Colors of the Wind

Rumors of an unknown people were spreading throughout Europe. Who were these reddish brown skinned people that inhabited this new world? Tocqueville gave quite an interesting description of the Native Americans in his text, Democracy in America; he portrayed them as poor and ignorant savages, yet also mentioned their passion and dedication to life and God. At first, I thought that Tocqueville was harsh and ignorant himself to write about the Native Americans in the way that he did, but then I thought that he did give a very full description considering that communication between both peoples was difficult and therefore minimal. I suppose I was just hesitant with his use of ignorant and savage, but then I thought more about the meaning of those words and thought that they were quite appropriate. I guess people often just assume that these words have negative connotations because they’re more commonly used with that purpose. However, ignorance is not knowing and yes, the Native Americans were unknowledgeable about a lot of new things that the Europeans brought over. Plus savage, derived from the Latin word silvaticus simply means of the woods. But even though Tocqueville gave quite a well-rounded and “fair” description of the Native Americans, they were nevertheless very much misunderstood. Because people were ignorant themselves about the Indians, they feared them. Fear of the unknown causes many misconceptions AND this of course made me think about Pocahontas and how her tale was a good representation of the American experiment into the New World. But instead of retelling her story, which I’m sure you are all familiar with, I wanted to spend more time looking at the lyrics of Disney’s Colors of the Wind. It brings up a lot of good points about how Europeans could be looked at by the Native Americans in a similar light. To them, Europeans were just as ignorant; ignorant to nature, values, and certain traditions. To them, Europeans only saw nature as a means to profit from. They didn’t understand or appreciate it the same way. Although the explorers talked about the Indians as uncivilized people, I think that like Tocqueville said, they were indifferent to technology and the fancy clothes. I always thought that the Indians chose not to develop a more “civilized” life simply because tradition was such an important aspect of their lives.

Basically, in this post, I just want to make people think about the American experiment from two points of view, not only from the European side that we are used to reading about. Enjoy the Pocahontas video above and think about the lyrics and how the Indians felt about the Europeans that looked at them and their land as an experiment to be toyed with and claimed.