Posted on 09/19/2007 4:58:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
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.
A nation ashamed of its past will fear its future.
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.
“Where are the skeletal remains of the supposedly tens of thousands of “Native Americans” done in by the diseases of the “White Man?”
One could just as easily ask: Where are the skeletal remains of the millions of deer from the period? They don’t exist any more because most skeletons are eaten, scattered, and destroyed.
Columbus practiced some but the brits rarely did. And the indians committed terrible acts on the Europeans. It was a nasty business as you’d expect when one people essentially invades the land held by another. Most though were killed by disease.
bump for future reading
In New England, especially, much of the violence between Europeans and Indians was simply the nearly endless war between England and France, fought by other means. The French and their Abenaki allies terrorized English frontier settlements in order to check their territorial advances to the west and the north. The English and their Indian allies retaliated, of course (e.g., by razing Norridgewock in 1724 and killing Father Sebastien Rasle), and thus began the cycle of violence.
Chief Take-Your-Money is waiting for the white devils and their wampum at the nearest Indian casino. Leave your smallpox blankets at home.
Another secret that no one ever wants to talk about is the fact that Indians bought slaves and fought for the South in the civil war.
I ran across this in a family history account of the Indian Territories(now Oklahoma). My Great(8)Grandfather was a US Marshall. He had arrested some of the Indians for theft, and they sent their slaves to kill him.
Another secret that no one ever wants to talk about is the fact that Indians bought slaves and fought for the South in the civil war.
I ran across this in a family history account of the Indian Territories(now Oklahoma). My Great(8)Grandfather was a US Marshall. He had arrested some of the Indians for theft, and they sent their slaves to kill him.
I have a friend who likes to hunt for native artifacts, spear points, arrow points, pottery shards, beads, gaming stones, pipes, tomahawk heads, etc. For centuries, this area of SE Tennessee was home to tribes who made spear and arrow points, some dating back 11,000 YBP. People have been picking them up by the bucketfuls in plowed fields and along river banks for over 150 years here. The Cherokee of western NC are adamantly opposed to those who hunt for artifacts, even on private land. Some have turned into virtual mercenaries for their cause. My friend was once confronted and physically assaulted for hunting artifacts along the Tennessee River on private land. The Cherokee aren't related to the Woodlands era tribes who lived here, but that doesn't stop them from trying to prevent folks from picking up rocks (flint) that just happened to have been altered by someone unrelated to them 1200 years ago.
Or better yet, what about all of the buffalo skeletons from the Midwest? I can’t see them today.
Perhaps because they were gathered up and destroyed?
You have to remember that innards of skeletons contain bone marrow, a very nutrient-rich and bloody substance. Carnivores LOVE to gnaw away and nibble at that stuff. If a bear or mountain lion found an Indian corpse, it’d probably be feeding on it. There’s also scavengers and other decomposing organisms to think about. This is all without factoring in environmental conditions. Out west, with windy dust storms, there’d be high chances of wind erosion. And hurricanes in the southwest and tornadoes in the Great Plains would displace and mangle heaps of skeletal remains.
Remember, fossilization is actually a pretty rare process. That not a lot of remains have been found isn’t surprising.
Cool stuff to a ten year old but the truth of the story is that John Underhill was a mercenary with a small army who hired out to Dutch and English communities who wanted to get rid of the Indians in their area.
The suggested battle was a high-tech, pre-dawn raid on a small tribe of pretty much defenseless fishermen Indians. It was a massacre, not a fight and it entirely eliminated the Massapequas as a tribe.
Of note...both Gerry Seinfeld and Carlo Gambino (THE Godfather) lived on that peninsula in the sixties.
†Being a white man is a crime in today’s lib world. “ unless you can donate to their favorite fraud campaign or send money to the Big scam in the sky ( to fight Aids in Africa ).
I have a liberal friend that claims we deserve what the Mexicans are doing to us because it’s no different than what the Pilgrims did to the Indians. More liberal guilt.
[shake head and roll eyes at this convoluted “logic”]
White Genocide is the biggest lie going....
Indians routinely slaughtered women and children and were merciless toward the white man.
At there highest point pre european North America only had between 7 and 10 Million total natives living on the entire continent.
While yes, not every interaction that europeans and later americans levied against the indians was fair or just, this notion that they were perfect creatures in tune with nature and never did anything evil is just nonsensical.
This myth that they only killed buffalo they needed and used every part is another nonsensical lie. Louis and Clark describe coming across a pile of rotting carcasses that stunk the air for miles around, caused by indians driving and entire herd over a cliff while hunting, and leaving most of it to rot in the sun.
They were savages, some were more civilized than others, but they were by and large savages none the less. They had no qualms hatcheting a child to death in cold blood and scalping the corpse.. taking a girl as a “wife” etc etc etc.
Thank God the europeans came and ended the savagery. I know not politically correct, but its not the lies that the PC crowd wish to continue to perpetuate.
I feel no white guilt over the fate of the indians, just as I feel no white guilt over the fate of many blacks in america today either, though the second group certainly has more claims of historical unjust treatment than a conquered bunch of savages.
“Indians routinely slaughtered women and children and were merciless toward the white man.”
For example, this video:
http://custer.over-blog.com/categorie-10018053.html
I've a "test" for you Michael. Slaughter every human in a village and see if you don't get the term "genocide" attributed you - whether you think the word's application is correct or not. Then again, should it have been your relatives who lived in that annihilated village, the word's definition might not so readily escape you.
SW, it appears Medved is stuck on the hierarchal value of the word's definitive terminology and totally lost its applicability.
The Indian massacre of 1622 (also known as the Jamestown Massacre) occurred in the Virginia Colony on Good Friday, March 22, 1622. About 347 people, or almost one-third of the English population of Jamestown, were killed by a coordinated series of surprise attacks of the Powhatan Confederacy under Chief Opechancanough.
Jamestown was the site of the first successful English settlement in North America in 1607, and was the capital of the Colony of Virginia. Although Jamestown itself was spared due to a timely last-minute warning, many smaller settlements had been established along the James River both upstream and downstream from it and on both sides. The attackers killed men, women, and children, and burned homes and crops.
I can’t imagine why they might want to get rid of the indians in the area (rolling eyes)....
Stop buying the PC crap... The indians by and large were violent savages.
Genocide in terms of the treatement of native americans is a joke. Do you know how many total indians were believed to live on the ENTIRE continent at their peak??
7-10 Million.. that’s it.. the ENTIRE CONTINENT.
There are more “native americans” in america today (or at least people who claim to be) than there were when the Europeans arrived. If genocide was what the europeans did, they did a piss poor job.
A massacre is a massacre, its not genocide. And I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but the earliest known massacres were committed by the indians... and far more often by them as well through the years.
This nonsense that the white man is evil and the red man is angelic is not remotely true.... Its what the PC crap demands, but its just not reality.
The Eastern tribes were among the most populous and lived in large settled groups. Their dead, diseased bodies were stacked like cordwood according to “historical” accounts.
It’s a simple point, really—An archealogical record larger than the relatively few recovered artefacts would be expected from such “devastation.”
Or is this just another homily/dogma that is supposed to pass unchallenged?
The biligana have always had a sliding scale to place value on the lives of others. You do it now as you daily murder your own unborn children.
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