"Critiquing "Cracked" and the notion of genocide" Topic

Okay… I know "Cracked.com" isn't exactly an authoritative reference, but this one kind of irked me.

link

In their article, "5 Ridiculous Myths Everyone Believes About the Wild West" the author claims:

"Native American deaths caused by the U.S. government and the military likely number in the millions."

Whoa! Millions? Where? When? Every book I've ever read demonstrates that the number of Indians killed in battle was exceedingly low. Even people of that era pointed out that these battles normally involved very light casualties… fights to the death like that at Little Big Horn were remarkable because they were rare.

So anyway, I click on the link and the document he cites claims that 12 million Indians were killed since 1492. I'm not sure how Indians killed in 1492 can be the work of the US government. Someone please explain this to me.

It appears that anyone talking about casualties in the Indian Wars range from 15,000 – 30,000, depending on how wide of a net you want to cast over the term "Indian Wars." Some sources only talk about the classical "Old West" period of 1850-1899 while some sources include every act of white-vs-red man violence.

Every source I've seen that talks about casualties in the millions is including every death from any reason in both North and South America from 1492 on. The overwhelming majority of these were caused by disease. Given the extremely poor state of 15th century medical knowledge, I'm not sure these deaths could have been prevented even if the Spanish had cared enough to try (and they didn't).

There were many, many people in the US that practiced genocide against the Indians. They got the short end of the history stick and there's really no other word for it. In some cases it was willful and deliberate.

However, I submit that it is morally and factually incorrect to blame the "US government and military" for the millions of unavoidable deaths caused before the US even existed. I believe this article is being willfully deceptive by implying that all of these millions of deaths were due to battle.

Yeah, well it's Cracked. If you're going there for accurate historical information you're likely going to get what you pay for.

Not to mention that natives fought each other on both sides of nearly every conflict from the British colonial period onward.

But yeah, it's Cracked, so…infotainment.

"I submit that it is morally and factually incorrect to blame the "US government and military"

Many people take these things rather personally, as if it's my Grandpa against your Grandpa.

But as for the US gov't's responsibility… well, there are some fairly damning moments, frankly.

When you've got Phil Sheridan in uniform, standing in front of Congress persuading them to authorize the extermination of the buffalo, explicitly for the reason that it would cause mass starvation of the Indians…. When the Senate majority leader, in his resolution, declares, "These people must die…. there is no help for them"… that's a certain level of official culpability there, methinks.

It might not have been bullets, but there was definitely a connection between policy and intent.

Keep in mind, he mentioned culpability for the millions killed from 1492 onwards, which is what the Cracked article cited.

" millions killed from 1492 onwards"

I know. I'm just saying that for the period of the US/Indian Wars (which I assumed is why this topic is on the "Old West" board), then Yeah, there's a certain official responsibility for many of those deaths.

You can't transplant 19th century morality to the 21st century, obviously, but the official statements and policies are in the historical record.

Diseases brought by Europeans reduced the natives populations of the Americas by near 90% I've heard.

And the reservations, deal breaking, policies, killings, intentionally giving small pox, etc does point to certain elements of the US government aiming at the eradication of the natives.

Of course not all the administrations and branches of government were dedicated to such an idea, but it did have its adherents and was carried out to an extent.

…That said, I agree with you that deaths before America existed (whether independently or as British colonies) cannot be blamed on the American government.

Well obviously, blaming a nation for its actions before it was born does not compute.

But calculating or depending on what is likely erroneous historical data for the specific periods also does not compute.

It's not like anyone would be in a hurry to actually write down how many natives may have just been exterminated by their unit if they thought later they might be reprimanded, or even charged. The thoughtless level of the typical US infantryman in the 19th Century was, well, not pretty. But then people of the time, despite the urbanized Victorian values of whitewash, tended to be just above barbaric anyway.

While I do not agree to the inclusion of pre-nation dates, the fact is the victors write the books and rarely, even when best efforts are put forward, will information be recorded that could later reflect poorly on those same victors.

People are loathe to blame their country in the first person, that is, "Yes, we wiped the whole village out" but are often very quick to blame in the third person "That country is full of butchering maniacs" when presented with data that to the owner's own national acts in the past might pale. It is an observation, but one that too often, I think follows a certain formulaic human response.

The claim is way over the top. When the US was created, there were between 600,000-1,000,000 native-american in what it's the Continental U.S. By 1900, it had dropped down to 250,000 people. That represents a demographic catastrophe for the natives, in which the US government and the colonization of the West played a major part. What it is not known is how many of those excess deaths were due to deliberate policies (massacres and/or forced relocation of people in murderous conditions), and how many non-deliberate deaths (diseases, for instance).

In modern day states, memory of past massacres are being used by the descendants of the vanquished as political tools to advance favorable legislation, or, as it happens in Spanish-America, to counter-weight the hold on political power by white elites (see Bolivia, particularly).

Basileus, where do you come by that figure?

Thanks,

John

I concur that US government and military policies were deliberately genocidal. There were many people like Sherman who willfully attempted to eradicate them. My argument is that it is not possible for the government to have been responsible for every single disease death, which some people (even outside Cracked) attempt to argue.

One of my favorite books on the subject is "1491," by Charles Mann. He argues that the world the Pilgrims found at Plymouth Rock was the equivalent of a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic world, wherein the Indians encountered in North America were the remnants of their civilization… it had been destroyed by Spanish diseases before "We" (as in, the US government and its predecessors) even showed up.

Basileus, where do you come by that figure?

That's the low end of the estimates I've read which are 1-3 million north of the Rio Grande, which is to say they don't really have much of an idea, though of course individual scientists studying the question will tell you their estimate is the true one.

Remember, this day in age, it's the "cool" thing to hate our own country, and do our best to feel guilty for whatever we've done in the past.

American culture is more and more cut-off from the reality of the world. People here seem to forget that the world as it is today is the result of wars and conquest. There isn't a single country in existence which isn't the result of years of bloodshed and scourges.

The world is awash with winners and losers. Two hundred years from now the face of the world will look different. Many countries now will be violently overthrown, people killed in the thousands/millions…and our world today will just be history.

Solosam,

Please cite for me your source material. As a student of Indian/White relations 1866-1890, I wish to use it in my lectures here at the University.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank You.

Solosam,

Deliberately Genocidal? Many agree with you. Please show me your information.

Again I look forward to hearing from you.