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To: Burkeman1
Seems Indians weren't hunters and gatherers but lived in well organized settlements. Of course, while tracking food across the plains, the pleblo on their spare time built their cities and so did the Aztecs and the Mias, etc.

Most Southeastern cultures were characterized by agriculture (although not all groups practiced agriculture; some, such as the Calusa in southern Florida, were gatherers and hunters, obtaining most of their food from the ocean) and complex political and social organizations (at least at the chiefdom-level, some perhaps approaching the state-level, or organization) and large, sedentary populations (estimates run as high as 1,250,000 persons 500 years ago).

And that's just for the SE of NA....so again, stop white washing your history. I'm not some third worlder without an education. That is one reason why so many educated none Americans hate Americans. All countries are guilty, few try so hard, with the exception of Turkey, to white wash their history. At least have the guts to anti up. And as far as Germany and Japan, the US fire bombed every city in both countries with the express aim of exterminating the populations.

87 posted on 06/28/2002 9:12:23 PM PDT by Stavka2
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To: Stavka2
Hunter gatherers- stone age slash and burn farmers- whatever. There were hardly "millions" of Indians at the time of English settlement. Aztecs? Mayans? Pueblo Indians? The Pueblo Indian civilization that you speak of was dead for half of millenium before the first white man set foot in North America. The Aztec and mayan "civilizations" were primitive barbarians who happened to be able to produce enough maize on very fertile land in order to sustain a brutalized population that built their "cities". Other than some astronomical achievements there is little passed down to us from those "civilizations".

What I take offense too is the term "genocide" when it applies to the American Indians. We have a lot of leftists in this country who constantly talk about it.

Fact of the matter is this. Most Indians died from diseases they had no resistance too brought by the white man who likewise had no concept of "germs" or contagion or resistance at the time. When you hear these numbers of "millions" being killed by the white man what they usually leave out is that it was disease that killed up to 75 percent of the Indian population in both North and South America within 100 years of the first white contact. One Conquistador in particular, Pounce De Lyon- I think was is name- the one who sought "the fountain of youth" and traveled all throughout the North American South East- Florida- Georgia, Albama, Mississippi- Missouri- in the early 1500's- long before english settlement of North America started- is now believed to have inadvertantly spread small pox to such an extent that 50 percent of the Indian population of North America had been cut down by the disease a full three generations before the first Enlish colony was established in North America.

Now we can discuss various atrocities committed by both Whites and Indians against each other. And we can discuss bad Indian policy but to talk about a concerted plan to kill Indians on the part of the US government is just nonsense and a lie. In fact the Us government actively tried to prevent whites from encroaching on Indian lands - Jefferson complained about it all the time- about how the treaties he signed with Indians were meaningless because he couldn't control white settlement on Indian land!

Quite frankly I don't feel one bit bad about what happened to the Indians in this country. They lost- and should get over it. And it is racist to say the Whites should have behaved with more moral superiority to the Indian than they did to us just because we had guns and science.

89 posted on 07/01/2002 4:05:29 PM PDT by Burkeman1
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To: Stavka2
With the express aim of exterminating their populations? I wouldn't go that far. But I think it was a immoral. And they did very little damage to German or Japanese war production as well and in fact- installed an even greater resistance in both populations to fight to the end. It is never remembered- but it was Great Britian which started terror bombing of civilian populations. Great Britain bombed Berlin first and this so infuriated Hitler that he ordered the Blitz. The effect of the Blitz in Great Britain was to harden resolve and it actually boosted morale for the war. Now why would American and British bombing over Japan and Germany not have the same effect on the population? The answer is it did. Both countries fought harder as a result as they felt such an enemy that would bomb civilians is so brutal that they must be fought at all cost. Soldiers coming home in Germany on leave to find their relatives dead were apt to fight harder and they did.

But if you want to get into atrocities- nothing beats the behaviour of the Red Army in every occupied land they conquered. The barbarity is well documented. Even allies of Russia like Tito protested to Stalin as to the behaviour of his troops!

91 posted on 07/01/2002 4:22:57 PM PDT by Burkeman1
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