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Post by Diane Merkel on Jul 14, 2005 19:00:27 GMT -6
Here are some questions from a website visitor:
Why did all Indians not unite against the white settlers? How many Indians live in the U.S. in our present time? Do they feel the white settlers took everything and tried to kill their civilization? Thank very much for giving answers.
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Post by melliott on Jul 14, 2005 19:24:14 GMT -6
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Post by Tricia on Jul 14, 2005 20:28:28 GMT -6
I think it matters who you ask. My family has a rather long history of working with the Anglos--my possible great-great grandfather (Henry Dodge) might have worked as a translator to first the Sioux before being transferred by the US to the Navajo Captivity at Bosque Redondo in 1860 (I am guessing the languages must have been similar). From there, my great-grandfather (Henry Chee Dodge, aka Kil' chi'i) also found his way in life as a translator--and then went into business (supplying rugs/blankets) with John Lorenzo Hubbell at Hubbell's trading post in Ganado, AZ. My family has always looked upon working with the Anglos as a positive, i.e., life saving activity. My grandfather (Thomas Henry Dodge, 1900-1987)was schooled at a Franciscan mission--St. Michael's, in Ft. Defiance, AZ ... was the Indian in him killed? Was he forced to speak English? Yes. Maybe. There are some members of my extended family and some NAs I have come across who would prefer to do without memories of Kit Carson, and blame Anglos for the roots of their misery, but as one person, I have come to depend on air conditioning and smooth roads! I still remember my Shi'i talking in Navajo the last time I visited Hubbell's. There IS something about the land of the four directions.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by weir on Jul 15, 2005 8:11:51 GMT -6
Here are some questions from a website visitor:Why did all Indians not unite against the white settlers? How many Indians live in the U.S. in our present time? Do they feel the white settlers took everything and tried to kill their civilization? Thank very much for giving answers. I think the Indians couldn't stop 2'000 years of tribal wars. They tried to unite but 20 centuries of angry is not forgettable in 2 centuries... Including metis, I read the Indians of the Plains are now up to 3 millions. At the time, they were 270'000. 75'000 died between 1850-90, mostly of illness (62'000 of the sole variola) and about 10'000 from tribal and indians war (including about 2'000 civilians). Four massacres of Indians during the war, Bear River (1863), Sand Creek (1864), Marias (1870), Wounded Knee (1890). My source is a french one. "Les Indiens des Plaines", Yves Berger and Daniel Dubois, Nuage Rouge, 2002. French author Daniel Dubois translated M. Hyde's work about the Sioux. As you can see, the West conquest is forced assimilation. No genocide at all.
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Post by Tricia on Jul 15, 2005 9:55:38 GMT -6
West--
What may be be forced assimilation to one Native American is considered genocide or ethnic cleansing by another. The dine' were better than some tribes at getting along with the powers that be, i.e, the War Department and Sherman come 1868, but one cannot help but argue that the implementation of the Indian school did considerable damage to the culture. The BIA continues to undermine--it's a lousy holdover from the Great White Father paternalism of the 19th Century and needs to go.
Was it genocide when comparing the Indian Wars to the Holocaust? To me, no--but I've got cousins who'll argue quite the opposite.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by weir on Jul 15, 2005 10:42:32 GMT -6
Genocide is a high massacre of people.
If we look in the numbers estimated by historians, there is no genocide of Indians people. No comparison could be made with Holocaust, Armenia, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Cambodgia, Russia under communists...
Native Americans today can argue about their culture, which was forced to be removed, but cannot say the American government or army did make a genocide of the Indians people. In fact, Indians killed more American civilians than the reciprocity.
Colonialism is not nihilism.
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Post by Tricia on Jul 15, 2005 10:56:16 GMT -6
West--
You, in all honesty, cannot tell a Native American HOW to perceive their past--that is something that is as individual as the person who does or doesn't feel that perception. We, NA or Anglo, all have our interpretations of history--as the discussions at this board so often portray.
And I will not entertain your comment about who killed whom more. This is a thread dedicated to modern feelings from the NA point of view, not a scorecard.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by weir on Jul 15, 2005 11:18:29 GMT -6
West-- You, in all honesty, cannot tell a Native American HOW to perceive their past--that is something that is as individual as the person who does or doesn't feel that perception. We, NA or Anglo, all have our interpretations of history--as the discussions at this board so often portray. True. I do think anyway numbers speak for themselves. And I will not entertain your comment about who killed whom more. This is a thread dedicated to modern feelings from the NA point of view, not a scorecard. Ok my comment was a little provocating, but that's the truth. I mean, people believe they know a lot of stuff about the Indians wars but they forget it was a war... And this is how Welch can sell his books...
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Post by michigander1 on Jul 17, 2005 3:50:06 GMT -6
One thing I learned, reading history is that a good reader must forget "black and white" or "good and bad". One of the most difficult and complicate history event is Indian wars and the American West. It seems to be that everywhere you look, you find a good reason to say both "was right" and "was wrong".
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Post by weir on Jul 17, 2005 9:51:48 GMT -6
One thing I learned, reading history is that a good reader must forget "black and white" or "good and bad". One of the most difficult and complicate history event is Indian wars and the American West. It seems to be that everywhere you look, you find a good reason to say both "was right" and "was wrong". I totally agree. The study of LBh is a good synthesis of this feeling. As a reader, you are following indian warriors by their testimonies, you learn to know them, and suddenly you don't understand the savegery they committed in tortures in the village. Same thing with the 7th cavalry. You read their statements about Reno Hill fight, and you find them again at Wounded Knee, and you wonder how the same guy could commit bravery in one battle and blind atrocities in another. No black and white, it's in shade of gray. That's the best way on my point of view to analyse an historical period.
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Post by crzhrs on Aug 3, 2005 17:27:58 GMT -6
<Why did all Indians not unite against the white settlers? How many Indians live in the U.S. in our present time? Do they feel the white settlers took everything and tried to kill their civilization? Thank very much for giving answers>
Native Amrericans found out to late that generations of inter-tribal warfare was far less important to them than unitying against the whites.
Still . . . today anomyosities still are there. The Lakota and Crow still cannot get over what took place years ago. The Crow for the Sioux taking their land and the Sioux for the Crow helping the Army fight them. There are many other cases of things like that taking place.
In the end it didn't matter if one tribe sided with the whites or not. They all got the short end of the stick.
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Post by Leyton McLean CSA on Aug 3, 2005 19:49:27 GMT -6
Crzhrs--
True, animosities still exist among tribes. Let's look at it as something not too different than tensions among the US and the various members of the so-called "axis of evil." Granted, problems between Native American nations won't result in WWIII ... nations we are and nations we will remain--though we argue about some relatively God-forsaken land (with the exception of mineral finds) ...
Regards, LMC
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Post by Realbird on Sept 22, 2005 19:37:41 GMT -6
Here are some questions from a website visitor:Why did all Indians not unite against the white settlers? How many Indians live in the U.S. in our present time? Do they feel the white settlers took everything and tried to kill their civilization? Thank very much for giving answers.
The culture of the Native American ( the essence of their very being) coupled with the harsh reality of an unstoppable foe rendered them incapable of true resistance. Out numbered by a species of man with vast, technological superiority, what could they possibly do to stem the flood of pioneers infiltrating their hearth and homes? Resistance was always individualistic and, often prompted by the younger men of the tribe. Debased, humiliated, deprived of dignity, various tribes would sometimes set aside their differences and retaliate. Incapable of comprehending sacred " White" truths such as greed, power, and " Manifest Destiny" the aboriginal never understood the insatiable exploitative ideologies of their adversaries. It was virtually incomprehensible to them that the land could be sectioned off and own by individuals. Could the sky be done so? They never understood, until it was too late, that only the brutal termination of their meandering way of life would free up thousands of acres of land. Land that could not be cultivated, mined, and exploited as long as the " savages" freely roamed them. And so, each act of Indian resistance was immediately met with an overwhelming, crushing retaliatory blows form the U.S. Government. Their women and children subjected to the likes of Col. Chivington and Company, the native Americans slowly realized that resistance was futile. While the Indians were perceived by mainline society to be " heathens", it does not necessarily follow that this erroneously concept equates stupidity. Did the warriors, in their vicious attempts to stem the tide of fate, commit despicable atrocities? Absolutely! In the end, however, they meekly submitted to their victors and hoped for the best. Presently, an exorbitantly number of Indian youths, essentially, dream of days of glory while enmeshing themselves in gallons of booze and wonder, what if? All species of man who are deprived of their " Cultural" dignity are deprived of the ability to instill positive representation in their youth. Thus, the race/group deprived of an inalienable right "to be" wither upon the vine, become stagnant and cease to evolve.
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Post by d o harris on Sept 22, 2005 20:26:55 GMT -6
Assimilation, forced or otherwise, is ethnic cleansing, unless the persons being assimilated are tough enough to maintain and live in two cultures. And, the thing is, it isn't the ones who would have brutalized the Indians that contributed to the cleansing. It was the do-gooders, the churchmen who wanted to Christianize the tribes, for example. The Shermans of the world would have been quite content to let the Indians be, so long as they stayed out of the way of white men. It is very difficult to imagine the moral and psychic destruction that accompanies a loss of culture, unless it has been observed first hand. I have witnessed it in a situation I do not particularly care to discuss, but it had to do with the assimilation of a large group of migrant workers into a community after migrant labor was no longer required because of improved crop strains and improved agricultural equipment. In 1873 a group of Sioux chiefs travelled to Washington to meet with Pres. Grant. He met with them only long enough to introduce them to Interior Sec'y Delano, with this admonition: "I want you boys to listen to this man. He knows what is good for you better than you do yourself." At the time Grant was still pursuing his peace policy at the behest of the churchmen, primarily, and I'm sure Grant sincerely believed he had the best interests of the Indians at heart. In this entire world there is no one more dangerous than the person who believes he knows better than you do what is best for you.
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Post by crzhrs on Sept 23, 2005 10:00:57 GMT -6
The policy of the government was to turn Indians into Christians and become farmers. Their children were kidnapped and sent to far off schools and were forbidden to speak their native language. Their hair was cut and they were dressed in military-style clothing. They were taught that being Indian was wrong, something to be ashamed of. Unfortunately that indoctrination caused the children to be stuck between two worlds. Once the next generation is corrupted the long line of culture is destroyed.
The destruction of the culture was far more insidious than killing Indians.
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