The Spaniard's policy was to baptize him, take his land,
enslave him, and appropriate his women. Any English-speaking
frontiersman who took up with the Indians was dubbed "squaw
man"--a term of sinister connotations. Despite pride in
descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of
such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-
Americans and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for
instance, with the interdicted crosses between white men and
black women. The Spaniards, on the other hand, crossed in
battalions with the Indians, generating _mestizo_ (mixed-
blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example.
As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have
in general absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian
culture--nothing at all comparable to the Uncle Remus stories
and characters and the spiritual songs and the blues music
from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his own grandpa
saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing raid
in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian
arrowheads; every section of the country has a bluff called
Lovers' Leap, where, according to legend, a pair of forlorn
Indian lovers, or perhaps only one of the pair, dived to
death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa Peak, Squaw Creek,
Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County, Indian
Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days.
Pages:
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65