4 ms·

> The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to

> The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors. Odds are good they knew (thanksgiving is literally foundational american history, but the Wampanoag were near ended by the end of the century). But “they’re just savages” makes it much easier to genocide them and steal their land than “they’re survivors of a civilisational collapse”. The US put significant effort in extirpating the tribes from their homelands and exterminating them, this labor was considered so important even the civil war did not stop it (the Long Walk of the Navajos started around the same time as the Siege of Atlanta and the displacement / forced marchs policy outlasted the civil war, the california genocide was basically an ongoing policy from the mid 1840s to the end of the boarding schools and eugenic policies — though most of the direct killing had been achieved by the turn of the century, …).

markdown 3y ago
> civilisational collapse This almost implies that their civilisation failed of its own accord, rather than it collapsing because 90% of the population were wiped out by introduced plagues/epidemics.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  There was a major collapse in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. Cahokia, for example, was abandoned before Columbus ever set sail. The diseases hit an already traumatized population.
Amezarak 3y ago
It's important not to leave out the fact the warfare was two-way. I mean this in an extramoral sense, not taking one "side" or another. It's just too easy to fall into the "settlers exterminating natives because they're in the way" narrative, when that's not what happened.
- masklinn 3y ago
  > It's important not to leave out the fact the warfare was two-way. I’m pretty sure the Navajos did not send settlers and army on death marches. Nor did the tribes start massive programs of sterilisation, or child removal and cultural destruction. The US did that. The settlers did that. The first governor of California literally stated: > a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the indian race becomes extinct Because settlers wanted the place, and natives were in the way. Or could be used for forced labour (see: Act for the Government and Protection of Indians 1850) > It's just too easy to fall into the "settlers exterminating natives because they're in the way" narrative, when that's not what happened. Isn’t it? Settlers took over land, and when tribes got inconvenient settlers moved to extermination and called in the army. The US made a bunch of empty treaties and broke them just as fast, doing nothing or even encouraging the destruction of the lifestyle of numerous tribes.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    > The first governor of California literally stated: Yes, "between the races", not "against the Indians." Because in his eyes, at least some natives were as intent on driving them out as he was them. > when tribes got inconvenient settlers moved to extermination To be clear, "inconvenient" usually involved native conducting raids, massacres, rape, and enslavement. Of course, had the settlers not been settling their land, this would not have happened. But I don't think anyone today would see this as an acceptable response to migration. (And it wasn't, solely, the same sorts of low-level clashes were quite normal even before Europeans, who injected themselves into it.) As a more extreme example, there's great books written about the Comanche empire. Indeed, if people had really seen things this way at the time, there wouldn't have been large numbers of natives assimilating into settler culture, nor would natives have allied with settlers against other natives continually even through the 1800s, when nobody could have argued that how the Americans would behave was unknown. "The settlers broke treaties" is true, but it's also true that natives broke treaties or made treaties that they had no authority to make in the first place, resulting in all sorts of disasters. The story of colonialist expansion in the US is not good vs evil.

markdown 3y ago

> civilisational collapse This almost implies that their civilisation failed of its own accord, rather than it collapsing because 90% of the population were wiped out by introduced plagues/epidemics.

Amezarak 3y ago
There was a major collapse in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. Cahokia, for example, was abandoned before Columbus ever set sail. The diseases hit an already traumatized population.

Amezarak 3y ago

It's important not to leave out the fact the warfare was two-way. I mean this in an extramoral sense, not taking one "side" or another. It's just too easy to fall into the "settlers exterminating natives because they're in the way" narrative, when that's not what happened.

masklinn 3y ago
> It's important not to leave out the fact the warfare was two-way. I’m pretty sure the Navajos did not send settlers and army on death marches. Nor did the tribes start massive programs of sterilisation, or child removal and cultural destruction. The US did that. The settlers did that. The first governor of California literally stated: > a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the indian race becomes extinct Because settlers wanted the place, and natives were in the way. Or could be used for forced labour (see: Act for the Government and Protection of Indians 1850) > It's just too easy to fall into the "settlers exterminating natives because they're in the way" narrative, when that's not what happened. Isn’t it? Settlers took over land, and when tribes got inconvenient settlers moved to extermination and called in the army. The US made a bunch of empty treaties and broke them just as fast, doing nothing or even encouraging the destruction of the lifestyle of numerous tribes.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  > The first governor of California literally stated: Yes, "between the races", not "against the Indians." Because in his eyes, at least some natives were as intent on driving them out as he was them. > when tribes got inconvenient settlers moved to extermination To be clear, "inconvenient" usually involved native conducting raids, massacres, rape, and enslavement. Of course, had the settlers not been settling their land, this would not have happened. But I don't think anyone today would see this as an acceptable response to migration. (And it wasn't, solely, the same sorts of low-level clashes were quite normal even before Europeans, who injected themselves into it.) As a more extreme example, there's great books written about the Comanche empire. Indeed, if people had really seen things this way at the time, there wouldn't have been large numbers of natives assimilating into settler culture, nor would natives have allied with settlers against other natives continually even through the 1800s, when nobody could have argued that how the Americans would behave was unknown. "The settlers broke treaties" is true, but it's also true that natives broke treaties or made treaties that they had no authority to make in the first place, resulting in all sorts of disasters. The story of colonialist expansion in the US is not good vs evil.