Political Cartoonists Seem Confused About Native Americans, Settlers, and Immigrants
For the last few years, I’ve been bothered by a certain reoccurring theme in political cartoons—the connecting of Native Americans’ relationship with the settlement of the United States to present-day debates over immigration.
I know this is a well-worn trope among American political cartoonists, since it goes back at least as far as 1898:
The caption says “Where Would We Be? — If the Real Americans had held [Henry Cabot] Lodge’s view of immigration there would be no Lodge Bill now — nor anything else.”
It’s extremely easy to find more recent examples, especially in the last few years, given the ongoing global refugee crises and Trump’s immigration rhetoric frequently in the news. Here are just a few of them:
All of these cartoons make a comparison between the arrival of European settlers in North America and the arrival of immigrants to the United States today. Some make their setting the settlers’ first arrival (usually Plymouth Rock or the Puritans’ first arrival), and some make their setting the present day—although the Natives in the cartoons are always wearing stereotypical clothing of some kind or another. Of course, the cartoonist has to make sure the message is as obvious as possible to the average American newspaper reader.
Whenever I first saw this kind of cartoon—back when I was in high school or maybe in college—I bought into the message right away. It appealed to me to criticize anti-immigration views as seemingly hypocritical according to history. I was raised in a family that always esteemed immigration, where my parents and relatives talked all the time about our ancestors’ stories, coming from England, France, Ireland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden.
As I made it through my last years of college, my first years of teaching, and into the Trump era, however, I grew much more uncomfortable with these cartoons whenever I saw them. I knew something just wasn’t right, although I never took the time to articulate why—until now.
1. What’s the point?
It strikes me that I can’t even tell for sure what side of the immigration issue these cartoonists lie on. I’m forced to conclude that there are two drastically different interpretations one could have:
Option A: If Native Americans had limited European settlement the way some people talk about limiting immigration today, the United States as we know and appreciate it today never would have existed. That shows we should continue to welcome new immigrants.
Option B: European settlers really did destroy Native American cultures and societies. That shows that we should have stronger limits on immigration today to prevent such destructive possibilities.
Take a look again at all four of the cartoons above and tell me that it isn’t possible to interpret all of them in either of those diametrically-opposed directions.
I get the impression that most—if not all—of the cartoonists are really aiming for Option A, just like the 1898 cartoon I first cited. However, even though I personally adhere to pro-immigration politics, I think that Option B is a far more logical and historically accurate point to make.
It is also possible that some of these cartoonists don’t intend to make a political point in one direction or the other at all, and merely intend to poke fun at historical parallels or perhaps spark conversation. That’s a pretty charitable take, though. More likely, the cartoonists were too lazy to consider the faulty logic behind their pieces, or too unwilling to part with such an easy (and clearly overused) political point.
There are more serious reasons to be wary of these cartoons, though.
2. Settlement ≠ Immigration
These cartoons all commit a grave historical fallacy by drawing parallels between historical European settlement of the Americas and present-day immigration to the United States. Above all else, there is one thing to keep in mind:
Settlers are not immigrants.
The first Europeans to arrive in the Americas were never immigrants. They did not travel across the Atlantic in order to become citizens of another country, assent to its laws, and join its culture. Indeed, they most often crossed the ocean at the behest of the country they were born in, or merely sought its approval and protection for what was otherwise intended to be an independent venture.
The Puritans weren’t attracted to the New World because of economic opportunities offered by the Wampanoag, nor did the Jamestown colonists plan to become civic participants in the Powhatan Confederacy. While there are examples of Europeans who decided to forsake their mother countries and were adopted into Native American societies, those examples are few, and few if any of those Europeans likely intended to “immigrate” into Native societies when they first crossed the ocean.
Even after the establishment of initial European colonies in the Americas, the arrival of new migrants onto Native lands was virtually never an act of true immigration. Instead, it was invasion. My ancestors may have been immigrants when they debarked from their ships in the United States and Canada, but when they bought or were granted stolen Native lands, they became settlers.
The fact is, would-be immigrants to the United States in the 21st century live in an entirely different world than settlers of the past. The intent of today’s immigrants is to live safer and richer lives as U.S. citizens, not create a new colony or exploit untapped resources. They have no opportunity to homestead or take land away from this country’s current inhabitants. The potential problems today’s immigrants may pose to American society are of an entirely different in nature from the genuine destruction that settlers wrought on indigenous peoples.
I think it’s time we end the trope of connecting historical settlement to present immigration. Call out the lazy cartoonists. Send your friends a link to this article whenever they make a poor analogy. Strive to discuss both the history of America’s settlement and present immigration policies in an intelligent, well-informed way—but probably not at the same time.
