1 John 4:21

Mary Brave Bird, a famous Native American, once said “The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies.” “An Indian’s Looking Glass for the White Man” and “Indian Names,” both written in the late 1800’s, magnify a central theme of Native American mistreatment in the United States by the white man and focuses more importantly on the unnoticed gifts that the Native Americans prized America. Apess highlights the fact that “Christian” white men are mistreating the “red-faced” Native Americans because they are following the guidelines of the Bible, yet the Native Americans “cannot enjoy their rights and privileges as the whites do, they are not protected in their persons and property...are disenfranchised from all their rights just because their skin is not white.” Had I been a white person reading this in the late 1800’s, I would have been utterly shocked by the point that Apess makes in his writing. He is not blaming the white’s nor “raising his voice” in an argumentative manner, he is “not speaking for office, but merely placing before you the black inconsistency that you have placed before me.” In sum, Apess addresses the injustice toward Native Americans by white Christians despite the fact that “men of a different skin are so despised, and the white’s are acting so contrary to the Gospel.” Similarly, in the writing by Sigourney, she addresses the same aspect of mistreatment toward Native Americans in a different light. Instead, she implies that the Native Americans that are being killed and mistreated in the United States are the reason why the United States is ultimately so successful. Like we have studied previously, Native Americans were the first people on our land and learned how to cultivate and survive on that land. Sigourney writes, “That ‘mid the forests where they roamed/These rings no hunter’s shout; But their name is on your waters/Ye may not wash it out...Your mountains build their monument/Though ye destroy their dust.” Therefore, the message in this poem is that, although you are destroying the lives and land of the Native Americans, their name, hard work, and dedication marked the territory of the United States. White Christians may have been “following the word of God” and putting themselves above Native Americans hierarchically, but there were still “fellow citizens, who advocate our cause daily” (Apess).