At least today’s textbooks no longer blame the Natives for all the violence,
as did most textbooks written before the civil rights movement. Historians used
to say, “Civilized war is the kind we fight against them, whereas savage war is
the atrocious kind that they fight against us.”^70 Not one of the eighteen history
books I examined portrays Natives as savages. The authors of the newer books
are careful to admit brutality on both sides. Some mention the massacres of
defenseless Native Americans at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Like much of
our “knowledge” about Native Americans, the “savage” stereotype derived not
only from old textbooks but also from our popular culture—particularly from
Western movies and novels, such as the popular “Wagons West” series by
Dana Fuller Ross. These paperbacks, which have sold hundreds of thousands
of copies, claim boldly, “The general outlines of history have been faithfully
followed.” Titled with state names, the novels’ covers warn that “marauding
Indian bands are spreading murder and mayhem among terror-stricken
settlers.”^71 In the Hollywood West, wagon trains were invariably encircled by
savage Indian hordes. Native Americans rode round and round the “settlers,”
while John Wayne picked them off from behind wagon wheels and boxes.
Hollywood borrowed the haplessly circling Indians from Buffalo Bill Cody’s
Wild West Show, where they had to ride in a circle, presenting a broadside
target, because they were in a circus tent!
In the real West, among 250,000 whites and blacks who journeyed across
the Plains between 1840 and 1860, only 362 pioneers (and 426 Native
Americans) died in all the recorded battles between the two groups. Much
more common, American Indians gave the new settlers directions, showed
them water holes, sold them food and horses, bought cloth and guns, and
served as guides and interpreters.^72 These activities are rarely depicted in
movies, novels, or our textbooks. Inhaling the misinformation of the popular
culture, students have no idea that Natives considered European warfare far
more savage than their own.
Most new textbooks do tell about New England’s first Indian war, the
Pequot War of 1636-37, which provides a case study of the intensified warfare
Europeans brought to America. Allied with the Narragansetts, traditional
enemies of the Pequots, the colonists attacked at dawn. Surrounding the Pequot
village, whose inhabitants were mostly women, children, and old men, the
English set it on fire and shot those who tried to escape the flames. William
Bradford described the scene: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in