Negative Stereotypes

The most common myths throughout Douglass’s book are negative stereotypes of Indigenous people.

This section contains discussions of violence and strong language.  

An engraving from page 141 of Outdoor Life and Indian Stories, by Edward Ellis, 1912. Internet Archive, Public Domain.

These come in all forms: from images of violent evildoers to wild and animal-like to weak and pathetic. Sometimes, stereotypes are obvious. Words like “barbaric,” “savage,” or “uncivilized,” let you know you are running into nineteenth-century attitudes about Indigenous people, rooted in the desire to get rid of them for their land.

The word “savage” comes up nearly 40 times in Douglass’s book.

However, sometimes stereotypes are more complex. What about acts of violence, or mishaps? How harsh is too harsh? Where does description begin and stereotype end?  In this exhibit, we’ll focus on two cases: Indigenous vs. white violence, and tragic accidents involving Indigenous people.  

“Blood Called for Blood”

This illustration is of St. Clair’s defeat against tribes such as the Wyandotte, Shawnee, and Lenape in 1791. This was just one of many examples of violent conflicts between Indigenous and white settlers in Ohio. (St. Clair’s Defeat (1896), Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, Wikimedia, Public Domain).

While there were times of peace, as white settlement moved westward, Indigenous/white relations got violent. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, white settlers and Indigenous people fought over Ohio. With fertile ground and ample wildlife, it attracted white and Indigenous settlers alike. Both Indigenous and white people committed acts of violence.

However, local historians like Douglass show obvious bias when talking about these violent acts.

And, if you’ve read other sections of this exhibit, you already know where Douglass’s sympathies are. We will look at two incidences of violence: the Captain Fulkes Massacre in Wooster, and the Capture of Captain Crawford.

Captain Faulkes Gets Revenge

In the 1790s, a group of Indigenous men from the Sandusky area (the tribe is not specified) allegedly killed at least five settlers and burned seven dwellings in Pennsylvania. Local settlers begged Captain Faulkes, a scout for the United States, to get revenge.¹ David D. Bricker, “George Fulkes” 2000.  

According to Douglass’s account, Faulkes and a small band of men headed westward until they came upon a group of Indigenous men camped in Wooster, south of downtown. Fulkes’s men killed all 16 and buried them in a shallow grave. Both Fulkes and the Indigenous group, if Fulkes correctly identified them, committed violence, and Fulkes carried out an act of violent revenge.  

Captain Crawford on the Attack

Crawford’s mission with the United States Army was to destroy the Indigenous settlements in Sandusky to make more room for white settlement, according to Gen. Irvine’s instructions, directly quoted by Douglass.²Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio, 209. While he and his men were supposed to take a different route, they ended up traversing the rolling hills of Wayne County on one of the Indigenous-made trails. Once Crawford arrived in Sandusky, the Wyandot settlers, along with their Shawnee and Delaware allies, had already escaped. Crawford was captured, tortured, and killed days after the battle. Captain Pipe, a Delaware leader, and his family led the tortures.

The Delawares were still reeling from the Massacre of Gnadenhutten, an American attack on Christian Delaware settlements with 90 Delaware victims.³Hurt, The Ohio Frontier, 91-92 However, Douglass downplays this, going so far to call one of the men who committed the massacre, David Williamson, “brave.”⁴ Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio, 209. Douglass bases much of his description of this event on Consul Butterfield’s book on Crawford’s Campaign. Butterfield was also a lawyer who lived in Wisconsin and Ohio, and published his book on Crawford’s campaign in 1873.⁵Western Historical Company, History of Dane County, Wisconsin, 962.

These two events have similarities.

Both are conflicts are between white and Indigenous people in Ohio and both involve acts of revenge. How does Douglass respond? Who has the right, according to Douglass, to take revenge, and who does not? Let’s first compare how Douglass treats Fulkes, who sought revenge for the United States, and the Delawares, who sought revenge for their families.  

Benjamin Douglass on Captain Fulkes’s Revenge

Notice especially that Fulkes is celebrated for acts of violence, and Douglass argued that Fulkes had good reason to commit revenge. How would Douglass react if these acts of revenge were committed by Indigenous people?

Benjamin Douglass on Captain Pipe and the Delaware’s Revenge:

We see here that Douglass does not lend any of the same sympathy to the Delawares, although they very similarly sought revenge for past killings of their own people. Instead, Douglass’s portrayals rely on stereotypes that Indigenous people must be especially violent and evil.  We see the same difference in Douglass’s descriptions of Indigenous and white attacks:  

Benjamin Douglass on Captain Crawford’s Attack  

Image: Portrait of Crawford by Robert O. Chadeayne, 1870s-1910s. Wikimedia, US Public Domain.

Douglass on the Indigenous attack before the Fulkes Massacre:

“These remorseless devils and incarnate fiends...pounced upon them” 

Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878), 168

Benjamin Douglass assumes Indigenous guilt and draws a line in the sand.

He also makes no attempt to show his readers any motivation on the part of Indigenous people other than their inherent violence, while also glorifying Fulkes’s mission to exact revenge and Crawford’s mission to destroy the homes and livelihoods of Wyandot people.

Plus, he dismisses the reasons why Indigenous people engaged in violence against the United States and white settlers. Captain Pipe, for example, allied himself with the British as they warned him that Americans were set on killing his people and taking his lands, and massacres like the Gnadenhutten confirmed these suspicions. Other Indigenous people similarly felt threatened by white settlers who viewed all Indigenous people as a threat.⁶ Miller, “The Contested Ohio Country,” 50.

Rather than taking these concerns into account, Douglass assumes that Indigenous people are inherently violent and evil, which helps authors like Douglass make sweeping generalizations about all Indigenous people, even those who were not involved in these specific events:  

“We record our antipathy to the Indian…and announce our desire, in advance, for the advent of the day when…a thousand of their captors shall struggle to be the executioner of the last son of the tribes.”  

Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878), 220.

An engraving of the Pequot War from page 70 of Outdoor Life and Indian Stories, by Edward Ellis, 1912. Internet Archive, Public Domain. What does the artist want you to think about the Indigenous people in this image?

Douglass uses these stereotypes as an accusation against all Indigenous people, dehumanizes them, and calls for their total disappearance- by any means necessary. This allows for an easy way to make white settlement on Indigenous land seem justified, as well as any violence towards Indigenous people. 

Portrayals of Indigenous people as evil and violent date back to the early days of European settlement. For example, Puritan settlers in New England viewed the Pequot and other Indigenous groups as devil-like and wild, leading them to justify killing even women and children during the Pequot War of 1637.⁷Jentz, Seven Myths of Native American History, 27-28. In Ohio, white settlers blamed violence against their own on all Indigenous people. Such an incident is what led to the Massacre of Gnadenhutten, where 96 innocent Delaware people were murdered.⁸ Hixson, American Settler Colonialism, viii.

Later, these portrayals moved to textbooks, popular literature, and visual popular culture to justify Indigenous removal out west. As white settlers sought to go further west, popular press encouraged them to do so on the basis that Indigenous people were too “uncivilized” to deserve the land.⁹ Jentz, Seven Myths of Native American History, 45.

For hundreds of years, these stereotypes have had dire consequences for Indigenous people and led to their removal and loss of life. However, today, we have a chance to take a closer look at these misconceptions and consider the Indigenous perspective.  

Stereotypes of Laziness

In other cases, authors chose to portray Indigenous people as unintelligent rather than evil.  

For example, Douglass tells us about an explosion at Stibb’s Mill, that also doubled as a store, located in Wooster. The first person to describe this event was Henry Howe, who wrote a collection of county histories called Historical Collections of Ohio in 1848.

According to Howe and Douglass, the explosion was caused by Native American men who were smoking too closely to a barrel of gunpowder. Douglass and Howe mentioned that the group that these men belonged to (which is not specified) called a council to discuss the issue and seemingly make amends, but the results of this council are left off the historical record.  

While we can’t be too sure of what exactly happened, or who was at fault, Douglass again takes this example to make sweeping generalizations about all Indigenous people as stupid, clumsy, and unfit to remain on their lands:  

“A predatory, languid, wandering, lazy race, they have bequeathed no evidence of inventive genius, productive energy, enterprise or thrift.”  

Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878), 171.

Generalizing about Indigenous peoples’ intelligence served similar ends as making them out to be violent and evil: if white settlers could prove that Indigenous people were not “inventive” or intelligent enough to use the land in the ways that Europeans did, they could also prove that white settlers deserved it more.¹⁰Jentz, Seven Myths of Native American History, 23

Douglass even infuses negative stereotypes of Indigenous people into his conversations about pre-contact Indigenous cultures. For example, he claims that while the moundbuilders were “civilized” because they lived in one place and farmed, the contact-era Indigenous people were in:

” The period in which man lapsed into barbarism, and the spots which had been forest, then (perhaps) sacred monuments, and, thirdly, cultivated ground, lapsed into barbarism once more.”

Benjamin Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio (1878), 160.

Douglass’s comparisons between these two cultures ignore many important details. When Indigenous people were in Wayne County during the Contact Era, they were often on the move from forced removal. They also still maintained agricultural settlements and trade networks in places like Wayne County.

Stereotypes of Indigenous people as lazy, ignorant, and unintelligent can also be seen throughout media all the way through the twentieth century and today.¹¹Jentz, Seven Myths of Native American History, 40. Take this 1938 Popeye cartoon, titled “Big Chief Ugh-Amugh-Ugh” as an example. The main character speaks in broken English while being the butt of the jokes throughout the episode.

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