Nevertheless, I shall deal with two of the "positive stereotypes" which Mr. Schuster accepts as articles of faith. Note that for these two, I shall speak specifically of the Sioux and the Plains.

1) THE ECOLOGICAL INDIAN STEREOTYPE

Schuster: "We don't trash the environment."

Any scholar with detailed knowledge of any cultural area of North America knows this is a myth. Rather than being a revolution in scholarly thinking, Shephard Krech's "The Ecological Indians: Myth and History" made some of the material accessible to non-specialists. This is a general book all interested in American Indians should know.

This is what my owns Plains research suggests: The consolidation of the independent bands on the Plains into tribes (such as the seven Lakota Sioux tribes) was primarily in the first third of the 19th century, and took place primarily to exploit, more safely and efficiently, the market in buffalo hides. As bull buffalo robes could not be dressed for sale, Indian hunters specialized in killing breeding-age cows, with a much more efficient technology and social order than previously available to the Sioux. This was the first big upsetting of the north Plains ecological situation. Indian hunters, especially the Saone group of Lakota, did a great deal to put the buffalo on the path to extinction.

2) THE PEACEFUL INDIAN STEREOTYPE

Schuster: "[My ancestors] may have done massacres, just not so many as yours."

(First I must note that had Mr. Schuster paid attention to what I have written, he would have found that my ancestors include American Indians, as well as Europeans. Hence, while he cannot be wrong in my case, I will take his statement as intending to mean that Sioux Indians did not kill as many Euro-American as the latter killed Indians. With this I proceed.)

The incredible slaughter of the buffalo herds by the Sioux in the 1830s meant that by the 1840s their food supply in the Missouri River country had become unstable, so they often faced scarcity. Hence, some Lakota Sioux groups pushed southward into the Platte River Country, and others westward toward the Powder. These regions, especially the latter, were taken and held by force of Sioux arms. Just before the Civil War, the Powder River country was contested with the Crow Indians. It could not be held by either, and this led to a concentration of the herd in this area. But by the end of the Civil War, the Sioux gained possession of the Powder River.

The most effective Indian military operations in the wars for the hunting lands was for a large force to attack an unsuspecting winter camp (when the tribal organization broke down into component bands). Usually, all living in the camp were killed-- men, women, and children, although sometimes young children might be saved for adoption. Such search and destroy operations were a technique later used by the U.S. army against Indians, but the army was much less efficient. Almost all of the American army operations against the Lakota were in the two decade period which began about the middle of the 1850s. More lives were lost in wars between northern Plains Indians during just the 1840s and 1850s than by U.S. army actions (and probably civilian, too, it might be added) throughout the whole period and area of the U.S. Plains "Indian wars."

My sources are very diffuse, but the ferocity of wars of Indians against Indians can be appreciated by anyone who will take the trouble to read the writings of the trader Denig.

Until almost the very end of the "Indian wars," the Plains tribes did not understand that they really needed to be concerned with the U.S. Army. Hence, when Custer's expedition entered the Black Hills in the summer of 1874, he found few Sioux around to oppose him. The great portion of the warriors were in the west, fighting the Crows.

These examples of the acceptance of erroneous "positive stereotypes" by Mr. Schuster give only partial insight into what he thinks about stereotypes in general. More would be know of his views had he condescended to answer my questions. Instead, he went into his Sioux Indian act, trying to imagine how a Sioux would respond. I have never called anyone a savage in this discussion. But in reply Mr. Schuster wrote something like (in very general paraphrase), "How dare you mention that word!" Hence, I must treat one of the "negative stereotypes"-- which, again inaccurately, forms Mr. Schuster's articles of faith-- not just the two "positive" ones.

3) THE SAVAGE STEREOTYPE

Although I do not agree with some of her formulations, Karen Kupperman's "Indians and English: Facing Off in America," makes some very valuable points, mostly regarding the mid-17th century Chesapeake region. It must be touched on because it is one of a very few studies which deals with documented English conceptualizations of Indian societies. Several of the things she shows, which are incontestable, will startle many (even if few specialists on Indian history will be). One of these is that all English observers of that time believed that the Indians of the region lived in civil society. In other words, they weren't thought of as savages.

Now turn to the French word "sauvage." It cannot be confused as being strictly equivalent with "savage" in English. This is implicitly recognized by translators of material dealing with Native Americans, where the word is almost always translated "Indian." There are many complexities here, but it would be well for one interested in this matter to look at the remarkable book by Eugen Weber, "Peasants into Frenchmen ....1870-1914." In this period, "sauvage" was still used by the French elite to describe the peasantry.

So what does this tell us about Mr. Schuster's view on stereotypes. First, it tells us that he has not investigated the facts. Secondly, his willingness to hold onto the same position, accomodating that position to the new fact, after it has been shown that the facts do not support his positon, shows he is not even interested in the facts. Thirdly, his whole argument demands that there can be no rational discussion of his position.

His position can be boiled down to this: I need not tell you why something is morally offensive to me, or even have any rational reasons for saying they are offensive. Once I have told you that it is offensive to me, you must immediately halt your offensiveness-- for it is your morall (ethical?) duty not to be offensive to me.

Come now !!!

Suppose I claimed that God had spoken to me, and that he told me that if I gathered all the diamonds in the world, and put them in a big pile, there were be a new world in which everyone would be happy and live forever. Suppose that within a week I had 10,000,000 adherents, including Mr. Schuster. As Mr. Schuster now believed in my message, we can extrapolate, to my movement, what he has thus far said about mascots. It would, for Mr. Schuster, be offensive, ethically or morally, for people to retain their personal diamonds and thereby keep the world from happiness. Should I go to the queen of England and ask her for all her diamonds, and the diamonds of the crown jewels, according to Mr. Schuster's argument, all I should tell her was that it is morally (ethically?) offensive that she keeps the diamonds from me-- I need not even tell her that if she gives me the diamonds, all the world will be happy. Of course not, she has an obligation to turn them over to me because I am offended by her continued possession.

There is obviously no point in further dealing with the kinds of arguments Mr. Schuster makes. In what I most sincerely hope will be my final submission to this discussion, I shall show why, likely, Mr. Schuster and Ms. Morrigan have argued along the lines they chose. And here, indeed, are the factors which are likely to upset the American public-- which knows almost nothing of where such arguments are leading.

-- Melburn D. Thurman (posted 5/14, 10:10 a.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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