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gender diversity occurring in John Cooper and Catarina de Escobar serves as the basic foundation of their making perception about the Indians.
4.2.2.1 Uncivilized
History told that when the Old World met the New World, the dissimilarities between these two worlds were palpable. Unger 1982 says that
Europe in seventeenth to nineteenth centuries had already developed into monarch civilizations with elaborated technologies, clothing, food production, knowledge,
family structures, farming, and weaponry. Nevertheless, America was still almost entirely a wilderness with very little civilization in some regions; regarding the
advanced Indian Tribes like the Inca and the Aztecs in Southern America. The rest of the inhabitants, especially the North American Indians, were still living
unstructured pp. 45-46. The customs and rules were upheld as in tribal ways accordingly. There was no unified law embracing the whole regions as it was in
the European countries. One of the significant factors that contrive the idea of civilization was
religion; where the governmental structure and education also contributed the sense of civilization. Nevertheless, the laws and the customs of the New World
were basically identified with the tribal traditions of the Indians, instead. Shoen 1955 says that all those Indian tribes lived in traditional customs and the laws
they established were tribal beliefs accordingly p. 12. They believed in what their gods commanded them and it was considerably different from the
civilization of the European where the tradition and the laws were established under the commandment of their monarch crowns and the church. Spanish was
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governed under the monarch in bourbon style. They had developed extraordinary devices that supported the commercial trades, farming, and weaponry. The Roman
Catholic was greatly dominating the laws and the traditions of Spain Trend, 1952, pp. 55-153.
As it is described in the novel about the contrast traditions between her Spanish civilization and the wild life of the Indians, Catarina de Escobar often
hurls her dissent in her mind, accordingly. Catarina de Escobar meets John Cooper at the very first glance. The way she looks at John Cooper with disdain
due to the fact that he has been living with the Indians, and because of his incongruous appearance and outfits, represents her dissent towards the uncivilized
Indians in her thoughts. It occurs when John Cooper comes to the Escobar family at the very first moment in order to take Carlos back from the cave after the
unexpected accident in his hunting. “Catarina de Escobar stopped short, her green eyes widening with surprise at the sight of the tall young man with long hair and a
straggly beard. There was a flicker of disdain on her exquisite face which she at once quelled…” p. 338. The inconsequential expression sparking in her face
indicates that she has accrued perception that the Indians lack of civilization on the contrary of that her people have had either way.
Despite the fact that John Cooper is not an Indian born, he, indeed, has been living and adopting the ways of life of the Indians. Thus, this strangeness is
unacceptable to Catarina de Escobar since her Reacting Part is distorted with something that she has never seen before. The way that John Cooper wears the
Indian clothes shows that he is out of civilization either. As a Spanish woman
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accustomed to the lavish living of noble family, Catarina de Escobar is accustomed to the luxurious dressing. She also knows how to maintain her
exquisite appearance. It is proved in the previous chapters when she joins balls and fiestas where she always wears proper gowns and makes herself up
exquisitely pp. 238-243. In the time when John Cooper takes Catarina de Escobar to a cave in order
to conquer her heart and prove that he is dependable and worthy to marry her, he shows her the way he survives in the wilderness this far. John Cooper makes a
campfire for two and offers her food that he consumes during the barren seasons in his journey. Pemmican, the cooked buffalo meat dried with berries and fats, is
the only supply of his food need during the blizzard. After seeing such repellent food that John Cooper offers, Catarina de Escobar hurls her disgust and
exasperation over it. “He brought a pouch of pemmican from the mustang’s saddlebag and came back to her…When she saw the crumbled bits of pemmican,
she angrily demanded, ‘Is this what you consider food?’” p. 396. Catarina de Escobar refuses it with anger, indeed. She never sees this kind of food and her
reaction even worsens when she tries to taste it. She grudgingly throws it away from her cupped hands when she knows that it is tasteless and with miserable
exasperation she cries out her murmurs toward John Cooper for treating her like an animal.
The fact does not depict that John Cooper treats her inhumanly, but it is more to Catarina de Escobar’s inconvenience that John Cooper gives her
something strange and out of her expectation. Her Reacting Part confronts the
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reality that John Cooper offers her with something that is strange and displeasing to her basis demand. Hence, this Reacting Part influences her emotions and
thoughts to be offensive and cynical. For Catarina de Escobar herself, the food that John Cooper has learned to make from the Indians is considered as something
that indicates their lacking of education and civilization. These Realities have indeed evoked Catarina de Escobar’s perception
about the wild life that John Cooper does as he represents the way that the Indians will live like. From the way of John Cooper’s clothing, gathering and cooking
food and also when he takes shelter in caves when the blizzards come, Catarina de Escobar cynically persecutes John Cooper’s ways of living as an uncivilized
person. Her distorted emotions and thoughts contrive harshly responsive utterances of the discomfort and queer ways of living she, whether or not she
wants, must accept. Catarina de Escobar’s emotional confrontations against the discomforts that John Cooper gives to her represents the contrast comparisons
between the luxury life she has and the wild customs that John Cooper has shown to her in the cave.
The basic causation that influences Catarina de Escobar’s tendency to be cynical about the Indians, by seeing through John Cooper, is because she lacks of
personal experiences with the Indians. Other factors that worsen her perception about the Indians are her female traits, as it is explained in gender diversities, and
the terrifying experiences she has with the Indians. Otherwise, John Cooper, despite his miserable background with the Indians who massacre his whole
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family, he has many personal experiences with the Indians during his journey westwards. Thus, he tends to perceive the Indians positively.
4.2.2.2 Barbaric
