Imagery of the Indian

As a child, I adored the movie Pocohontas.  I could watch it over and over again, singing along at every song.   I wanted to be Pocohontas: to dive off the waterfall and wear her awesome necklace.   History class began to darken my concept of the Disney film as I learned of the early settler's brutality towards the Native Americans, and, eventually, the factual liberties taken with the popular Disney movie.   Deloria's "Playing Indian"  added yet another layer to my insight, addressing an issue which I had seen countless times throughout my life, but had not paid much attention to: the Native American as a symbol in white American culture.  A quote which struck me was within the introduction of the reading, which stated, "Savage Indians served Americans as oppositional figures against whom one might imagine a civilized national self."   Connecting this to the images found in Groseclose's "Nineteenth-Century American Art,"  I indeed found popular images of the Indian to display the idea of the dangerous and exotic.  An Indian woman holding the severed arm of an ememy exceedingly muscular men and women give way to more feminine, sensual depictions fo the Indian, from Columbia to Lady Liberty.  Even these softer, more European portrayals of the Native Americn maintain a sense of the wild, as can be seen in the feathered, war-like cap atop Lady Liberty's head.  I connected this wish for the exotic and dangerous as a personification of both the fears and hopes of the settlers as they arrived in America.  When we discussed the Puritans, we spoke often of their fear of nature and, in some sense, the unknown.  They drew into their own, inclusive society as a survival technique in an unknown world.  The Indian was a visual and physical representation of their fears: a scapegoat and a reminder of the work that had to be done to recreate a society similar in terms of comfort to the one they had known in England.   They represented not only the danger of their new life, but also the excitement that could be found in conquering and succeeding at their endeavors in the New World.   Ini some respects, I was not surprised to find references the continued use of this symbol today, despite the United States' status as a highly developped nation.   Even in commercial products we hold unto the symbol of the Native American, such as on Land O'Lakes butter.   It serves as a reminder of the excitement of the American Dream: to conquer the unknown, to live in excitement, and to venture boldly in new directions.  However, the Indian as a symbol is not the Native American's self-image.  It is the white man's American Dream, leaving those upon whom it relies in the corner, waiting for their turn to dream.