"The American Indian Holocaust, known as the ..." Topic

…."500 year war" and the World's Longest Holocaust In The History Of Mankind

"The term Genocide derives from the Latin (genos=race, tribe; cide=killing) and means literally the killing or murder of an entire tribe or people. The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group" and cites the first usage of the term as R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, (1944) p.79. "By ‘genocide' we mean the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group."

The U.N. General Assembly adopted this term and defended it in 1946 as "….a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups." Most people tend to associate genocide with wholesale slaughter of a specific people. However, "the 1994 U.N. Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, describes genocide beyond outright murder of people as the destruction and extermination of culture." Article II of the convention lists five categories of activity as genocidal when directed against a specific "national, ethnic, racial, or religious group."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I blame the Mongols. They started all this move into a territory and ravage the land thing. If you go back far enough, I'm sure the Neanderthals have a beef against us homo sapiens.

The biggest killer of humans in the New World after contact with Europe was disease. But even if the first Europeans had shown up, smoked a peace pipe, sung kumbaya and left – the diseases would still have ravaged the inhabitants with no immunity to the various diseases.

What Brian said. More broadly, and with disease as #1, consider also that the Indian's cultures were so weak in relation to the Europeans that the slightest contact brought them despair and destruction. Politically, religiously, ecopnomically, technologically, the natives could never make a 'fair fight." Wars were generally alternating massacres, as Indians attacked by surprise -- the only way they had a chance -- and then the Europeans/whites retaliated by exterminating them. A great tragedy, and quite unavoidable.

The Spanish did not intend to kill the Indians, they would have greatly preferred to enslave them.

Don't forget that natives were using genocide on each other as well.

The Elmo family took a vacation recently and visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield. What is interesting was the arrangement of the Black Hills Reservation was destroyed by the discovery of gold.

The government tried to keep prospectors out, it didn't work and the Indians didn't want to modify the treaty. Honestly, given gold it was a losing fight.

Yeah, might makes right so let's blame the victims for being too weak. There's a lot of self interested rationalization going on here. Not much difference between killing someone and enslaving them, which for the Indians was a virtual death sentence since they died like flies while enslaved. Mr Elmo is right. Greed rules. You've got what I want and if you don't give it to me I'll kill you one way or another. That about sums up White/Indian history.

We were killing each other long before you boys showed up.

A great "what if" for me would be to ask; what if the immunity issue would have worked the other way around and the Europeans had no immunity to the diseases of e new world? At the local level it would have been like "War of the Worlds". But, just imagine the sequel where the invading aliens take the diseases back to their home world.

"The Spanish did not intend to kill the Indians, they would have greatly preferred to enslave them."

Not only Bill… the Spanish also mixed very well with the natives… see Mexico for Example….

Amicalement
Armand

If a culture is so fragile that it disintegrates at the slightest contact with a stronger one, destruction is inevitable. Of course that is a tragedy. But this is not a case where "blaming the strong" trumps "blaming the weak." Blame doesn't really come into it. Of course both sides were human and did bad things. But it takes some parity of power to establish a long-term peace. Just a fact.

Hogwash, the Spanish waged war n the Aztecs, Incas, Florida tribes and totally annihilated those Florida tribes who sided with the French.
They blazed a trail of destruction across what is now Alabama and Mississippi.
They conducted a centuries long war against the Pueblo and Navajo.
Tribes that did not want to convert to Christianity were slaughtered.

Choctaw is right traditional enemies fought endless battles. One battle between the Choctaw lasted several days until the exhausted survivors called a truce to bury the dead. Two mounds were started with one for Chickasaw and the other Choctaw. The twin mounds grew into hills several hundred feet high and covered with dirt. Just one example from my articles in Time Portal Passages called Under One Sun:A record of First Nation conflicts with each other.

The great mystery to me is how did white Europeans become what they were: steel, gunpowder, etc.

What led them to be such bad assess?

The need to resist Islamic and Mongol imperialism.

Yes. Europe was under siege, and when it broke the siege around 1400 it kept expanding. Also, we have been very open to foreign ideas. The Chinese invent paper and gunpowder and make firecrackers. Europe gets it and makes "A Mighty Fortress."

Mr Elmo….a suggested read: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

One of the reasons the Europeans sailed West to get to the East was because when Constantanople fell (1445?) they were isolated from trade with China and India and sailing around Africa was not a great solution. After Spainish Reconquista (1490?) they were able to fund Columubus's voyages.

The Turks and other Arab and North African countries could have sailed West but could not get out of the Med. What would the effect be on North and South America if the Turks had gotten here first and converted the locals to Islam? You can forget about casinos. What if the Russians, Japanese or even the Chinese got the North and South America before the Europeans? I doubt if Stalin would have been kind.

Unfortunately, the Europeans were not doing anything much differently than everyone else at the time and did what they had to do to show a profit and resettle. When they arrived in Central America some of the locals took up an alliance against the Aztecs because they didn't like being organ donors for their religious practices. Fortunately, things have gotten a little better since then.

Maybe we should look at the Aztecs going back to their old social and religious practices. The West has been legally practicing human sacrifice for decades, why shouldn't they.

Of course if the Europeans of today were running things back in the 1400's they would have given the people of the New World free food, free healthcare, preference for jobs and outlawed Christianity.

Wolfhag

Well said….

Amicalement
Armand

While we are on the subject of enslavement of the indigenous natives of the Western Hemisphere. Who do we suppose was toiling in the mines to extract all the vast quantities of gold and jewels that so bedazzled Cortez and Pizarro? or worked in the quarries to provide the huge stone blocks to erect the cities of the Aztecs and Incans?

It is not a coincidence that many states subjugated by the Aztecs and Incans allied themselves with the Spaniards to overthrow their existing masters.

Human history is not black and white, but a vast expanse of varying shades of grey.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B