Posted on 10/12/2009 8:30:59 AM PDT by Dick Bachert
An exchange Sunday with my eldest son got me to thinking (a rare feat, indeed).
He asked if tomorrow was a holiday. I responded that it’s Columbus Day. Sensitive and bright guy that he is, he came back – half joking -- with “Don’t you mean Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Day?”
He and I have debated the matter of the government’s treatment of the American Indian many times. He takes the position that we badly mistreated these original and mostly warrior inhabitants of what we now call America. I agree with him that, sadly, by violating treaties, marching them off to barren reservations, etc. we have done that, but I also reminded him that throughout history, with precious few exceptions, when two cultures have clashed, the one with the superior and more advanced technology usually prevailed.
That brought to mind a warning Mr. Jefferson issued over 2 centuries ago that “Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”
And THAT brought to my alleged mind Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“Peace” has several definitions:
1. The absence of war or conflict and the necessary presence of justive. (A desirable but, according to Scripture, an unattainable goal.)
2. The absence of RESISTANCE to efforts by utopian elitists to destroy traditional national sovereignty and blend all the nations of the world into some bizarre socialistic New World Order where all will be equal – but SOME will be more equal than others. (Can you guess who "THEY" would be?) Obama received the nomination after less than two weeks in office. The Nobel socialists apparently listened to his campaign speeches more intently than the American electorate. It seems they understood what he was well before the election.
I’m 100% convinced that the Nobel was his reward for promoting a “peace” meeting not the first definition -- but the second.
Obama’s constant apologies, his repeated remarks about our unexceptionalism coupled with his rapid moves to weaken – indeed, CRIPPLE – the United States in an increasingly dangerous and envious world more than confirmed the Nobel socialists’ fond hopes. And if anyone still thinks he’s simply a naïve fool, you’ve not been paying attention. He – and his global elitist handlers – know PRECISELY what they are doing.
Which brings me back to the clash between native Americans and the technologically superior Europeans who ultimately overwhelmed them.
At what point will WE assume the role of those early natives when some technologically superior culture – made so by endless streams of “foreign aid,” technology transfers and outright theft of that technology from the global corporations who site plants in those would-be foes for the cheap labor -- determines that we are ripe for conquest?
What’s even sadder is the probability that America’s obituary – if anyone who cares is around then to even write one -- will declare the death of our culture a suicide.
“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.” Daniel Webster
Get ready, folks, because that’s where we’re headed.
Man is a war-making creature. Always has been. Always will be.
Sometimes there is no other option but to resist with arms.
“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of thosewhom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass August 4, 1857
Quite true. Unfortunately, given the history and prehistory of other human groups, this doesn't mean they were peaceful.
I highly recommend War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Laurence Keeley.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
The author compiles what is known of "primitive" cultures from archaeology, anthropology and early explorers. What he found is that the vast majority of such societies had a much higher death rate from war than more modern "civilized" societies.
For example, the 20th century is often called the most violent century in human history, with an estimated 100 to 200 million people killed in its wars. If the average death rate from warfare from the dozens of primitive societies he studied had applied worldwide during the 20th century, 2 billion people would have died.
And that's just the average war death rate of primitive societies. Some were much more warlike than the average.
This really shouldn't surprise us much. Let's assume Tribe A was peaceful and warlike Tribe B moved in next door. Either Tribe A quickly became warlike in self-defense or it quickly became extinct. The book documents numerous examples of this extinction, BTW.
"Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you – a land with large, fine cities you did not build, houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill, be careful not to forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery." - GOD
I think we may need a reminder.
I'm suffer under no illusions about the Indians. I really don't care about the Indians. But there are just little BS flags that go off in me once in a while. When you read about Lewis and Clark, they want you only to learn about Lewis and Clark, but I guess I pay attention to everything; and their interaction with the Indians was one of those things. I've also driven around this country. Before that though, in the 50s one day when my father took me to a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, my father drove me around Harlem to show me "where the poor people live." Well, when I did that drive around the country, I went to New Mexico. And there I saw Indians living on land "we" "gave" them. The "reservations." No water. Nothing grows. Miles from anything useful. You see their cars and you wonder how they can get to anyplace they might want to go without a breakdown, or three. It's the closest thing we have to third world poverty that I have seen in this country; and all those folks in Harlem ought to be taken out to those reservations in New Mexico so they can see how lucky they are.
ML/NJ
I’ve lived in NM. FWIW, 19 of the 22 NM Indian tribes, the Pueblos, live pretty much where they’ve always lived. I’m not sure how it’s the white man’s fault they chose some truly god awful country to settle down in.
It’s not like they were wealthy and we went there and took away their stuff. By any rational standpoint every Indian tribe has more material things than they ever have. They just haven’t taken advantage of America to increase in wealth as much as the average.
You mention they have broken down cars. I wonder what kind of car Geronimo drove. It was probably a real nice ride.
I’ve always thought it strange that Indians (more often Indian wannabees) obsess about how the white man is destroying traditional ways of life. Well, their traditional ways, like the traditional ways of all other peoples, are based on being absolutely dirt poor.
So you can be poor and stay traditional, sort of, or you can become rich and abandon traditional ways. You just can’t be a rich traditional Indian. Most modern Indians would be appalled at having to live as their ancestors did.
Of course, so would most white or black Americans. It’s just most white people don’t obsess about their traditional ways.
If I, a white guy, lived on a reservation out in the middle of nowhere, I’d be poor too. No jobs. I’ve moved nine times in 34 years back and forth all over this country so I could take advantage of job opportunities. Nobody is preventing the Indians of NM from doing the same.
You see, I guess I'm naive. Here I thought that "reservation" meant that it was some patch of land that "we" "gave" them; and you come along and educate me: THEY CHOSE IT! (Do you have any idea what their second choice might have been?)
ML/NJ
You are obviously unfamiliar with the history of NM Indian tribes. As I stated, 18 or so of the 22 registered Indian tribes in the state are Pueblo Indians.
Pueblo means village or town. Most of these pueblos have been inhabited since well before the Spanish, much less the Americans, showed up. Taos Pueblo, for instance, is over 1000 years old and Zuni over 1300.
Should we have evicted these settled town-dwelling Indians from their ancestral homes and forced them to live somewhere else because you don’t think the setting is attractive enough?
The Navajo, in addition, live very nearly on the same land they did at the time of the Mexican War, although perhaps their reservation is now somewhat smaller than their semi-nomadic range prior to that time. Most of their reservation, of course, is in AZ, with a small amount in UT.
The two Ute tribes that extend partly into NM from CO did have a bunch of their range stolen, but mostly in UT and CO. They didn’t come into NM much historically, because when they did the Kiowa, Comanche, Apaches and Navajo killed them.
The two Apache tribes that now have reservations in NM, Jicarilla and Mescalero, used to range over much of the American southwest and far into Mexico. They’ve been restricted to much smaller ranges, but where they live now is part of where they always lived. The Jicarilla Res is pretty bleak, but the Mescalero Res ain’t bad.
You seem to be under a misapprehension as to what the term “reservation” means. It hasn’t, for well over a century, meant somewhere Indians were forced to stay. It means land “reserved” for their exclusive use, land they can’t sell off to white men for a quick buck. Kind of like a wildlife preserve for humans.
Any Indian who wants to can go live anywhere he can pay for, just like any other American.
Your criticisms of reservations are perfectly valid for much of the West, and even more for the East and South, where Indians were largely ethnically cleansed. They just aren’t particularly valid for the state of New Mexico.
I was talking stone-age in terms of technology. All the darts, wicker shields and obsidian-edged swords were ineffective against Toledo steel, crossbows and arquebuses. It wouldn't have mattered how culturally advanced they were (and in some cases they were over the Spaniards and Portuguese) going against any race that had discovered and used bronze, let alone steel, spelled the end.
It’s not a big deal, but the pottery made by Indians could be used to cook directly on the fire. I’ve found pot fragments in NM and UT still with layers of smoke residue on them from cooking.
One can make an excellent case that germs defeated the civilized Indian empires more than the Spanish did. It’s hard to fight a more technologically advanced invader when your 30 to 50% of your population is dying in a short period.
For comparison, consider how well Europe might have resisted a major invasion during the throes of the Black Death, especially if the invaders were largely immune.
The Aztecs were largely overthrown by other Indians they had oppressed, but the Incas are a much more clear case of the lethal combination of Guns, Germs and Steel. (To coin a phrase.) :)
It’s hard to fight a more technologically advanced invader when your 30 to 50% of your population is dying in a short period.
Lord knows they were almost wiped out by the ensuing diseases and brutality, but the Spaniards wouldn't even have gotten a toe-hold if it hadn't been for their superiority in arms. Even after Montezuma wised up about the new Quetzalcoatl, his troops still couldn't win. Plus, I think their method of combat was more one-on-one compared to the organized Spaniards.
The Aztecs were largely overthrown by other Indians they had oppressed, but the Incas are a much more clear case of the lethal combination of Guns, Germs and Steel. (To coin a phrase.)
Good phrase. That conquest amazed me. Lucky for Pizarro he came in in the middle of a civil war and played each side against the other. But just look at our own Indian wars - as long as we had muzzleloaders the Indians held their own. When breechloaders and repeaters came in, it was all over. Our locust-like numbers didn't help either.
OK. Soumds like you're actually out in the trenches. I'm getting my info from "Course of Empire" by DeVoto and "The Conquest of New Spain" by Conquistador Bernal Diaz.
The Spanish came from a dramatically more advanced society both technologically, and probably more importantly, socially and culturally.
A society that had produced Machiavelli was far more advanced politically than the God-King society of the Aztecs.
Technological surprise was a huge impact initially. As with all surprises, it loses effectiveness quickly. After the rapid initial rollover of the Meso and South American Empires, Spanish advance in other areas was much slower. In Chile, for instance, the Araucanians held them off for centuries, pushing them back in many cases, till the mid and late 19th century.
BTW, the Guns, Germs and Steel bit was a joke.
VERY big bestseller by that name. Interesting ideas, and at least he’s able to come up with a rationale why Europe won other than that the white man was meaner than everybody else.
But he’s still a little too PC and doesn’t leave enough territory for the social and cultural differences between societies and how these non-material factors effect their ability to defend themselves.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.