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The post you’re replying to attributes the dwindling bison population to a real, documented effort to starve Amerindians and your response is to say there were

The post you’re replying to attributes the dwindling bison population to a real, documented effort to starve Amerindians and your response is to say there were other causes besides that and anyway the Indians had their own problems. Both claims may be true but I don’t see what it changes.

whimsicalism 3y ago
> dwindling bison population to a real, documented effort to starve Amerindians It's a discussion about the cause of bison elimination and I am discussing large proximate causes of bison death in the 19th century. Not sure why this is out of left field for you.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Because I think that even if they had the wind at their backs, so to speak, and don’t deserve full “credit,” your post reads like an attempt to minimize what would otherwise read as a shocking act of violence, especially with a coda that seems to serve no real purpose but to denigrate the victims of it.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    > especially with a coda that seems to serve no real purpose but to denigrate the victims of it. I'm not denigrating Native Americans by rejecting the racist trope that they were too simplistic and culturally at peace with nature to ever destabilize the environment they were in. I think there is a big gulf between how we are interpreting this thread that I can't bridge. European colonization of the Americas was marked by many, many acts of horrific violence, regardless of whether they were the sole cause of bison extinction.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Even divorced from the context of the discussion the claim strikes me as untrue: “noble savages” go back centuries earlier than the 20th Century counterculture.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        Fair enough. Perhaps, a popular revival with a focus on waste and environment under the counterculture might be more accurate, but perhaps even then it is still not very accurate given the long history of the concept.

whimsicalism 3y ago

> dwindling bison population to a real, documented effort to starve Amerindians It's a discussion about the cause of bison elimination and I am discussing large proximate causes of bison death in the 19th century. Not sure why this is out of left field for you.

emodendroket 3y ago
Because I think that even if they had the wind at their backs, so to speak, and don’t deserve full “credit,” your post reads like an attempt to minimize what would otherwise read as a shocking act of violence, especially with a coda that seems to serve no real purpose but to denigrate the victims of it.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > especially with a coda that seems to serve no real purpose but to denigrate the victims of it. I'm not denigrating Native Americans by rejecting the racist trope that they were too simplistic and culturally at peace with nature to ever destabilize the environment they were in. I think there is a big gulf between how we are interpreting this thread that I can't bridge. European colonization of the Americas was marked by many, many acts of horrific violence, regardless of whether they were the sole cause of bison extinction.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Even divorced from the context of the discussion the claim strikes me as untrue: “noble savages” go back centuries earlier than the 20th Century counterculture.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      Fair enough. Perhaps, a popular revival with a focus on waste and environment under the counterculture might be more accurate, but perhaps even then it is still not very accurate given the long history of the concept.