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[[File:Playing_Indian.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300080670/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0300080670&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=a6aa91ef1bac6a98a4df201221a41366 Playing Indian]</i> by Philip Deloria]]Philip DelorisDeloria's <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300080670/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0300080670&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=a6aa91ef1bac6a98a4df201221a41366 Playing Indian]</i> seeks to explain why white Americans have consistently mimicked or played Indian for the past two hundred fifty years. Deloria sought attempts to untangle the various reasons for this “persistent tradition in American culture.” (Deloria, 7.) Americans, according to Deloria, have usually played Indian to order define “themselves as a nation.” (Deloria, 5.) As an amalgamation of various European and African immigrants and Native Americans, the United States had an understandably unclear and muddled national identity. White Americans, Deloria suggests, sought to create something uniquely American. One of the key ways they accomplished this was by appropriating Indian dress and traditions to fashion and inspire a separate and distinct American character. While the specific rationale behind playing Indian changed from generation to generation, Americans adopted various aspects of Indian culture to aid them in this quest. While White Americans saw the utility in adopting some aspects of Indian culture, they struggled with whether they should only adopt the mythical and stereotypical perceptions of Indian society or if they should try accurately portray Native Americans.
Attempts by White Americans to precisely portray Indians often brought Americans into contact with real Indians who often challenged their preconceived notions of Indianness and even undermined their national identity creation efforts. Deloria’s book presents a unique explanation for the creation of the American national identity, but his conclusion is debatable and unverifiable. Some key questions need to be asked to assess the merits of his work: Has he misread the intentions or reasons why White Americans played Indian? Has he conflated a relatively innocuous and meaningless practice into a quest for an American identity? Does the trend spotted by Deloria represent mainstream efforts at identity creation or do these individuals represent a less significant attempt at creating a national identity?
Deloria’s argument that the literary society’s adoption of Indian identity was a concerted attempt to create a new national literature is unassailable. It is difficult to disagree with his premise that playing Indian was perceived by Morgan and other literary types as useful way to define America’s soul. Still, Deloria fails to address whether the work of the Red Man or New Confederacy groups beliefs influenced mainstream America. Unlike the Tammany groups, these literary societies would have little appeal outside the intelligentsia. Additionally, Deloria believes that Morgan and his colleagues failed to make any lasting contributions to American literature. Therefore, it is difficult to suggest that these men’s views should be included in a discussion in the national identity of America because their direct impact seems somewhat limited. It may more difficult to evaluate the importance of Deloria’s next example - the Camp Fire Girls.
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Ernest Thompson Seton and Dan Beard created the Boy Scouts at the start of the twentieth century to ensure the masculinity and American identity for boys who they believed were threatened by “an effeminate, postfrontier urbanism.” Each man had different ideas were drawn to very different ideas of what constituted the American identity. Seton believed boys should acquire this identity by studying trees, flowers, nature and playing Indian. Beard envisioned a society for boys that emphasized America’s frontier past, the history of white Americans and military order. Unsurprisingly, over time Seton’s and Beard’s conception of the appropriate education for American boys forced Seton to leave the Boy Scouts a few years after it was chartered. Beard did not believe that Seton’s nature programs created sufficiently masculine boys.
While Deloria believes that White Americans have played Indian to both create and reshape their existence as Americans, it is not entirely clear at the end of his book how big a role these peculiar practices have played in defining a unique White American identity. Have these practices by White Americans helped shape this identity or have they only fiddled with the margins? The most convincing argument Deloria makes in his book is that playing Indian helped Indians reassert control over their communities and culture by sparking Indian separatism in the 1960s and 1970s. Ultimately, it is utterly impossible to determine what role, if any, playing Indian has had in shaping America’s identity.
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====Related DailyHistory.org Articles===={{#dpl:category=Book Review|ordermethod=firstedit|order=descending|count=7}}</div>[[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:Historiography]] [[Category:United States History]] [[Category:Native American History]]
