Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans

Few opinions I've expressed on air have produced a more indignant, outraged reaction than my repeated insistence that the word "genocide" in no way fits as a description of the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists or, later, American settlers.

I've never denied that the 400 year history of American contact with the Indians includes many examples of white cruelty and viciousness --- just as the Native Americans frequently (indeed, regularly) dealt with the European newcomers with monstrous brutality and, indeed, savagery. In fact, reading the history of the relationship between British settlers and Native Americans its obvious that the blood-thirsty excesses of one group provoked blood thirsty excesses from the other, in a cycle that listed with scant interruption for several hundred years.

But none of the warfare (including an Indian attack in 1675 that succeeded in butchering a full one-fourth of the white population of Connecticut, and claimed additional thousands of casualties throughout New England) on either side amounted to genocide. Colonial and, later, the American government, never endorsed or practiced a policy of Indian extermination; rather, the official leaders of white society tried to restrain some of their settlers and militias and paramilitary groups from unnecessary conflict and brutality.

Moreover, the real decimation of Indian populations had nothing to do with massacres or military actions, but rather stemmed from infectious diseases that white settlers brought with them at the time they first arrived in the New World.

UCLA professor Jared Diamond, author of the universally acclaimed bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," writes:

"Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600's, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River (page 78)....

"The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus rank top among the killers." (page 212).

"As for the most advanced native societies of North America, those of the U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi River system, their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European explorers and advancing ahead of them" (page 374)

Obviously, the decimation of native population by European germs represents an enormous tragedy, but in no sense does it represent a crime. Stories of deliberate infection by passing along "small-pox blankets" are based exclusively on two letters from British soldiers in 1763, at the end of the bitter and bloody French and Indian War. By that time, Indian populations (including those in the area) had already been terribly impacted by smallpox, and there's no evidence of a particularly devastating outbreak as a result of British policy.

For the most part, Indians were infected by devastating diseases even before they made direct contact with Europeans: other Indians who had already been exposed to the germs, carried them with them to virtually every corner of North America and many British explorers and settlers found empty, abandoned villages (as did the Pilgrims) and greatly reduced populations when they first arrived.

Sympathy for Native Americans and admiration for their cultures in no way requires a belief in European or American genocide. As Jared Diamond's book (and countless others) makes clear, the mass migration of Europeans to the New World and the rapid displacement and replacement of Native populations is hardly a unique interchange in human history. On six continents, such shifting populations – with countless cruel invasions and occupations and social destructions and replacements - have been the rule rather than the exception.

The notion that unique viciousness to Native Americans represents our "original sin" fails to put European contact with these struggling Stone Age societies in any context whatever, and only serves the purposes of those who want to foster inappropriate guilt, uncertainty and shame in young Americans.

One of the most urgent needs in culture and education for the United States of America is discarding the stupid, groundless and anti-American lies that characterize contemporary political correctness.

The right place to begin is to confront, resist and reject the all-too-common line that our rightly admired forebears involved themselves in genocide.

The early colonists and settlers can hardly qualify as perfect but describing them in Hitlerian, mass-murdering terms represents an act of brain-dead defamation.

you don't know WHEN to quit do you???

my suggestion is to stop reading KNOWING LIES, spoon-fed to you by "your betters" & go read the original military/civilian documents that discuss ways/means for EXTERMINATION of EVERY Indian in the country.

fwiw, those documents will NOT be "hard to find". most any large public library will have sufficient documentation to get you to realize the TRUTH.

meanwhile, may i suggest that you stop posting & turn off your computer, so that you don't become a "target of opportunity" for RIDICULE, as some here (mostly members of "the DAMNyankee coven of fools, BIGOTS, lunatics, HATERS, "useful idiots", REVISIONISTS & nitwits") demonstrably ARE.

free dixie,sw

Look, you can keep calling me whatever name you like, but the charge of Genocide just isn’t defensible, at least not by the true definition of Genocide.

The means to kill certainly existed by the late 1800s, had the US government desired ever last person of american blood exterminated, they could have done it.

You don’t need a gas chamber to slaughter people. Native Americans did it with hatchets and bows long before gas chambers they committed massacres against each other long before europeans arrived. Europeans were doing it against each other with far more primative weapons as well, long before any of them had sailed west across the atlantic.

IF the goal of any policy was to ensure that every last native american was dead, they wouldn’t have been reservations to be relocated to.

Lets just for the sake of argument your alleged numbers are accurate, there were 15-20 Million natives in the contiguious 48 in the 1700s and by the mid 1800s were only 7-10 million as you claim. Tell me, where did those 7 to 10 million that no longer lived go? Given 150 years of procreation etc?

in 1790 there were ~4 million americans living in the original 13 colonies... and none other than a stray individual here or there was much west of the Missisippi or Ohio. By 1840 there were ~13 Million americans, the vast majority of them still along the eastern part of the continent.

So to get to your claims, every man woman and child of the United states would have on average had to have directly killed one Native American to get to the numbers you are claiming. This just doesn’t add up based on the evidence of a systematic slaughter of the native peoples.

There is little doubt that new diseases introduced when europeans and others arrived did cause death to native peoples... and probably devastated populations. However this is not willful and wanton planned annylation.

Now while the westward expansion and indian wars are well documented, and attrocities and massacres committed by all involved also well documented, NOWHERE are there claims of MILLIONS upon Millions of either side being butchered or killed, directly or indirectly. Your numbers just don’t add up.

I suppose you will claim disease brought by the white man whiped out the natives (as thats the only way you can get the numbers you are alleging) however there is no historical evidence that biological warfare was ever engaged upon, other than ONE reference in the 1700s by one british commander at Ft Pitt under seige contemplating it. No evidence exists that this pondering was ever turned into an executed action. All other claims are by absolute discredited fools like Ward Churchill, who basically made his allegations up.

You just don’t get Genocide by its definition out of the conflict between the native americans and the european settlers. What you have is a long drawn out war that had various hot and cooler times between 2 cultures and peoples over the course of many centuries and hundreds of thousands of square miles, and which, at the end of the day, the native americans lost. They were conquered.

To allege the american government of the 1800s did not have the capacity to slaughter wholesale the defeated indians because they didn’t have gas chambers is ill informed. If their desire was to simply end the life of every native american they had more than the capacity and ability to do so if they chose. Now does that mean that the american government did not commit attrocities against the native americans? Absolutely not.. but to call it genocide is just political correct emotionally loaded ignorance.

in other words, you are UNWILLING to accept the FACTS & would rather continue to believe the KNOWING LIES that you've been spoon-fed, as if you were a child.

the TRUTH is that the INTENT was to DRIVE OUT or EXTERMINATE the American Indians by ANY means. there are HUNDREDS of OFFICIAL US government documents which say PRECISELY that.

also the TRUTH is that the government failed to wipe out the AIs ONLY because they COULD NOT, absent more $$$$$$$$, supplies & TIME than the government was eventually WILLING to expend. (may i gently remind you that ONE Seminole "chieftain" with less than FIFTY (50) warriors tied down the modern equivalent of an infantry BRIGADE for over FOUR years, with a total casualty rate for the Seminoles of ONE killed & about a DOZEN wounded. the US army had over ONE HUNDRED KIA & at least 100 more WIA ands/or DOW. finally, the army "declared victory" & LEFT the area, HUMILIATED. there are FEW records of this HUMILIATING DEFEAT, surprise, surprise!!! )

it matters NOT that you WISH that it was not so. as "SGT Joe Friday" used to say on TV, "Just the facts." fyi, the FACTS are NOT on your side, so you give us OPINIONS "dressed up as" facts.

free dixie,sw

You are a raving lunatic.

The US government had more than the will and resources to whipe american tribal blood from its lands if it had intended to.

You need not remind me of holdouts who hid in the mountains and engaged in hit and run engagements, this isn’t news to me, or anyone.

50 holdouts does not create a decendant pool of millions 150 years later, sorry, NA don’t breed like rabbits.

The indians moved to reservations were disarmed, defeated and could have just as easily and readily been shot dead by the americans had they chosen to simply whipe indian blood from the land.

Your claims are just ludicrous.

Lets not even get into the fact your 50 holdouts were all men... something that makes reproduction impossible.

How many indians were relocated to reservations? If genocide was the intent relocating the indians west of the Mississippi would not have occurred, they would have just been slaughtered completely.

Claiming attrocity is one thing, to claim genocide is just not remotely supported by facts. You have made wild allegations that the US government could not have killed off the indians... this is nonsense. They were conquered, disarmed and relocated, all at the expense of the American Government, do you think paying for the ammunition needed to exterminate a defeated and disarmed people once this was done would have bankrupted the government if that had been their desire?

You are free to voice your complaints against the government for its actions, but to call it “genocide” does not remotely meet the definition of Genocide. Indian tribes were conquered, and yes attrocities occurred by all involved over the 400 years or so of conflict. To call it genocide is just over the top liberal shock value screeding.

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