Journal #5: Societal Reform

Both Lydia Sigourney’s “Indian Names” and William Apess’ “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for The White Man” exhibit an overall theme for societal reform, specifically to that of the treatment of the Native Americans. However, the two authors go at the issue differently. Sigourney seems to be more aggressive in her poem, while Apess’ work is more mild, but still gets his point across.

Lydia Sigourney’s “Indian Names” addresses the issue of how can the Native Americans be forgotten when many of their names are names for our land features? “but their memory liveth on your hills their baptisms on your shore,” How can we forget these people when their names are present in our daily lives? In a way, she is almost mocking the United States saying that if you really wanted to completely wipe out these people you wouldn’t use their names at all. “Your mountains build their monument, though ye destroy their dust,” Instead you raise up their names even though you’re destroying their very lives.

I can very much relate to this. I spent most of my life in a town called Okemos near Lansing, MI. The town was actually named after a chief of the Saginaw Chippewa tribe named John Okemos. We also have a middle school called Chippewa and a river called the Saginaw River. However I did not learn all of these names were after Native Americans until about the seventh or eigth grade.

William Apess takes a very different approach to try to bring this issue of societal reform to the “white man’s” attention. Being raised in a white family’s home, Apess takes an approach that is more of an “I want to say something, but I don’t want you to get angry,” tone. Almost like he wants to give his opinion, but is almost too shy to. He wants more to be accepted by the white people than stand up for his own race. However, he does get his point of treating the Native Americans equally, across and he does it in a rather biblical way. He uses the example of how Jesus Christ was born a Jew so he was of color. However, he did not judge on color, but on “the hearts” of men. Apess devotes a whole paragraph and a half to different scripture backing up his point of “love thy neighbor as thyself.” This is very significant because the major religion in that day and age was Christianity.

Even though Lydia Sigourney and William Apess had different means of getting to the point of treating the American Indians as everyone else, the point is that they got there. All people, no matter their color, should be treated equally.