Article: 853 of sgi.talk.ratical From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Subject: 500 years: the blinding arrogance of the invader/dominator mentality Summary: we must all undergo a basic change of consciousness--evolve or perish Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 14:35:18 GMT Lines: 124 The arrogance that gave sanction to the invader mentality is something that continues to affect so much in this culture. Witness Cotton Mather who, referring to the original peoples of Turtle Island, proudly wrote, "The woods were almost cleared of those pernicious creatures, to make room for a better growth," while Ben Franklin wrote of "the design of Providence to extirpate those savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth," or even Abe Lincoln writing in his boyhood, the "natural and kindly fraternization of the Frenchmen with the Indians was a cause of wonder to the Americans. This friendly intercourse between them, and their occasional intermarriages, seemed little short of monstrous to the ferocious exclusiveness of the Anglo Saxon." [continuing on from "Book of the Hopi" by Frank Waters:] As early as 1641, New Netherlands began offering bouties for Indian scalps. The practice was adopted in 1704 by Connecticut and then by Massachusetts, where the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of Northhampton urged settlers to hunt Indians with dogs as they did bears. Virginia and Pennsylvania followed suit, the latter in 1764 offering rewards for scalps of Indian bucks, squaws, and boys under ten years of age. In 1814 a fifty-dollar reward for Indian scalps was proclaimed by the territory of Indiana. In Colorado, legislation was offered placing bounties for the "destruction of Indians and skunks." By 1876, in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, the price of scalps had jumped to two hundred dollars. In Oregon a bounty was placed on Indians and coyotes. Indians were trialed with hounds, their springs poisoned. Women were clubbed to death, and children had their brains knocked out against trees to save the expense of lead and powder. Massacres of entire tribes and villages, such as that of Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864, were not uncommon. Here a village of Cheyennes and Arapahoes were asleep in their lodges when the Reverend J. M. Chivington, a minister of the Methodist Church and a presiding elder in Denver, rode up with a troop of volunteers. "Kill and scalp all the Indians, big and little," he ordered, "since nits make lice." Without warning, every Indian was killed--75 men, 225 old people, women and children. Scalps were taken to Denver and exhibited on the stage of a theater. Wholesale removal of whole tribes from reservations granted them by solemn treaties was in order whenever their land was found to be valuable. The Cherokee Nation was the largest of the Iroquois tribes; its people had invented an alphabet and had written a constitution, establishing a legislature, a judiciary, and executive branch. In 1794, in accordance with a treaty made with the United States, the Cherokees were confined to seven million acres of mountain country in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In 1828 gold was discovered on their land. The Georgia legislature passed an act confiscating all Cherokee lands, declaring all laws of the Cherokee Nation to be null and void, and forbidding Indians to testify in court against whites. The confiscated lands were distributed by lottery to whites. The case of the Cherokee Nation came up before the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice rendered his decision, upholding the Cherokees' right to their land. Retorted President Jackson, "John Marshall has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it." What was enforced was a fictional treaty whereby the Cherokees agreed to give up their remaining seven million acres for $4,500,000 to be deposited to their credit in the United States treasury. General Winfield Scott with seven thousand troops then enforced their removal west of the Mississippi. Of the fourteen to seventeen thousand Cherokees who started on the "Trail of Tears," some four thousand died on the way. The financial costs of their removal were promptly charged against the funds credited to them. And when it was over, President Van Buren in December 1838 proudly informed Congress, "The measures by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects. . . . The Cherokee have emigrated without any apparent reluctance." The legality of this procedure was upheld again on the seven-million- acre Sioux Reservation in the Black Hills of Dakota. To this land the Sioux Nation had been granted "absolute and undisturbed" possession by a solemn United States treaty ratified by the Senate in 1868. But when in 1874 gold was found in the region, General Custer was sent with United States troops to protect white prospectors. After the massacre of his troops the full force of the Army was summoned to eject the Sioux and throw the reservation open to whites. The United States Court of Claims subsequently upheld the legality of the procedure. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis C. Walker gave voice to public sentiment when in 1871 he stated that he would prefer to see the Indians exterminated rather than an amalgamation of the two races, asserting, "When dealing with savage men, as with savage beasts, no question of national honor can arise. Whether to fight, to run away, or to employ a ruse, is solely a question of expediency." So mile by mile westward, and year by year through the "Century of Dishonor," the United States pursued on all levels its policy of virtual extermination of Indians, accompanied by a folk saying that served as a national motto: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." A racial prejudice that became an idee fixe, a national psychosis sanctioning the wanton killing of Indians, is still the theme of America's only truly indigenous morality play--the cowboy-Indian movie thriller. [pp. 339-342] As a boy, Hitler loved reading German writer Karl May's stories about the American wild west and was fascinated by methods the Americans used in their own adventures in extermination which he, in part, modeled his own adventures after. Such a model to the world of the way "democracy" thrives--on the bodies of those it kills to make room for god-fearing (they've got good reason to fear god) and peace-loving people--is tragically still with us in the current late twentieth century incarnation of orwellian "`watch' what we say, NOT what we do" mentality. American people like myself share a collective guilt about the sordid and terrible, unconscionably nightmarish treatment our forebearers perpetrated on the native peoples who lived here millenia before our europeans ancestors ever set foot on Turtle Island. This guilt must be acknowledged, faced and atoned for if there is ever to be the kind of healing of the wounds and pain that permeate the land and the people still here. -- "I lean on what I learn about our guidelines as to how we should live. And the bottom line is always respect. It is what causes you to think about not hurting or bringing about suffering to any living thing." --Audrey Shenandoah, Onondaga