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In reply to the discussion: I could see that the white man did not care about each other the way our people did. [View all]Maraya1969
(22,441 posts)pre-European North America violence and the only thing I found it one archeological dig that they think might be a genocide but there were only 100 skeletons found.
They have found many, (but I can't find a number) skeletons with digs in their bones where they were hit with arrows and such.
And then I found this: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/11/21/thanksgiving-guilt-trip-how-warlike-were-native-americans-before-europeans-arrived/
Here are some paragraphs:
In two momentous early encounters, Native Americans greeted Europeans with kindness and generosity. Here is how Christopher Columbus described the Arawak, tribal people living in the Bahamas when he landed there in 1492: They
brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks bells. They willingly traded everything they owned
. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance
. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
How that passagewhich I found in A Peoples History of the United States by the historian Howard Zinn (Harper Collins, 2003)captures the whole sordid history of colonialism! Columbus was as good as his word. Within decades the Spaniards had slaughtered almost all the Arawaks and other natives of the New Indies and enslaved the few survivors. The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide, wrote the historian Samuel Morison (who admired Columbus!).
The friendliness of the Wampanoag was extraordinary, because they had recently been ravaged by diseases caught from previous European explorers. Europeans had also killed, kidnapped and enslaved Native Americans in the region. The Plymouth settlers, during their desperate first year, had even stolen grain and other goods from the Wampanoag, according to Wikipedias entry on Plymouth Colony.
The good vibes of that 1621 feast soon dissipated. As more English settlers arrived in New England, they seized more and more land from the Wampanoag and other tribes, who eventually resisted with violencein vain. We all know how this story ended. The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million, Zinn wrote.