It was unjust and cruel, some Indians fought back, some helped the White people, and of course were killed for their trouble as soon as the white man wanted what the Indians had. LAND and, in some cases, such as the black hills and California, GOLD.
We would all have fought and killed in order to keep our land and way of life if we had been there at the time and had been the ones being invaded. Period.
The apology sucks but what really sucks are the posters on this thread trying to say that Indians were the bad guys for killing the white invaders. Yep, Indians were savage to each other and to the white invaders, but it was their land, used by them and they had the right to fight each other and the duty to kill off the invaders.
The higher civilizations have been invading and killing lower civilizations since the dawn of time, doesn't make it right but there it is.
As for the a**hats on this thread talking about scalping, the French invented scalping as a means of paying a bounty on British troops and civilians killed by the Indians, the scalps were proof they actually killed them. The Indians adopted it readily for their own use.
This is entirely false. The Indians scalped their enemies centuries before Colombus was in sight.
As for the bill, the Whites and the Indians struggled for the same land, period. Apologizing for the struggle is like apoligizing for having built America - and for the cultural failure that made the Indians unready to preserve their conquests.
Moreover, this bill is one of many attempts to entirely whitewash the history of the American West. The story of the pioneers has disappeared. The massacres caused by Indians have been whitewashed. The treaties broken by Indians are never cited. This is an academic fraud.