Charlot and American Indians and American Identities

Everything Charlot said was true. I sympathized with his greatly. He had to be a brave and intelligent man to know the doings of the whites and to speak out against them. He proves the whites wrong who call them savages because savages don't have morals and values, as the Indians showed the early settlers by showing them hospitality even though they came only to take. The Flatheads were a people of compromise. They abide by the reservations laws or peacefully resisted if they did not agree.

Charlot states that "To take and to lie should be burnt on his forehead" as he refers to the whites. This was a powerful statement and sums up the whites because all they did was lie about treaties and take the land, cattle, and possessions of the Indians and then request them to pay to live on these reservations. Not only did they take the physical things but they also took the history and traditions of the Indians. Their souls and spirits were taken along with the land that was given to them. The Indians harvested and were one with the earth, as mentioned in American Indians and American Identities. The whites wanted to take that away from them but wanted the Indians to show them how to become this was themselves. They didn't want to be Indians but wanted to have the knowledge and bond that they held about nature without giving credit to them.

Throughout this horrible journey, the Indians voices have never been fully heard and their stories have gone untold. They have been put in the past and only the whites stories about gaining the land that wasn't theirs have been told.