Since Native Americans (or also known as indians) were the first people to settle and live off the land in America, why are cowboys viewed as the "heros of the story of America"? In old movies or tv shows, the cowboys of the West were seen as the good guys while the indians were view as savages who were the bad guys. Realistically, if you see the cowboys from the indians point of view, it's the complete opposite. The indians were bothered by people with more advanced equipment, who wanted to take over their land and selfishly take it for their own and get credit for being a good guy/innocent person in all the encounters between the cowboys and indians. It might not have been until later that the cowboys realized what they had done was bad, but to this day, they are viewed as the ones defending themselves against the big bad indians.
3 comments:
Sarah,
A very insightful comment accompanied by a bit of an oversimplification. First, I really like how you take those to task who would call a cowboy a "hero" before calling an American Indian the same.
However, keep in mind that not ALL cowboys were in conflict with Indians, as Hollywood and others would have us believe.
I have to agree with mr.Bolos that not all cowboys were used to fight native Americans like in the Hollywood blockbusters. Most of the time the so called "hero" would just sit around in a bar and wait for work. they rarely had battles/shootouts like they did in the movies.
I also agree with bolos and harles on this one, everything needs to be taken into perspective and i really don't think either can be called a hero, but if you had to choose i'd say the native american was more heroic. The cowboys were just the bulies trying to metaphoricaly take the Indians lunch money, and the indians were only trying to defend themselves. Hollywood did portray the Cowboy as a hero, and like harles said many cowboys did nothing but heard cattle and pass out in bars, not so say i don't like cowboys. Great post sarah.
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