The Beginnings of Multicultural America – IDST 2315
Mary Magoulick
Source: Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
SECTIONS INCLUDED on this page
| From Removal to Reservation | |
| The Origins of Slavery | The Southwest |
Settlers try to make America in own image (“New England”)
Conscious of perils of frontier, foreigners, aliens; want to tame/subdue wilderness
RACE = social construction to set apart “minorities” from Europeans
Columbus (& others): SEARCH FOR WEALTH; sponsored by wealthy to produce / find more wealth.
RACE becomes social construction to set apart “minorities” - European assumption of rights + greed
Indian (Caliban)/ Other = savage, cruel, barbarous, treacherous, devil, cannibal, bloody, wild, beast, vile, libidinous, brutish, sexual, uncivilized, “natural slaves,” animals
1607—Virginia Company—120 colonists (business ventureà plantations trading w/ Europe)
1620—Mayflower drops anchor in Plymouth Harbor—102 men; < ½ = Puritans; rest = business men
within 20 years, 20,000 more English colonists arrive
TWO REASONS FOR COMING TO NEW WORLD: GREED & HOPE FOR A BETTER LIFE
(Some come educated w/idealistic hopes of better society, many others’ primary motivation is greed)
Dispossession needed to take over “new” world for either goal: requires misrepresentation or “racialization of savagery” = heathenism, laziness, savagery seen as inborn (a matter of race)
By 1616 – rampant epidemics depopulate “new world” (Bradford says it’s “the will of God”)
Need “OTHER” to confirm identity (in new world) according to what one is NOT
In typical European conception: Black = foul, stained, dirty, dark, deadly, malignant, sinister, wicked, brutish, vile, without god or law vs. White = purity, innocence, goodness
1619 – 1st 20 Africans sold to colonists in Virginia by Dutch slavers, as INDENTURED SERVANTS (not slaves) (bound by 4-7 year contract); most indentured servants were White
VIRGINIA WEST INDIES (Barbados)
1650 – 300 Africans (2% of total pop of 15,000) 1645 – 5,000 Africans
1675 – 1600 Black (5% of total pop of 32,000) 1660 – 20,000 Black (=majority)
1700 – 9,000 – 20,000 Black (of 63,000)
1715 – 25% = Black; 1750 – 40% = Black
By 1643 – Blacks given harsher sentences (more often degraded to condition of servitude for life)
1660’s – official slavery begins (by 1650’s 70% Blacks in Virginia were serving as slaves)
1661 – Virginia Assembly makes slavery a LAW
1669 – Virginia Assembly makes slaves = property
Why 50 years between introduction of African “servants” and move to official slavery?
TURNED to blacks after 1676 because of “Giddy Multitude” =freed Whites competing for land, feel discontented, duped = volatile, unruly
OTHER REASONS to increase # of slaves:
By 1700 – 50% work force = black slaves (increasingly subordinated to prevent assembly/revolt)
New World: abundance of uncultivated land (Jefferson’s
vision: independent yeoman farmers)
Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin
“Money had become the nexus of social relations.”
CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS à greater multiculturalism still
1860 – new economy West – grain, livestock
East – manufacture, commerce
South – cotton
Cotton production – needed Indian land & Black labor (major cotton-producing states carved out of Indian land in Alabama, Mississippi, & Louisiana) à tribes forced to cede lands and move west
Market opened way for more multiculturalism (challenges Jefferson’s vision of “homogeneous” America & Franklin’s society of “the lovely White”)
· Irish came as laborers; women worked in textile mills of New England using fabric made from cotton grown on former Indian land and picked by enslaved blacks
· War vs. Mexico with annexation of the Southwest territories; Mexican workers shipped hides from California for Irish men to make shoes in factories
· Expansion à Asian and Chinese immigrants who, with Irish laid the transcontinental railroad tracks that closed the frontier and changed forever the lives of Indians in the West
· All fastened together by the economy
“The very boundlessness of this racial and ethnic diversity generated a need to reinforce interior borders. This dilemma of preserving racial homogeneity while becoming a multicultural society perplexed the policymakers of the new nation” – esp. concerned about Blacks and Indians.
1803 Jefferson sees INDIANS as problematic; must be assimilated or removed
ANDREW JACKSON
§ Uproots 70,000 Indians to West of Mississippi River
1830 – Indian Removal Law works by land-allotment or treaty (see class overhead)
1871 – Indian Appropriation Act (no Indian Tribe recognized as independent nation, tribe, or power) = no more treaties (tribes do not exist politically)
White progress = Indian death (railroad; loss of buffalo)
Land
Allotment
Treaty
Instituted by Jefferson (Chocktaws)
Instituted by Jackson (for Cherokees)
1805 -- reserved tracts of land for
individual
1829 -- Law give state authority over Cherokees
Chocktaws to
transform them into
farmers
John Ross -- leader of majority
System worked well until whites wanted
land
John Ridge -- leader of minority
Gov't offers to buy land -- Chocktaws
refuse
(cooperates with government)
Gov't tell them fed forces will destroy
them
Ross & Cherokees protest (new treaty is breaking
1830 -- Treaty of Dancing Rabbit
Creek
(federal law)
Some Chocktaws stayed and were
tricked
Gov't conspires with minority faction (Ridge)
Whites squatted and took over their
property
"False" treaty ratified by Congress & relied upon
Chocktaws felt "hedged in by 2 evils" and had
to
Land ceded -- Whites move in
choose the
lesser
1838 -- Cherokees refuse to leave
They move West to "Indian
Territory"
Hunted by soldiers, rounded up (dragged from
homes, forced on march West, property taken)
1/4 (4,000) die on the "Trail of Tears"
By 1840’s – great cities with many factories and workshops (in East)
~ war vs. Mexico à American expansionist thrust celebrated as “Manifest Destiny”
1542 – first expedition to California (Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo sails along coast)
1769 – Juipero Serra founds the mission of San Diego de Alcala
most settlers are from Mexico (desperately poor, mestizo)
1821 – 3000 Mexicans (Mexico becomes independent country) in CA
Americans find Mexicans “idle, thriftless”vs “Yankees” = industrious, frugal, sober, enterprising
1840’s – more Yankees driven to West by dreams of wealth & land ownership
key objective of Mex./Am. War was to annex California (begins in Texas)
1820’s Americans settle in Texas, many = slaveholders from the South in search of new lands for cotton
1836 = war (Ams begin armed insurrection at San Antonio mission = Alamo – 175 Texas rebels)
Santa Anna leads Mexican soldiers, who kill most rebels (incl. Jim Bowie & Davie Crockett)
San Jacinto – Sam Houston counter-attacks – leads methodical slaughter (630 Mexs, 2 Am dead)
1845 – Santa Anna cedes Texas à “Lone Star Republic” reflects “glory on Anglo-Saxon race”
à bad diplomatic relations with Mexico à border disputes à brutal, unrestrained military campaign
1848 – horror ends w/ treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; Mex. Cedes SW territories for $15 million U.S. sees it as providence opening way for multiplying millions = manifest destiny (divine)
Belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority (a la Franklin “lovely white”& Jefferson homogeneity)
Men claim “their sexual attractiveness to Mex. Women was god-given (see poem p. 177)
“Occupied Mexico” -- 1000’s Mexicans suddenly find selves inside US (hated) politically vulnerable & powerless (in Ca. outnumber Anglos 10 to 1 until gold is discovered at John Sutter’s mill)
1849 – Anglo pop. = 100,000 vs 13,000 Mexicans (most in Southern CA)