Analysis of Yuchi’s “Creation of the Whites”

In the tale of “Creation of the Whites” by Yuchi I was very intrigued while reading, however it didn’t make sense to me why such a tale would draw my attention, you see usually I’m not one to enjoy tales like that, I tend to stick to the more to the facts. This could be due to the fact that sciences are more of the type of classes I tend to enjoy. This story however interested me; it was so unusual and went against everything I had been taught from elementary school and up. In elementary school I was taught that at first the Indians didn’t want anything to do with the incoming American’s and that they had been somewhat hostile, they didn’t actually help until it came down to a life or death situation and that’s where our tale of the first Thanksgiving comes into play because that’s when the Indians finally taught us how to live off the land and our fist harvest was thanksgiving, yet throughout my years of schooling Indians were essentially called savages even when others have hard the other side of the story (the Indians side) but Americans are always right, correct? Well no, but that seems to be the way we act. In Yuchis tale it shows that at first when the Americans first came it was just a few, “then a person emerged from the sea foam and crawled out upon the log. He was seen sitting there. Another person crawled up, on the other side of the log. It was a woman.” (Yuchi, pg1) Once these few people found the land they went back and retrieved more people to see this great land. “In about a year they returned, and there were a great many of them.” (Yuchi,pg1) However the new voyager left again why, the tale doesn’t say perhaps to tell more people about the new land and confirm that it was real. They did return again though with even more people and tried to communicate with the Indians. There was a language barrier but this story describes the Indians being intelligent and discovering a way to communicate. “They approached the Indians and asked if they could come ashore. They said “yes”’(Yuchi,pg1) this also shows that the Indians were welcoming. “ they had a box with them and they asked the Indians for some earth to fill it, it was given to them as they desired” (Yuchi, pg1)this shows that the Indians were also generous. Perhaps this is something that intrigued me, perhaps this is just the author’s view because everything I have learned since I was a youngling could not be wrong, then I started thinking about second stories and how every side has its own view and realized this is part of the Indians view then I kept reading. “…the white men planted seed in them and many things were raised.” (Yuchi, pg1) this was confusing to me at first until I realized that the white men were testing the land to see if it was fertile which was quite intelligent on their part. “After they had taken away the shallow box, the whites came back and told the Indians that their land was very strong and fertile. So they asked the Indians to give them a portion of it so that they might live on it. The Indians agreed to do it.” (Yuchi, pg1) This shows again how the author views the Indians as being very generous, kind, and intelligent. This tale also in a twisted way describes the Americans as greedy, they showed up and took took took without giving back to the Indians. This is a great example of how there are two sides to every story.