Human history for all of human history has been the story of the stronger conquering the weaker. We are supposed to feel guilty for it when in fact Whites have been far kinder to those we conquered than what would have happened to us if those we conquered had been victorious.
Your claim about the number of treaties and that they were all broken is patently false. There were around 374 treaties, and for one example in Michigan all treaties were fulfilled both contemporaneously and to this very day, enforced right now through federal law, etc.
This lie about broken treaties being universal is an anti-White propaganda claim used to justify false claims of Whites living on stolen land.
Yes, many were broken, frauds and crimes committed. But that assertion is at best an extremely gross misrepresentation, and likely more accurately an intentional blatant lie.
I agree. My point was that you acted like I needed to do more homework because I had said something false, when I had not. I have studied Native American history. I literally worked in a tribal government on a reservation and would sit around drinking and debating politics with my full blooded best friend at the time.
That's part of the reason I commented. Because I already knew that statement wasn't true because I'd studied various treaties.
I had actually lauded the tribes over the Black Hills issue just recently because they have a huge sum of money sitting in the bank waiting for them (held by the US gov, estimated over a billion dollars), but they've refused to take it on principle because they just want their land back, and by accepting the money they would be accepting the legitimacy of its seizure.
I'm not ignorant of these issues. The fraud of Pennsylvania is another glaring example. Or how the natives were ran out of the south and then the President himself was bullied into submission when he tried to stand up for them, etc. And those were well integrated members of society with businesses, etc.
I never said such things didn't exist. I said only that the claim of 500 treaties, with every single one being broken, was untrue on both counts. Wrong count, and wrong in its claim of them all being broken.
But on the other hand, you have to understand, the Natives were in effect conquered. It's a largely done deal. They are now 2% of the population and Europeans have controlled basically every aspect of this continent for centuries now. European descended people are now native to this land, and undeniably its rulers, with language, religion, technology, science, academia, infrastructure, culture, etc... EVERYTHING being overwhelmingly European derived.
I'm know many natives are still mighty upset about that, but it doesn't change that history was a very messy, violent affair. It had been for thousands of years, and for example was between the thousands of different tribes in the Americas, speaking hundreds of different languages, many mutually unintelligible, many as unrelated to each other as Swedes to Egyptians today, and engaging in rape, murder, genocide, torture, chattel slavery, etc... the same as anyone else on Earth.
Which was kind of the point of the article we're commenting under. To point out the reality, so that people understood that this "Pocahontas" idea of natives talking to animals and being peaceful noble savages living in harmony with nature is largely horse doo doo.
The White man did to the natives what the natives were doing to each other, and did it not only more effectively, but often with much more honor than the natives themselves were doing to each other.
History must be judged both on the facts, and in its own historical conext. Not by the metrics of our modern social mores and moral norms.
What do those have to do with my statement about Michigan as an example that there weren't 500 treaties, and not "every single one" was broken as claimed?
I specifically said "Yes, many were broken, frauds and crimes committed."
Did you read what I actually wrote before commenting?
Another generous misconception about North American Indians is that their lands were 'stolen'.
Most Indians in what became the US, were nomadic. They had consistent stretches of land they hunted on. But there was no possession of land. They didn't have established towns and cities like Central/South American Indians. It wasn't really a situation of settler land theft. It was more like the settlers crowded the Indians range.
Eventually relations did deteriorate to a point where Indians were wholesale being chased off of familiar lands through warfare and broken treaties. But that was a later stage feature and Indians were compensated in varying degrees with reservation lands. Your point is well taken, the real story is two civilizations clashed, and there were winners and losers. And the Indian good guys vs American bad guys is a naive, misinformed mythology.
Agree. That's a fair, objective way to look at it. But the history of North American conquest has become completely ideological and intensely emotional to the left.
In 1895, it was determined that a pathogen that was not a bacteria was killing tobacco plants. This was Tobacco Mosaic Virus, the very first virus to be discovered though we didn't know what it was, at the time.
By 1930 we knew we had discovered a previously unknown form of life but viruses are so tiny, far smaller than baccteria, that no normal microscope can reveal them, wavelengths of light just pass around them.
Even though poxes are, coincidentally, among the largest viruses, the Smallpox blanket story is unlikely, at best.
Particularly in Canada, one of the worst things Europeans did to native Americans was to supply them with muskets & even cannon, in trade, which they used to slaughter each other in unprecedented numbers.
I am SO SICK of the "smallpox blankets" bullshit. Germ theory wasn't even developed until the last part of the 19th century and wasn't widely understood among the public until decades after that. As if anyone could say, "Ok, put the smallpox here" and then (insert magical sequence here) everybody has smallpox. The idea that someone could say "Ha, we'll give them BLANKETS that will kill them all!" is absurd. Why is it always blankets? Why, in all the wars and conflicts around the world, did no one else think of this brilliant idea? Why is it ALWAYS only in the context of American Indians?
There is one letter discussing it. The tribes already had smallpox at the time. There's no evidence it was actually done, had any effect beyond what was already in progress, and no evidence it was ever done anywhere else at any other time. Just more anti-White mythology.
I heard an "urban legend" that a soldier claimed credit for infecting the Indians by chucking a blanket over the fort wall. The legend may be true, but the blanket was not the cause of the smallpox outbreak.
Smallpox had already been afflicting those tribes for a few years before that siege. So it's highly unlikely that the attempt accomplished anything by using an invalid vector to infect those already exposed to infection.
It simply remains the only instance of it actually being proven to have been even plausibly attempted.
Regarding "3. The Comanche: Lords of the Plains": construction of the transcontinental railroads played a significant role in subduing the plains tribes during this period. Armed, mobile work crews, quicker transportation of US Army and materiel between forts, rail-based bison slaughter, etc.
The "stewards of the environment, in harmony with nature" line is mythology, too. Indians exploited nature to the limits of their technology, just like everybody else on earth. They didn't always use every part of the buffalo, either. There are archaeological sites where hundreds of bison were driven over cliffs, partially butchered for the choice cuts, the rest left to rot. Plains Indians set up camps near streams and rivers, then piled up shit and garbage until the stench and flies became intolerable, and moved on to a new site.
Scalp Dance is a particularly good read (IMO). Why? it's little more than vignettes or after action reports by ordinary soldiers and their officers on the plains during the Plains Indian Wars begun in earnest after the Civil War ended and resources could be fielded to suppress the tribes. Ordinary soldiers have little to gain from the telling of their experiences in these reports. They are plain spoken and chilling in description of Indian--and white--brutality toward each other. These are not the views/experiences of some "woke" historian generations after the fact.
Sheer numbers of European settlers was going to overwhelm the native population together with advanced weaponary etc. would be interesting to know how the introduction of alcohol effected the indigenous people
The European nations deliberately moved into North America knowing the culture of (mostly) low intensity warfare and violence that existed and were prepared to exploit it in furtherance of the objectives of appropriating the land and subjugating the people.
Very good piece. You documented well the one sidedness of most perspectives when like much of history there was plenty of mud to go around. One thing I have noted that rarely gets mentioned as well is the times when the two cultures actually worked well together. Good example being the Burlington Northern Railroad transcontinental line. Typically private small scale ventures with tribes generated mutually beneficial outcomes in many cases. Government and big money saw no need to even try.
Penobscot Nation, had raiding parties that travelled from the Penobscot River Valley in Maine, all the way to Florida and captured many of the local native Americans living in that region and would bring them all the way back to Maine. Don’t believe it? Ask the Penobscot’s they have made note of it in their oral history.
Human history for all of human history has been the story of the stronger conquering the weaker. We are supposed to feel guilty for it when in fact Whites have been far kinder to those we conquered than what would have happened to us if those we conquered had been victorious.
Very true for those who view history with an objective m8nd
Your claim about the number of treaties and that they were all broken is patently false. There were around 374 treaties, and for one example in Michigan all treaties were fulfilled both contemporaneously and to this very day, enforced right now through federal law, etc.
This lie about broken treaties being universal is an anti-White propaganda claim used to justify false claims of Whites living on stolen land.
Yes, many were broken, frauds and crimes committed. But that assertion is at best an extremely gross misrepresentation, and likely more accurately an intentional blatant lie.
fixed it
Thanks for the heads up. I'll fix it.
I agree. My point was that you acted like I needed to do more homework because I had said something false, when I had not. I have studied Native American history. I literally worked in a tribal government on a reservation and would sit around drinking and debating politics with my full blooded best friend at the time.
That's part of the reason I commented. Because I already knew that statement wasn't true because I'd studied various treaties.
I had actually lauded the tribes over the Black Hills issue just recently because they have a huge sum of money sitting in the bank waiting for them (held by the US gov, estimated over a billion dollars), but they've refused to take it on principle because they just want their land back, and by accepting the money they would be accepting the legitimacy of its seizure.
I'm not ignorant of these issues. The fraud of Pennsylvania is another glaring example. Or how the natives were ran out of the south and then the President himself was bullied into submission when he tried to stand up for them, etc. And those were well integrated members of society with businesses, etc.
I never said such things didn't exist. I said only that the claim of 500 treaties, with every single one being broken, was untrue on both counts. Wrong count, and wrong in its claim of them all being broken.
But on the other hand, you have to understand, the Natives were in effect conquered. It's a largely done deal. They are now 2% of the population and Europeans have controlled basically every aspect of this continent for centuries now. European descended people are now native to this land, and undeniably its rulers, with language, religion, technology, science, academia, infrastructure, culture, etc... EVERYTHING being overwhelmingly European derived.
I'm know many natives are still mighty upset about that, but it doesn't change that history was a very messy, violent affair. It had been for thousands of years, and for example was between the thousands of different tribes in the Americas, speaking hundreds of different languages, many mutually unintelligible, many as unrelated to each other as Swedes to Egyptians today, and engaging in rape, murder, genocide, torture, chattel slavery, etc... the same as anyone else on Earth.
Which was kind of the point of the article we're commenting under. To point out the reality, so that people understood that this "Pocahontas" idea of natives talking to animals and being peaceful noble savages living in harmony with nature is largely horse doo doo.
The White man did to the natives what the natives were doing to each other, and did it not only more effectively, but often with much more honor than the natives themselves were doing to each other.
History must be judged both on the facts, and in its own historical conext. Not by the metrics of our modern social mores and moral norms.
What do those have to do with my statement about Michigan as an example that there weren't 500 treaties, and not "every single one" was broken as claimed?
I specifically said "Yes, many were broken, frauds and crimes committed."
Did you read what I actually wrote before commenting?
Another generous misconception about North American Indians is that their lands were 'stolen'.
Most Indians in what became the US, were nomadic. They had consistent stretches of land they hunted on. But there was no possession of land. They didn't have established towns and cities like Central/South American Indians. It wasn't really a situation of settler land theft. It was more like the settlers crowded the Indians range.
Eventually relations did deteriorate to a point where Indians were wholesale being chased off of familiar lands through warfare and broken treaties. But that was a later stage feature and Indians were compensated in varying degrees with reservation lands. Your point is well taken, the real story is two civilizations clashed, and there were winners and losers. And the Indian good guys vs American bad guys is a naive, misinformed mythology.
or, we could say, Europeans were another "tribe"
Agree. That's a fair, objective way to look at it. But the history of North American conquest has become completely ideological and intensely emotional to the left.
A good book about American Indians--specifically the Comanches--is "Empire of the Summer Moon' (2010) by S. C. Gwynne.
In 1895, it was determined that a pathogen that was not a bacteria was killing tobacco plants. This was Tobacco Mosaic Virus, the very first virus to be discovered though we didn't know what it was, at the time.
By 1930 we knew we had discovered a previously unknown form of life but viruses are so tiny, far smaller than baccteria, that no normal microscope can reveal them, wavelengths of light just pass around them.
Even though poxes are, coincidentally, among the largest viruses, the Smallpox blanket story is unlikely, at best.
Particularly in Canada, one of the worst things Europeans did to native Americans was to supply them with muskets & even cannon, in trade, which they used to slaughter each other in unprecedented numbers.
Good point about supplying Indians with guns
I am SO SICK of the "smallpox blankets" bullshit. Germ theory wasn't even developed until the last part of the 19th century and wasn't widely understood among the public until decades after that. As if anyone could say, "Ok, put the smallpox here" and then (insert magical sequence here) everybody has smallpox. The idea that someone could say "Ha, we'll give them BLANKETS that will kill them all!" is absurd. Why is it always blankets? Why, in all the wars and conflicts around the world, did no one else think of this brilliant idea? Why is it ALWAYS only in the context of American Indians?
There is one letter discussing it. The tribes already had smallpox at the time. There's no evidence it was actually done, had any effect beyond what was already in progress, and no evidence it was ever done anywhere else at any other time. Just more anti-White mythology.
I heard an "urban legend" that a soldier claimed credit for infecting the Indians by chucking a blanket over the fort wall. The legend may be true, but the blanket was not the cause of the smallpox outbreak.
Smallpox had already been afflicting those tribes for a few years before that siege. So it's highly unlikely that the attempt accomplished anything by using an invalid vector to infect those already exposed to infection.
It simply remains the only instance of it actually being proven to have been even plausibly attempted.
Regarding "3. The Comanche: Lords of the Plains": construction of the transcontinental railroads played a significant role in subduing the plains tribes during this period. Armed, mobile work crews, quicker transportation of US Army and materiel between forts, rail-based bison slaughter, etc.
The "stewards of the environment, in harmony with nature" line is mythology, too. Indians exploited nature to the limits of their technology, just like everybody else on earth. They didn't always use every part of the buffalo, either. There are archaeological sites where hundreds of bison were driven over cliffs, partially butchered for the choice cuts, the rest left to rot. Plains Indians set up camps near streams and rivers, then piled up shit and garbage until the stench and flies became intolerable, and moved on to a new site.
dot Indians also seem to have a limited sense of 'tidiness
Judging by the state of sanitation and health in their own country, I'd say you're right.
Read” Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”..
or Blood Meridian
Scalp Dance is a particularly good read (IMO). Why? it's little more than vignettes or after action reports by ordinary soldiers and their officers on the plains during the Plains Indian Wars begun in earnest after the Civil War ended and resources could be fielded to suppress the tribes. Ordinary soldiers have little to gain from the telling of their experiences in these reports. They are plain spoken and chilling in description of Indian--and white--brutality toward each other. These are not the views/experiences of some "woke" historian generations after the fact.
Sheer numbers of European settlers was going to overwhelm the native population together with advanced weaponary etc. would be interesting to know how the introduction of alcohol effected the indigenous people
The European nations deliberately moved into North America knowing the culture of (mostly) low intensity warfare and violence that existed and were prepared to exploit it in furtherance of the objectives of appropriating the land and subjugating the people.
sounds like Muslims into Europe and soon the USA
Too late for that. They’ve been here for quite some time now, and they don’t seem to be any worse than the rest of us.
The melting pot! Well met!
Seems very well written and researched. It sounds plausible and it’s inspired me to further reading. Thanks.
Very good piece. You documented well the one sidedness of most perspectives when like much of history there was plenty of mud to go around. One thing I have noted that rarely gets mentioned as well is the times when the two cultures actually worked well together. Good example being the Burlington Northern Railroad transcontinental line. Typically private small scale ventures with tribes generated mutually beneficial outcomes in many cases. Government and big money saw no need to even try.
And the Cherokee Nation, Choctaw Nation, Chickasaw Nation, Creek (Muscogee) Nation, and Seminole Nation were allies of the Confederacy
Penobscot Nation, had raiding parties that travelled from the Penobscot River Valley in Maine, all the way to Florida and captured many of the local native Americans living in that region and would bring them all the way back to Maine. Don’t believe it? Ask the Penobscot’s they have made note of it in their oral history.
They're ability to live off the land made long distance excursions possible