Posted on 05/08/2015 7:35:15 AM PDT by Theoria
I grew up on the family ranch in a remote part of SW Texas-I was a child then-the goats were tough and did fairly well, but I remember the sell-off of cattle by my granddad and uncles-my dad was in the military and got assigned to a family-appropriate base shortly after the drought got bad, so we were out of state for the worst of it. Things were just starting to come around again when he was rotated back home for awhile.
Burning pear for cattle food was a common thing in the late summer from the time I can remember-some ranchers still do it out here where I live-the pear burner tool has improved in safety, though-it used to be about as safe as a flame thrower...
We are in a drought here now, but it is not as severe as the one you are referring to, and is letting up a bit with a wet year predicted-and most people are well acquainted with water conservation, thanks to the ag agent.
It was a concentration camp - neither the first or last in our sordid history of wars with aboriginal Americans. The Brits used them too - on the Boer women and children in the Boer war. I doubt there were no predecessors given humanity’s long hate affair with itself.
When someone uses the phrase “concentration camp”, he knows darn well how the majority of people are going to think, ‘just like the Nazis’, and in case he thought someone might miss that, he also used the phrase “final solution”
Both phrases are 20th century, and he knew very well how misleading they are to most modern people.
Well, the attitude of the US government was aboriginal American tribes either had to accommodate to the European lifestyle or be exterminated. Plain and simple. And they took huntergatherer and agricultural tribes and confined them to small, cramped areas where their ability to successfully farm even if they wanted to was little likely to succeed. Many, but not all, indian agents screwed them out of the government issued foods they were promised or provided substandard supplements so they could make money on the side. The number of aboriginal Americans who died in these trails of tears or on the disease ridden reservations was substantial.
What would you call it?
History
That is a lie, there was never a government plot to “exterminate” all Indians in America.
In fact, few Indians died in combat with the U.S. government.
Considering up to that point in history, the SOP for conquerors was to either enslave or wipe out the conquered, I’d say providing an area for them to live, no matter how harsh the conditions, would have been looked upon as rather enlightening.
But that’s just me.
Amazing observation.
If you were talking middle ages I would agree with you. But this was the Victorian period, that genteel Era when skirts were put on chairs to cover their “legs”.
Some of this was due to the brutal way aboriginal Americans waged war, part was a leftover from the French and Indian wars and the horrors that spawned and a lot of it was due to unalloyed racism.
As a conservative living in a culture which finds a need to blame America and Americans for everything from species extinction and global warming to the actions of savages in ISIS, I find this an uncomfortable subject. I am happier defending my country. And even here on this subject, Americans were not of one mind. There always was a popular objection to the mistreatment of these people even at the time it was occurring.
Not every Indian fighter was an indian hater. Crockett and Boone spoke up for the Red man when it was unpopular.
There are far too many wrong things we are falsely blamed for. But the treatment of aboriginal Americans was truly an egregious violation of everything we really stand for.
But it’s easier to look back clinically on the topic when you are not holed up in a frontier fort surrounded by mutilated American bodies and assaulted by shrieking warriors welding tomahawks with only a flintlock and a skinning knife for protection.
Perspective.
Why would an accurate statement so amaze you?
I know the left outs out a lot of nonsense about poison blankets and genocide and gives the impression that the U.S. Army hunted Indians for centuries with a kill on sight order, but you don’t have to believe it all.
I don’t.
I don’t.
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