来自：查字典高考网 2014-12-25
Native Americans in the popular imagination
An American tradition dating back to early times is *Thanksgiving. When the English arrived in Jamestown many died during the long cold winter, but in the following spring Native Americans showed them what local foods they could eat. In the autumn, well-prepared for the winter, settlers and Native Americans had a special dinner together, the first Thanksgiving, to thank God and the Native Americans for all the food they had.
Another story describes how the Native American princess *Pocahontas saved the life of John *Smith, the leader in Jamestown, when her father, *Powhatan, wanted to kill him. She later married another Englishman, John Rolfe, and went to England with him. The story of Pocahontas is widely known and many Americans are proud to have her as an ancestor.
But Native Americans were more often seen by white settlers as the enemy. *Westerns, i.e. films and books about the *Wild West, use the threat from Indians as their central theme. In this context Native Americans are still called Indians. Children often play cowboys and Indians and pretend to kill each other. When *Buffalo Bill, began touring the US with his Wild West show, the chief Sitting Bull was one of many Native Americans in it, and many people went to see this former great enemy.
Many Americans have an image of a typical Indian, a chief who lived in a teepee with his squaw (= wife), smoked a peace pipe after signing a treaty with the white man (whom he called pale face), sent smoke signals to communicate with people far away, and spoke broken English full of colourful expressions such as big heap wampum (a lot of money) and speaks with forked tongue (is lying). Most of these ideas have some basis in Native American culture, but it is wrong to put them all together and believe that that was how Native Americans lived.
Americans make such mistakes because they have little interest in Native Americans. Having succeeded in pushing them out of the way onto reservations, most Americans ignore them. This may be because the Native Americans who are left are living proof of a hard truth: America wants to be, and often is, a land where everyone has a chance and where the government behaves fairly and honestly to all, but this America is built on land stolen from the people who lived there first.
【托福(toefl)阅读考试知识(十八)】相关文章：
[标签：海外留学,语言考试,托福,,]
美术联考用纸上海考试模拟试卷纸高考统考纸 4k水粉纸素描纸 速写纸卡纸美术模拟测试试卷纸 美术考试专用纸
视频|2019全国高考今日开考: 语文特级教师评析上海卷高考作文
2019全国高考志愿填报攻略 第50集 天津市高考历史三年本科录取排名
创艺第二届：2019届高考录取表彰大会暨“核桃音乐节”合影——你只管努力，剩下的交给创艺
沈阳音乐学院郎亦农教授的女高音高考曲目解析课程 第1集 沈阳音乐学院郎亦农为你讲解女高音高考曲目
张雪峰高考志愿填报指南 第28集 高考志愿分析，材料科学与工程专业，就业很一般，建议慎重选择
