Investigating Representations of Indians

According to Google the definition of savage means fierce, violent, or uncontrolled in its adjective form. When it is used as a noun it means a member of a group of uncivilized or primitive people.

In the online textbook archives Indians were not seen as great people. The textbook describes them as a copper-brown color and as if they were some type of strange creature that did not belong in the New World. The Northmen also known as the vikings traded with the Indians for skins and furs. The word savage is used to describe the Indians alike they are animals.

If I were an American students reading this I would think that the Indians were horrible people and just wanted to kill everyone they came into contact with. The word savage makes them seem vicious and relentless almost like a character from a movie.

News About Indians Analysis

In the Las Vegas Gazette in New Mexico on March 1, 1873 an article was written in the newspaper discussing views of handing the Indians over the the War Department. The views of respecting the Indians and there matters was a sensitive topic when the discussion happened but obviously the issue is still controversial in 1873 as most of the page is covered with this story.


A very horrible event of a store blowing up happened yesterday in a small town outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico. This could have been prevented but the man to blame for this act was too stupid to think what he was doing and where he was. The  story goes that a man was loading a gun over a canister of gun powder in his shop while smoking a pipe, several people were injured due to this ridiculous man. How are people so stupid these days and lack so much common sense? At home news doesn't become much brighter. Two meat shops are going out of business and the ads in the newspaper don't say a whole lot so money must be limited for them. This week has been quite terrifying for most people, a soldier was court-martialed because he was scared of ghosts at his command post where he was supposed to stand. His punishment was to give up $10 of his monthly pay for three months. I know that this town can be quite frightening and have a lot of scary acts but I have gotten used to them, except for one. A young colored servant girl tried to cut off the nose and fingers of the mistress's daughter. I can see why the finger might be one to cut off but a nose? Why would you cut off a nose? Luckily the daughter didn't lose and fingers and still has her nose thanks to the timely arrival of the mother. Though the daughter was saved the mother might have just lost her sense of safety and security of her home. The servant girl attacked the mother brutally and furiously when she came to save her daughter. This town is so crazy that there are usually more stories than this in the paper, but since today's paper was mostly covered by that stupid discussion of respecting Indians there were not many stories to be told. It's tragic to hear all of these stories but they are so wild and fun to read that I look forward to reading them in the Las Vegas Gazette.

Deep Thinking

"Our use of social media for news is selective and intentional so that we may tend to remain interested only in things that we already interested in. On the other hand professional news outlets like newspapers expose readers to information on a broad range of topics this helps me to see what other people are interested in or think what it is important ."

Newspaper Homework Research

3. Newspaper - a publication that appears regularly and frequently and also discusses news on various current events.

4. The first ancestor of the modern newspaper was circulated in Venice during the sixteenth century.

5. The first U.S. printed news report was a description of an earthquake in Guatemala in 1541. This paper was also printed in Mexico.

6. On the Wall Street Journal of October 15, 2015 some of the leading headlines are that the White House has a new plan to ease tension in the Middle East and the democrats are trying to persuade Vice President Joe Biden to run for President.

7. A newspaper of record is a major paper and in  the act of gathering news is a professional job and is usually authoritative. In 1913 the New York Times became the nation's first newspaper of record and today the Wall Street Journal could also be considered a newspaper of record.

8. Newspapers were popular when social media was not in existence. Putting in business advertisements, announcing weddings, deaths, births, and divorce is something that is just done on social media today. By putting these in newspapers people were forced to outside of a home to gossip and even get opinions on current events. Today we send links and talk about top headlines in apps and the information is also susceptible to change. When social media didn't exist people couldn't just cross something out and tell another person their correction. Newspapers were the only reliable source of information and it also helped humans develop social and communicative skills that the generations of today lack.

Quarter 1 Reflections

During the first quarter I have better informed and added more to my knowledge of US history. I have learned about slavery before but not all of it, and I now know why. We always hear about how bad slavery was but never really got the idea of it. Watching movies in class about the Civil War and Slavery helped me truly understand how bad of a time period that was. In 12 Years a Slave, the story of Solomon Northup almost made me feel like I was living through that part of history. Learning about the West and doing the reading questions also helped me retain the history of the West.

            The in class essay on the two films we watched challenged my skills of paraphrasing. When I first heard and learned how to properly paraphrase I thought that it would be so difficult but it turns out that it wasn’t. I realized I just had to say where I got the information from and what the source of the information said. We also talked about how empathy is a factor in how history was made.  Empathy and the understanding of a situation changes how people act and can seem silly now that we look back on the history of certain times.