3 ms·

It really is a strange and horrific metaphor, analogy, and parable about the effects of isolation - made all the more distressing because it wasn't intentional

It really is a strange and horrific metaphor, analogy, and parable about the effects of isolation - made all the more distressing because it wasn't intentional. It was just our broader ancestors going about their business as normal people.

dyauspitr 2mo ago
Yeah, for the most part, I mean there are tales about small pox ridden blankets being intentionally given to the Native Americans, but I don’t know if those are apocryphally or not. Either way it’s not like we had vaccines and immunization back then it would’ve happened anyways.
- paimapi 2mo ago
  there are recorded incidents: https://project1492.org/small-pox-blankets/ https://project1492.org/small-pox-blankets/ the controversy is mostly around whether or not it was a systemic, pervasive form of biological warfare. the evidence base is fairly small but needs to be considered in context of Native American cultural habits around durable recordkeeping (eg trade ledgers) vs colonial, and if colonists would record such an act there was also active ethnic cleanses and genocides committed by the US government repeatedly throughout US history too and those are very well documented, all dotted with stories as bad or actively and intentionally worse than biological warfare https://news.uoregon.edu/content/historian-examines-native-american-genocide-its-legacy-and-survivors https://news.uoregon.edu/content/historian-examines-native-a... "He was speaking in opposition to a treaty that proposed the Cherokees sell off 20 million acres of homeland—a large portion of present-day Kentucky and Tennessee. This tension exploded with the commencement of independence hostilities in July 1776; some Cherokee leaders sided with the British, and in response the US charged thousands of colonial troops with “the utter extirpation of the Cherokee Nation.” https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2017/04/17/indian-removal-act-genocide-native-americans/ https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2017/04/17/indian-removal-... "Throughout American history, the treatment of indigenous Native Americans has violated numerous articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These violations resulted in the loss of numerous Native American homelands, the Cherokee being only one example, and the genocide of numerous other smaller tribes since the beginning of European colonization. This is largely due to Eurocentric ideals, like the natural law of the Puritan worldview, which elevates the status of European peoples over that of indigenous, Native American peoples through a biased worldview. This mindset is so pervasive and powerful that it still prevails today, evidenced by modern films and television that paint Native American tribes as savage, ignorant and of ill intent toward the “white man”, and the policies of the current United States government." see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_th... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_No... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_genocides_of_Indigenous_peoples#Denial_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_genocides_of_Indigen...
  - culi 2mo ago
    Malcolm Harris' book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World goes into surprising depth on the history of the California Genocide[0] in the first few chapters. It's a very well-researched work [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history" There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives. The Indians were not literate and so did not write letters and keep diaries. Even things like the number of Indians cannot be pinned down with any precision.
    - paimapi 2mo ago
      the Native Americans were highly literate, they just didn't record granular details to ledgers because they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population there is so much easily searchable resources for this and though it might not be your intent, your comment reads as willfully ignorant for being so broad and bought into the type of 16th century Puritan Eurocentrism that many of the articles above discuss in depth * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems * https://www.science.org/content/article/roots-mesoamerican-writing https://www.science.org/content/article/roots-mesoamerican-w... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems * https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indigenous-languages-of-North-America https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indigenous-languages-of-Nor...
      - WalterBright 2mo ago
        Highly literate? From your britannica reference: "No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact" And yes, I was referring to the North American Indians. I know the Mayans had writing. I even have a book on the Mayan writing system. > they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population People did not write letters and keep diaries in order to control their population. The book "Empire of the Summer Moon" which is a history of the Commanche empire, and the book laments that their only sources were diaries and letters written by colonists.
- BurningFrog 2mo ago
  Most of this happened centuries before the germ theory of disease. No one on either side had any real clue what was going on, and most probably thought it was a cruel punishment from the God(s). Often the disease travelled faster than people, and when Europeans arrived, the natives were long since gone.
  - anon84873628 2mo ago
    >Often the disease travelled faster than people, and when Europeans arrived, the natives were long since gone. I understand the gist of this statement with regards to the size and complexity of indigenous civilizations, but we need to be much more careful with the framing. Plenty of Native Americans (in both continents) survived the European diseases. but just looking at the North, the English colonists interacted heavily with Native Americans - hence the story of Thanksgiving. The "French and Indian War" pitted an alliance of the French and Indian nations against the English settlers. It was a deliberate genocide campaign in the 19th century (a good 300 years after initial European contact) that largely exterminated native cultures from what is modern USA. The current color of the continent is not some accident of "oh well we didn't know any better about disease". In Central and South America (and the far North), native cultures survived to a much greater extent and are still visible today.
- PeterHolzwarth 2mo ago
  I definitely get your broader point, but it turns out the smallpox blankets things is a myth. But I know what you mean, nonetheless.
  - SanjayMehta 2mo ago
    It happened and it was whitewashed out of history because the victor writes the history books. In India the British deliberately caused famines, something they learned to do in Ireland. But the Irish famines are accepted and documented but British historians go out of their way to cover up their crimes against humanity in India and other colonies. https://www.history.com/articles/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/articles/colonists-native-americans-...

dyauspitr 2mo ago

Yeah, for the most part, I mean there are tales about small pox ridden blankets being intentionally given to the Native Americans, but I don’t know if those are apocryphally or not. Either way it’s not like we had vaccines and immunization back then it would’ve happened anyways.

paimapi 2mo ago
there are recorded incidents: https://project1492.org/small-pox-blankets/ https://project1492.org/small-pox-blankets/ the controversy is mostly around whether or not it was a systemic, pervasive form of biological warfare. the evidence base is fairly small but needs to be considered in context of Native American cultural habits around durable recordkeeping (eg trade ledgers) vs colonial, and if colonists would record such an act there was also active ethnic cleanses and genocides committed by the US government repeatedly throughout US history too and those are very well documented, all dotted with stories as bad or actively and intentionally worse than biological warfare https://news.uoregon.edu/content/historian-examines-native-american-genocide-its-legacy-and-survivors https://news.uoregon.edu/content/historian-examines-native-a... "He was speaking in opposition to a treaty that proposed the Cherokees sell off 20 million acres of homeland—a large portion of present-day Kentucky and Tennessee. This tension exploded with the commencement of independence hostilities in July 1776; some Cherokee leaders sided with the British, and in response the US charged thousands of colonial troops with “the utter extirpation of the Cherokee Nation.” https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2017/04/17/indian-removal-act-genocide-native-americans/ https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2017/04/17/indian-removal-... "Throughout American history, the treatment of indigenous Native Americans has violated numerous articles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These violations resulted in the loss of numerous Native American homelands, the Cherokee being only one example, and the genocide of numerous other smaller tribes since the beginning of European colonization. This is largely due to Eurocentric ideals, like the natural law of the Puritan worldview, which elevates the status of European peoples over that of indigenous, Native American peoples through a biased worldview. This mindset is so pervasive and powerful that it still prevails today, evidenced by modern films and television that paint Native American tribes as savage, ignorant and of ill intent toward the “white man”, and the policies of the current United States government." see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_th... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_No... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_genocides_of_Indigenous_peoples#Denial_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_genocides_of_Indigen...
- culi 2mo ago
  Malcolm Harris' book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World goes into surprising depth on the history of the California Genocide[0] in the first few chapters. It's a very well-researched work [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history" There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives. The Indians were not literate and so did not write letters and keep diaries. Even things like the number of Indians cannot be pinned down with any precision.
  - paimapi 2mo ago
    the Native Americans were highly literate, they just didn't record granular details to ledgers because they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population there is so much easily searchable resources for this and though it might not be your intent, your comment reads as willfully ignorant for being so broad and bought into the type of 16th century Puritan Eurocentrism that many of the articles above discuss in depth * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems * https://www.science.org/content/article/roots-mesoamerican-writing https://www.science.org/content/article/roots-mesoamerican-w... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems * https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indigenous-languages-of-North-America https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indigenous-languages-of-Nor...
    - WalterBright 2mo ago
      Highly literate? From your britannica reference: "No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact" And yes, I was referring to the North American Indians. I know the Mayans had writing. I even have a book on the Mayan writing system. > they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population People did not write letters and keep diaries in order to control their population. The book "Empire of the Summer Moon" which is a history of the Commanche empire, and the book laments that their only sources were diaries and letters written by colonists.
BurningFrog 2mo ago
Most of this happened centuries before the germ theory of disease. No one on either side had any real clue what was going on, and most probably thought it was a cruel punishment from the God(s). Often the disease travelled faster than people, and when Europeans arrived, the natives were long since gone.
- anon84873628 2mo ago
  >Often the disease travelled faster than people, and when Europeans arrived, the natives were long since gone. I understand the gist of this statement with regards to the size and complexity of indigenous civilizations, but we need to be much more careful with the framing. Plenty of Native Americans (in both continents) survived the European diseases. but just looking at the North, the English colonists interacted heavily with Native Americans - hence the story of Thanksgiving. The "French and Indian War" pitted an alliance of the French and Indian nations against the English settlers. It was a deliberate genocide campaign in the 19th century (a good 300 years after initial European contact) that largely exterminated native cultures from what is modern USA. The current color of the continent is not some accident of "oh well we didn't know any better about disease". In Central and South America (and the far North), native cultures survived to a much greater extent and are still visible today.
PeterHolzwarth 2mo ago
I definitely get your broader point, but it turns out the smallpox blankets things is a myth. But I know what you mean, nonetheless.
- SanjayMehta 2mo ago
  It happened and it was whitewashed out of history because the victor writes the history books. In India the British deliberately caused famines, something they learned to do in Ireland. But the Irish famines are accepted and documented but British historians go out of their way to cover up their crimes against humanity in India and other colonies. https://www.history.com/articles/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/articles/colonists-native-americans-...