (Horsman, pg.
Common topics in this essay:
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Buffon Blumenbach,
Native American,
Western Europeans,
Washington Lincoln,
American Natives,
America Franklin,
Agassiz Swiss,
Americans Throughout,
Indians Blacks,
native american,
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nineteenth century,
biological determinism,
colonial america,
racist ideology,
american civility,
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pg199 cooper,
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inherited biological,
inherited biological differences,
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Acceptance Essays
