Now the Right Wing Extremists are going after Native Americans

[wnylib]

26. A large number of Native Americans

did die as a result of European diseases. Not sure I'd agree that it was 90%.

One problem that I have with the emphasis on Native deaths due to disease is that too many people use that to excuse or ignore the other causes of Native deaths and tribal extinctions. Other causes were:

1. Brutal slavery under Spanish rule in which people were literally worked until they dropped dead and fresh bodies were brought in to replace them.

2. English colonial practice in New England of trading Indian war captives to the Caribbean in return for "seasoned" African slaves, and starting wars to get slave captives.

3. English colonists surrounding Native villages in the middle of the night to set them on fire and shoot all who tried to escape, wiping out entire villages.

4. Crowding tribes out of their own territories, creating loss of tribal crops and game so that they starved to death.

5. Forcing tribes onto reservations that were not suitable for living due to lack of water supplies, game, and farmable land, causing massive starvation.

6. The US government's bounty on the scalps of every Native man, woman, and child found on land that was not reservation land.

7. The forced removal of all Native children from age 5 to 16 from their families for placement in government and church run boarding schools. The purpose was forced assimilation. The schools had no oversight and most teachers had no training. Food and clothing came from donations of castoffs. Faculty and staff took their pick and students got what was left of food and clothing. No medical care. Students were hired out to do manual labor and their pay went to administrators and teachers. Children were forced to convert and and take Christian names. They were forbidden to speak their native languages or say native prayers.

Punishments for violations were severe - kneeling on hardwood floors for 12 to 24 hours with no food, water, or bathroom breaks, denial of meals for an entire day or longer, being locked in closets for 24 hours, standing outdoors nude in winter for several hours, being force fed lye soap, getting beaten with horse whips, treelimb switches, or fists.

Children died of exposure from outdoor nude punishments, starvation, beatings, and disease. Sick children were not excused from "chores" and died from lack of rest and untreated illnesses.

Sexual abuse was rampant. Children were passed around in sex rings to priests and hired out as prostitutes to locals.

These assimilation boarding schools started in the 1870s and continued into the 1960s. Hundreds of children died and were buried in hidden graves on the grounds of the schools. Their families were told that they ran away. Their graves were discovered decades later.

Some schools were better, and their graduates went on to some achievements in sports, like Jim Thorpe. A few went on to college. But most carried emotional and physical scars from their boarding school experiences. They were not able to reintegrate into their families or tribes, whom they were taught to hate and look down on. They were not prepared for life among non Native Americans and were not accepted by European Americans. Some turned to alcohol and drugs. Some remained prostitutes after leaving school. Some committed suicide.

Amnesty International has collected the testimonies of former boarding school students who survived.

Disease is not the only thing that killed Native Americans.