Ramsey County History – Fall 1965: “Foolish and Childlike or Fierce and Savage? St. Paul’s Early Settlers and the Indians Among Them”

Foolish and Childlike or Fierce and Savage? St. Paul’s Early Settlers and the Indians Among Them
Author: Edward J. Lettermann

“In the history of America, the relationship of white man to Indian has swung wildly between cordial and aggressively hostile. . . . Whites seem to regard the Indians alternately as foolish children and fearsome savages. . . . In the St. Paul of 100 years ago these attitudes showed clearly in what was written about the Indians of the area by the men and women who knew them ….” The author draws upon early sources for an array of attitudes toward the mostly Dakota people who lived near and visited St. Paul. These materials portrayed Native Americans as, alternatively, shrewd traders, drunks, beggars, stoics, providers of staple goods, trustworthy, thieving, and comical.
PDF of Lettermann article