Opinionated History Lessons! Native Americans

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Opinionated History Lessons! Native Americans
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 Asura.Kingnobody
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By Asura.Kingnobody 2020-01-16 17:04:29  
Since this was mentioned in another thread, I thought it could be a good subject for discussion.

My knowledge on this subject is limited, so I hope somebody opens the discussion a bit and we can go from there.

Please note that all sources are accepted, even those that people do not like. No knowledge is rejected, as long as it's proven or backed up.
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By 2020-01-16 18:00:21
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By Viciouss 2020-01-16 18:05:27  
Ive never seen either of those figures before.
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 Asura.Saevel
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By Asura.Saevel 2020-01-16 18:29:59  
Folks from Europe showed up and found a ginormous land mass full of late stone age humans that the Europeans called "savages". Those local humans frequently fought with each other over land and such. European visitors where the technological equivalent of space aliens to the locals and intermittent peace followed by intense fighting followed. The local tribes and the Europeans all sought to use each other against enemies, lots of blood shed. In the middle of all this smallpox, which the Europeans had developed resistance to spread among the locals who hadn't developed resistance, the results devastated the locals.

New country formed, ***happened, that countries *** leaders decided they had a right to all the land from Ocean to Ocean and really bad ***happened. Many many years later, different set of politicians realized how atrocious and inhumane that bad ***was.

Native Americans are the one ethnicity that I give a pretty big pass to and have earned a ton of respect from me. Those guys put up one helluva fight considering they were stone age level at that time. They continued putting up a fight while adapting the tactics of their enemies.
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By Josiahafk 2020-01-16 18:33:29  
We had a very interesting continent before europeans came and the dislocationing started. I'm the one near the top, Ojibway but our self name is Anishinaabe

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 Garuda.Chanti
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By Garuda.Chanti 2020-01-16 19:52:39  
Everything that is wrong with America can be directly traced back to the native's lax immigration laws.
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 Bahamut.Negan
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By Bahamut.Negan 2020-01-16 20:12:13  
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 Shiva.Zerowone
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By Shiva.Zerowone 2020-01-16 20:54:33  
Viciouss said: »
Ive never seen either of those figures before.

100M+ sounds like the numbers you hear associated to Buffalo.
But 100M+ Native Americans in all of North America over the course of 400+ yrs etc... it’s plausible.

90% morality due to viruses/disease is dependent on what we’re talking about.

Example: Spaniards occupation of Aztecs (Mexica), it’s quite plausible that it’s close to 90% but really is more like a 70:30 distribution.

Compared to like say English and French colonialists befriending rival tribes and getting said tribes to help fight proxy wars for the empires.. who knows what the breakdown of
Code
 murdered by native: murdered by foreigners: killed by domestic disease: killed by foreign disease
would be.

However there is probably a data set out there that’s just a google away.

That’s not even getting into the impact of Manifest Destiny.
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 Shiva.Zerowone
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By Shiva.Zerowone 2020-01-16 21:09:35  
DirectX said: »
I think it's impossible even in the 400 year time frame to have been 100M.

It’s a murky figure given known historical global population levels prior to the industrial (where it skyrocketed) and petroleum (exponentially skyrocketed) revolutions.

I figured that was where your objection was coming from.
 
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 Shiva.Zerowone
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By Shiva.Zerowone 2020-01-16 21:39:51  
Well when you factor in the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch activity in Central (I assume this includes the Caribbean) and South America along with the French and British in North America.. the 56M number isn’t unbelievable. Over the course of 100yrs that’s questionable. Those are industrial revolution era numbers.
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By Ashleyz 2020-01-16 22:06:20  
The link below is a scientific article saying the same thing DirectX linked.

"The arrival of Europeans in the Americas led to a catastrophic
decline in human numbers, with about 50 million deaths between
1492 and 1650, according to several independent sources
58,63,68,69."


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273467448_Defining_the_Anthropocene
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 Asura.Saevel
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By Asura.Saevel 2020-01-16 23:22:49  
50 million is an extreme exaggeration. Upper limit estimates are 20 million. This was bad, real bad. The native Americans had no resistances to the pathogens from Europe and Asia along with non-existent medical technology and cultural beliefs that made disease's worse.

Again can't overstate my respect for these people who continued to fight under these circumstances.
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By Ruaumoko 2020-01-17 00:06:31  
I remember a really good video from Extra History on Native American History. It was about The Law of Peace and how it was used as an inspiration for the original version of the U.S Constitution.

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7:31 is the part you want but both parts are worth watching.
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By kishr 2020-01-17 01:43:46  
cnn sucks
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 Asura.Saevel
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By Asura.Saevel 2020-01-17 08:19:30  
kireek said: »
People tend to romanticize Native Americans, keep in mind they were not a nation of people united and saw themselves that way, nor was there much chance of them becoming anything more than they were. They were a lot of tribes who regularly went to war against each other, took slaves and just brutalized each other and anyone else.

Many of them also took great pleasure in murdering and enslaving the farmers who were trying to make a new life there, when you try to fight your enemy by terrorizing and murdering civilians you're going to incur a massive reaction.

At the end of the day, if the EU nations had no colonized America some other nation would of done it anyway. China, Japan, Middle eastern nations, Russia whoever.

Yeah the myth of the "noble savage" is complete ***. The native Americans were stone age tribes acting like every other set of stone age tribes acted in history. They fought over land, resources and the rights to breed women. Occasionally one great leader would surface and create some sort of coalition that would work for awhile, that leader would die and that coalition would eventually fall back to the practices of stone age tribes.

My respect doesn't come from the stone age part of their lives, but how they fought back despite the ridiculously huge difference in technology and sheer number of pathogens they had running around. Like I said, the Europeans were basically space aliens compared to the native Americans.
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By Torzak 2020-01-17 09:31:39  
Native Americans in many places had their kids taken from them and forced through Boarding Schools. Many were forced through the teachings of Catholicism. The Pope's canonization of Junipero Serra upset a lot of Native Americans, because they didn't see him remotely in the same positive-spin as the Pope. They were brutalized.

Some European people came to America to escape the persecution of their homeland and the lack of freedoms of religion and likely weren't part of any of the killing or conflicts with the Tribes. Back then church for these Europeans was all basically in Latin. And if you didn't go to the church, you didn't get the class, because you couldn't read it for yourself. This is one angle that frustrates me with how light-skinned people all get lumped together as the killers of Native Americans; some were just trying to get away from European government/church. Keep in mind that the Roman Catholic Church burned William Tyndale at the stake for just trying to get the Bible translated to English - This wasn't ok by everyone.

Some Europeans saw going to America as something of a Gold Rush. Something to be exploited. The extents that those people went to is a sad story.

I currently live just outside of a reservation, work on a reservation, and enjoy the company of many Native American friends.

I have in my ancestry: Spanish roots (those that conquered Mexico), Aztec roots, (those conquered by the spaniards), Welsh roots, and German roots. A background like that, I've often thought of myself the product of people being able to look beyond their differences. As people should be able to.

History was something I hated in Middle/High School. I love to learn and look stuff up and track with what's going on now.
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 Asura.Kingnobody
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By Asura.Kingnobody 2020-01-17 09:46:16  
Asura.Saevel said: »
Like I said, the Europeans were basically space aliens compared to the native Americans.
Until they either took or traded for that technology, that is.

Sure, at first Natives were outclassed in every way, but once they started arming themselves, they were brutal.

Torzak said: »
Some European people came to America to escape the persecution of their homeland and the lack of freedoms of religion and likely weren't part of any of the killing or conflicts with the Tribes. Back then church for these Europeans was all basically in Latin. And if you didn't go to the church, you didn't get the class, because you couldn't read it for yourself. This is one angle that frustrates me with how light-skinned people all get lumped together as the killers of Native Americans; some were just trying to get away from European government/church. Keep in mind that the Roman Catholic Church burned William Tyndale at the stake for just trying to get the Bible translated to English - This wasn't ok by everyone.
But they were complicit on the brutal conditions that was being brought against the Native population.

While they may not know any specifics (due to media portrayal or governmental propaganda that was played at the time), people back then were not stupid, and knew that mass murder of the Native population was not only occurring, but encouraged.

But that was the times. Remember that we are looking at this from a historical perspective, and one of the things you have to acknowledge is the moodset of the population during this time. There were no major protests against the genocide against the Natives.

Yes, we treated Natives very poorly back then, but they treated their own just as poorly, and treated us just as poorly too. These weren't people who said "Go ahead and kill us all."
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 Garuda.Chanti
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By Garuda.Chanti 2020-01-17 10:29:16  
You all seem to forget the Iroquois Confederacy and the Cherokee.
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 Bahamut.Celebrindal
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By Bahamut.Celebrindal 2020-01-17 11:03:41  
One of the first occurrences of germ warfare.

I'm not going to post a lot here, but rather just once and a lot- it hits home for a lot of friends from not only this game, but my entire lifespan. Your understanding of Native history in the Americas must first come with an understanding of pre-historic migration patterns of the Americas.

Most know about the "land bridge" between Siberia and modern day Alaska during the Ice Age. More ice on the poles=less oceanic water=lower sea levels, which resulted in the Bering Strait to be dry. Migrant people moved across this space, and continued to move south to more temperate regions, and settled as they found such usable land.

But the tribes of most of North America do not descend from those original migrants stopping setting up shop, with a straight line history from that. Most actually kept moving South to modern day Mexico and South America, from which true "nations" of Maya, Inca, and Aztec would develop over time. The Aztecs then moved NORTH into modern southwest United States, the South, and even as far as the Midwest eventually. Over time, those more northern tribes formed their own autonomous groups as the power of the Aztec waned.

Of course not 100% of all migrants moved all the way south, leaving the entirety of North America empty of human presence. Some stayed, and many NA tribes can trace lineage back in certain areas thousands of years.

We once described "progress" by that which a society built and left as evidence of their power and wealth. So looking at a "Stone Age" society such as most of North America certainly appeared to be savage in the eyes of 17th and 18th century Europe. But they had functioning societies with government, language, writing, art, and history. Great buildings and technology like the West they did not have. But they build cities, took care of their own, had larger structures of government and inter-tribal relations...honestly their society was pretty on par with Western moral values, just not the same religion and a lack of brick,mortar, and gunpowder made the West view them as savage.

They were not deserving of the treatment that was given to them, being seen as evil by The Vatican and Spanish Conquistadors, having their traditions and religions ripped from them force-ably. The certainly did not deserve the constant forced migration by the United States government on increasingly worse and worse land, while the land they had settled generations ago, tended and developed into habitable places, was turned over to those with more guns. And they certainly did not deserve their openness towards new people in many cases used as a weapon against themselves.

I often wonder what the middle of this country would have looked like without the American Revolution. The British at the time had a policy of Colonization- you were no longer your own country, you were part of "The Empire", but for the most part they set up port cities and extracted raw materials to support that Empire...they didn't have a policy anywhere near the level of either The Monroe Doctrine or Manifest Destiny....two devastating policies to the Native peoples of the Americas. Not to say all Europeans were so hands-off- just look at the policy of exporting Catholicism by the Spanish Empire, and their take on taming the savages. For the most part, Britain set up forts in the midwest it did get to, but didn't encourage colonization. It was about the Fur Trade primarily.

Different parts of America fared very differently. Due to the policies of Reservations and relocation, its hard to even run into someone of a majority Native American descent in the Midwest or Northeast (outside of extremely rural pockets of the extreme Northeast or Northern Midwest) who can trace ancestry back to that area. As young children, we're taught about how the Natives welcomed the first settlers, but it was those nasty British and French who did most of the fighting...or worse yet, taught terms like "Pontiac's Conspiracy" about Chief Pontiac's attempt to unify the tribes as they were being exterminated. Think for a second- a leader of people tried to strengthen those people through common problems and make his people safer, and that is taught as a "Conspiracy".

Head farther West, and you'll finally start seeing locals who truly trace their heritage to tribes in that area back hundreds of years. In those areas, you'll also see more preservation of historical sites. But the legacy of the South, Northeast, and Middle states of this country is one of pain, blood, and extortion.

In my town of Defiance, Ohio, I can walk the streets along the River and see turn of the century homes built on what once was a thriving Native American village at the meeting point of two major waterways in Ohio- the Maumeee and Auglaize. These two rivers allowed continuous travel of people and goods from Lake Erie down to the Ohio...in a sense, it connected the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Some late 19th century homes that are now marked as "Historical Landmarks" are built on top of tribal burial mounds because after the locals were expelled from that land by Brigadier General "Mad" Anthony Wayne...who once stripped an entire forest so he could build a fort to stand against said locals-a town to this day known as Fallen Timbers-the settlers just thought they were natural hills above the river.

This was against the very famous Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket, and basically ended any Native resistance to white settlement of Ohio. This led to the draining of the Great Black Swamp, which to this day has had negative effects on the natural draining and flow from Lake Erie across all of Northern Ohio. The true history of the land and its people has been completely rewritten in the part of the country.
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By 2020-01-17 11:28:27
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 Bahamut.Celebrindal
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By Bahamut.Celebrindal 2020-01-17 11:30:09  
DirectX said: »
I'd love to hear Saevel's interpretation of colonisation and slavery in Africa.

----edited b/c Kingnobody is right.
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 Asura.Kingnobody
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By Asura.Kingnobody 2020-01-17 11:40:43  
Don't complain if people sarcastically and/or maliciously put words in your mouth, assuming that you would say some harsh and hurtful things.
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 Bahamut.Celebrindal
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By Bahamut.Celebrindal 2020-01-17 11:47:46  
Asura.Saevel said: »
kireek said: »
People tend to romanticize Native Americans, keep in mind they were not a nation of people united and saw themselves that way, nor was there much chance of them becoming anything more than they were. They were a lot of tribes who regularly went to war against each other, took slaves and just brutalized each other and anyone else.

Many of them also took great pleasure in murdering and enslaving the farmers who were trying to make a new life there, when you try to fight your enemy by terrorizing and murdering civilians you're going to incur a massive reaction.

At the end of the day, if the EU nations had no colonized America some other nation would of done it anyway. China, Japan, Middle eastern nations, Russia whoever.

Yeah the myth of the "noble savage" is complete ***. The native Americans were stone age tribes acting like every other set of stone age tribes acted in history. They fought over land, resources and the rights to breed women. Occasionally one great leader would surface and create some sort of coalition that would work for awhile, that leader would die and that coalition would eventually fall back to the practices of stone age tribes.

My respect doesn't come from the stone age part of their lives, but how they fought back despite the ridiculously huge difference in technology and sheer number of pathogens they had running around. Like I said, the Europeans were basically space aliens compared to the native Americans.

So lemme get this straight....

"they were not a nation of people united"...so because France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and England all occupy a total landmass smaller than Texas and have close to 15 different cultural groups and at the time of American Expansion had at least 5 different formal governments they WERE "a nation of people united" but the Cherokee, Shawnee, Cheyenne, Seminole, and Ute tribes (again, 5 "nations") covered a population almost double them and a landmass over triple the size of Texas, they were just savages?

"Many of them also took great pleasure in murdering and enslaving the farmers who were trying to make a new life there"...so you're a murderer if you defend your home against invaders? You do realize that's the function of ANY defender in ANY example of warfare known to man. It was their home. It had been their home for already hundreds of years. And they were just supposed to let people who didn't speak their language, made no attempt to join the existing society present, and didn't respect the current users of that land one bit, just TAKE it? Put down the Kool-Aid.

"They fought over land, resources and the rights to breed women."...let's break this down. "Fought over land (and) resources"- like every war in every part of the world to this day, but that's "stone age"? "rights to breed women"-oh! You mean like during the Spanish Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, and Nazi Germany? Yeah, very refined people in those examples, not like those brown savages. Or like those super advanced Vikings and Northern Brits. Or again- like any other culture around the world doing the exact same things at that time.

"the myth of the 'noble savage' is complete ***"- you're completely right on this one. They weren't savages. No more than their white counterparts, black counterparts, or yellow counterparts anywhere else in the world. The only difference was in weaponry, technology, and architecture.
 
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By 2020-01-17 11:55:12
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 Asura.Highwynn
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By Asura.Highwynn 2020-01-17 11:58:25  
Slavery is still very much alive in Africa and Middle East. As racially intolerant and sexist liberals think America is, we are far from being the worst. We are not even close. Go check out the ***that still happens in Chad, Niger, Liberia, Congo, and Ivory Coast.
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By Torzak 2020-01-17 11:59:36  
Yeah, it's pretty bad @ Highwynn.
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By 2020-01-17 12:04:45
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