Blog #5: Apess and Sigourney

“Now I ask if degradation has not been heaped long enough upon the Indians?”  During the 18th and 19^th century discrimination and prejudice was shown towards the Indians. The whites tried to take away their rights and most didn’t even recognize these rights. This caused authors like William Apess and Lydia Sigourney to speak and act out about the suppression of these Indians. In both of their stories and poems I recalled a central theme of sympathy on behalf of social injustice. Apress’s story An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man, discusses how Indians are treated unequally to the “white man.” He goes through and quotes bible verses that defend his argument as to how God tells us to “love one another.” He quotes 1 John 4:20 that says, “If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.” Throughout the whole story Apess constantly questions readers to examine how if God loves all his children why don’t his children love one another just as He does. He goes on to continue to say that Jesus Christ and the Apostles never gave any regard to skin, color, or nation in which people come from and that if they knew Jesus personally, who didn’t condemn men, then who are these white men to oppress the Indians. Apress concludes his story by stating that “man was created for society, and not for hissing-stocks and outcasts.” In other words God created man to live among each other in peace, harmony, and unity, but there is separation of whites and Indians. These ideas tie into Sigourney’s poem, Indian Names, through description of how the Indians founded the land and how these other men are driving them out. Sigourney says that although they have been removed from their lands, their presence, names, and influence still lives in the lands. The land hasn't forgotten who settled it originally. It is impossible to completely wipe the Indians away, no matter how hard some may try, and some have tried hard and brutally. Heaven will listen in the appeal for justice in their afterlife, and certain people will be sorry for taking their father's lands away from them. Their souls are tied to the land, and vice-versa, and they call out to each other. Their memory will always linger in our paths. “Their memory liveth on your hills.”