Otis How Does James Otis\'s

Otis

How does James Otis's opinion of Native Americans compare with what your history text (The American People: Creating a Nation & Society, 7th Edition) tells you about Europeans first ideas about them?

James Otis was one of the most radical voices propelling public opinion to support the American colonist's movement towards independence from the British Crown. He proclaimed freedom and liberty as the natural rights of all human beings. However, as a politician with a substantial working-class base of support, in contrast to some of the more aristocratic Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Otis was not a supporter or even a sympathizer towards Native American rights. On one hand, when condemning the Stamp Act, Otis invoked Native Americans as kind of natural persons, noting that even so-called ignorant savages would comprehend that the colonist's rights were being violated. But this attitude merely highlights the fact that Otis did not see American territory as in any way contested, or potentially divided between the rights of the colonists and the land's original inhabitants.

Much as noted in The American People, Otis implicitly subscribed to the idea that because the savages were not literate in a European sense and did not seem to claim ownership of the land in a legal fashion, the European colonists had a greater right to the American territory. He saw the colonists as civilized and living in a law-abiding and property-owning society in the way that Native Americans did not. Thus, even if Otis proclaimed the right of self-determination of the colonists in a way that was based upon natural rights and the natural integrity of all persons, regardless of the will of the British sovereign King George, the inherent rights of human beings to life, liberty, and property did not extend to the property claims of Native Americans upon the land who resided outside of the European legal system. Otis saw Indians through the lenses of past American conflicts, such as the French and Indian war, rather than as noble savages or potential sources of trade or missionary 'targets' like some of the initial European explorers.