Engl50-visuall analysis of bad indians PDF

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Noah Colby ENGL50 Professor A 03 September 2020 Visual Analysis of Bad Indians In her book Bad Indians, Deborah Miranda uses narrative, poetry, and photos to describe the horrors placed upon the native peoples in the Americas by European colonization. An image that particularly resonated with me is the one on page 28 and shows a Spaniard holding an Indian by the hair as he flogs him. The drawing is bitterly simple in its illustration, which highlights how helpless these natives were upon arrival of the Spanish. Including this image details the specifics of the manner in which the native people were beat, broken, and killed against their own will. Miranda doesn’t sugarcoat her ancestor’s history, as doing so, she describes, would enable the rewritten side of Native American history. The artist behind the image used perspective and proportional disparity to illustrate how much dominion the Spaniards had over the Natives. The Spaniard that is shown whipping the Natives is drawn to be much larger than either of the Indians waiting in line to be whipped. This contrast of size shows the power disparity Miranda describes, working to expose the abuse of power these colonists subjected the Natives to. He stands taller upright and takes up significantly more space than any one of the natives. This comparison implies the difference in social status between the Native people and colonized Spanish (these social differences were created completely by

colonists). The Spaniard holds one of the natives by his hair; this particular native drawn in such a way that he is much smaller than any other person in the image. Also, his stature appears deformed, his torso mutilated, and his arms completely crossing one another. These distortions show visually the brutality the Spaniards inflicted among the native people and the suffering these Natives underwent. Adding to the idea of size disparity, the whip the Spaniard is holding is noticeably large compared to any of the people, especially the natives. The size of the whip creates a menacing scene as it is understood that each of these natives will soon be struck multiple times by the Spaniard. In the context of the book, this image takes on a deeper and more personal meaning to Miranda as a reference to the overall injustice of the conquest of native land by colonial Europeans. The body language and confinement of the two Natives lined up to be tortured next is also indicative of the overall message about the Spaniard’s handling of them. Again, this comparison also implies the difference of social status between native people and colonized Spanish. The Indians are tied up with ropes that are tight around their necks and wrists, literally being denied any sense of human rights. As described in the text, their crime is likely nothing other than defiance to Spanish rule, either refusing to assimilate, or in a more formal manner. The narrative within Bad Indians makes it clear, however, that punishment to the Indians was something that came mostly from their unwillingness to cooperate with the colonists ‘iron fists.’ They were shackled as if they committed some despicable act of crime, but the possibility is much greater than likely that the punishment does not fit the crime. Ironically, the very people that put the

shackles on the Indians are the ones that are committing the wicked acts of murder and theft. Altogether, the simplicity of the drawing is misleading as it holds a much deeper meaning than its style suggests. The reason Miranda chose to include such an image is to bring to light how Spaniards maltreated the Natives, which is further supported by the fact that the artist was also a Native. The image literally depicts the brutal treatment of Indians by Spaniards, but the artist purposely tells a metaphor of the conquest story at large. The artist uses the details described previously to reflect the inescapable captivity the Natives were brought into during European colonialism of the Americas....