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