[donmeaker]

I believe that when indians left the reservation, raided settlers, that it was understandable that military power would be neither discriminating nor proportional.

I also believe that when a farming culture meets a hunter-gatherer culture, the farming culture has significant advantages. I believe it is unrealistic to expect the farmer culture to adopt the lack of property rights that characterize the hunter gatherer society. I also believe it is ridiculous for a child of the industrial society to look into the past and apply the industrial society property rights to a hunter-gatherer culture that was in competition with the farmer culture.

The hunter-gatherers had no doubt that they had rights to free passage over the land, and rights to the buffalo. The farmers had no doubt that the land they occupied was open land, free under the homestead act to anyone who would build a residence, occupy it, and improve it. Each by their own reference was right. That differeence in viewpoint was the source of the conflict.

In the beginning, humans often look to "Right" to avoid conflict. Where there is no common frame of reference as to "Right", a common frame of reference will be found, and in the past, that has often been power. The agrarian-industrial society had access to much more power than the hunter gatherer society. The end was sure, in the absence of direct intervention by the Divine.

[stand watie]

in other words, you think the THOUSANDS of rapes, tortures & coldblooded murders of MY people was A-OK, just because the "farmers" were RACISTS & believed it was in the "farmers" best interest????

i guess then that you think the atrocities of the holocaust were OK too.

free dixie,sw