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Wow...me too! Although it was all on my father's side. They lived in Tennessee and owned slaves and my great, great grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. Small world!
RACIST!
Uhm... nevermind, I guess.
Wow...me too! Although it was all on my father's side. They lived in Tennessee and owned slaves and my great, great grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. Small world!
Really is...the Cherokee was from my fathers side and they came from Tennessee too...Both sides came while it was still Mexico but my mothers side is do ented and the GGF on that side signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. My daughter is DAR and DRT pedigreed LOL.
I had a relative in a po-dunk town in Texas that was a Sheriff that hung a negro.
RACIST!
rarely tbh
lot of anglo mutts in this forum
hey, I'm 1/32 navajo, so I can make blanket statements about native americans.
I forget how far back. I was told once, but I think I'm 3/32 Indian between the Cherokee and Blackfoot in me.
If you have to compare native americans to the afghan war then you should at least make the most important point...genocide works.
Aren't all gods fake..... except maybe Clint Eastwood who is a living god
Great band, I saw them at the Rex in pitt last year...they opened for Zyklon B and the Soap Bars.
obviously a stupid troll post, but besides noting what others have posted (the role of disease, technology, religion, "blockading" (ie depriving native americans of resources), western civilization's hypocrisy (ie, the greeks were intellectuals but Native Indians were barbarians), I just want to add a couple more points (in other words, i'll bite):
not all NA tribes were familiar with horticulture, however:
a) the americas were so rich with resources and life that well adapted hunter gatherers lived quite well without the need for agriculture. it wasnt quite paradise of course, but there is little evidence that lack of food was a regular problem.
b) still there were many that did practice horticulture successfully, without the use of fertilizers and insecticides and without leaving the land barren from over use.
c) in other areas they were significantly more advanced than europeans. one of the reasons disease killed so many native americans was that they were far more hygenic than europeans. this cant be explained simply by population density; for example, Tenoch lan was easily one of the 5 biggest cities (population) on earth, if not the biggest, till europeans conquered it; yet unlike any european city at the time, it had a sewer system to remove dirty water and bring clean water in.
why is it that european history is filled with stories of plague and famine, yet none such records exist for native american peoples? The native americans have every reason to be sore losers, for they didn't lose a war, they were defeated by plague and famine (european "inventions") and simple trickery. Western revisionism has is that europeans triumphed because of their technological, cultural, even moral superiority, but in reality dirtiness, moral and phsyical, was what saw them through.
Finally, I just want to say that native americans were able to win in the sense that they resisted assimilation (despite the explicit intent of politicians to assimilate their culture and turn them into economic slaves), and that the govts (including the US govt) have only been able to keep them down through repression. Thats why I cant stand western "progressives" who spout off about Tibetans but dont say a word for their native american peoples.
^^nice post.
Too sweeping are your generalizations. There were plenty of Natives who lived very primitive, dirty lives. Lack of food was most definitely a problem, especially in the winters (read La Relacion, a very interesting do entation indeed). The reason they were destroyed by plague had little, if anything to do with hygiene, and everything to do with simply owning bodies that had, by and large, very little immunity to these new pathogens. No amount of hygiene (at that stage of technology) could have mended this situation. I am not familiar with insecticide history, so I am not sure what the Europeans would have used - insecticides are either natural, or chemically synthesized, from what I know (could be wrong). Finally, having no widespread written word, unlike the Europeans and others, who wrote concisely for as many as 2000 years before the conquer of the Aztecs, is why so few legends persist from the Indians' "ancient history." the Natives kept few records and almost nothing is in tact compared to say, the Classical Greek's civilization period.
And there are many Natives who were fond of enslaving their other tribesmen and war, trading their wives and overall dominating the female sex, and otherwise, living very primitively. The Europeans were much more advanced by 1500, had large, unified nations, and had a long established history.
The Aztecs, conversely, were sacrificing thousands for their gods, and spread over a large area of land. They didn't even know what a ship was, believing it a large mobile island whose sails were specially grown trees. Montezuma supposedly cried when he heard about the Spaniards from a messenger.
They were definitely the victims of a murderous, zealot-fumed land grab, I agree. Yet they also did hold a predominantly savage, primitive nature.
Last edited by z0sa; 10-25-2010 at 01:25 PM.
I didnt mean to say they ate like kings every night or had better standard of living (you'd have to define it first) than europeans, Im sorry if my post came off that way.
the point about food was that they didnt have the same need as europeans for agriculture because there was more land, more bountiful land, and a better climate (compared to most of europe). In any case, there is no evidence that native americans had less food than their european contemporaries.
the point about hygiene, was that natives were less resistant to disease because they were less exposed to it, until europeans arrived. (much like developed nations that implemented mandatory antibacterial soap laws, now find their population far more susceptible to infection). if they had poor hygiene like their european counterparts, they would have likely fared better against the foreign pathogens.
there is less written do entation from native american cultures, but they do exist. there are several codices, pre and post "discovery", and they have lots of information, about themselves and about the invasion. the spaniards still keep them (along with the rest of the loot) in Madrid and only released uncensored versions in 1979. why didnt they release them earlier? something to hide, perhaps? according to Spanish records, they melted TONS of gold and silver engravings the Inca's had in their "palaces" depicting their history. hey, at least it went to good use, as the spaniards used it to fund more war mongering. who knows what other records they destroyed in their quest for more?
and europeans weren't "fond" of enslaving their fellow man and dominating the female sex? by 1500 europe had large unified nations? tenoch lan by itself was bigger than sevilla and madrid combined (spain's two largest cities at the time). Spain still has secessionist movements to this day. europeans are so unified they still identify themselves by their city/town and nearly destroyed the planet fighting one another, but they're the civilized ones?And there are many Natives who were fond of enslaving their other tribesmen and war, trading their wives and overall dominating the female sex, and otherwise, living very primitively. The Europeans were much more advanced by 1500, had large, unified nations, and had a long established history.
if the aztecs were savages, why did they greet Cortes with gifts? It was Cortes who declared war, not them. And so it was in most of the Americas.
and the inquisition was? the crusades? why the double standard?The Aztecs, conversely, were sacrificing thousands for their gods
I'm not arguing that the native americans were utopian saints, but I cant stand the "primitive savage" BS. Europeans had technologies that native americans didnt, the same way chinese had technologies europeans didnt. europeans gained dominance through war, and yet the other cultures are the savages? please.
also, there were many many different cultures and some of them were definitely more hostile and "barbaric" than others; also, like any other culture there were different movements within them, it most certainly is a generalization to treat them as a single block and again that wasnt the intent of my post.
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