white mans creation

Indian: White Man’s Creation

The images of the Indian as we know them today are the invention of the White man (Birkhofer 3). In fact, according to Roger Williams, until the Europeans arrived, the Native Americans had no need for a term that differentiated them from outsiders and thus only used the term “Indian” because the English used it (228). These images were created by the White man to justify their accumulation of wealth and colonization. While various descriptions and images are contradictory, the label “Indian” became synonymous with “savage” and “heathen” and perpetuated stereotypical images that unfortunately have endured for centuries.
In The White Man’s Indian, Robert F. Birkhofer, Jr., tells us that the Spanish inspired the term Indian, the concept that remains with us today, and that Christopher Columbus provided the original notion of the Indian, portraying both good and bad images of the natives in the New World (5). Columbus desc...