Looks at how newspapers and news-making practices shaped the representations of Native Americans.
Newspapers were a key source for popular opinion in the nineteenth century, and The Newspaper Indian is the first in-depth look at how newspapers and news-making practices shaped the representation of Native Americans, a contradictory representation that has carried over into our own time. John M. Coward examines seven decades of newspaper reporting, showing how journalism has perpetuated the many stereotypes of the American Indian.
Indians were not described on their own terms but by the norms of the white society that wrote and read about them. Coward looks at how Native Americans were representated (and misrepresented) in the media and shows how Americans turned native people into symbolic and ambiguous figures whose identities were used as a measure of American Progress.
A fascinating look at a nation and the power of its press, The Newspaper Indian demonstrates how images of Native Americans have been woven into the very fabric of American life.
