I hope you didn’t infer from my comments about Indians that I in any way condone what happened to them after the Europeans came.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
What happened is an egregious example of ethnic cleansing without the murder. The murders took place as an “act of war.” Hit the enemy before he hits you.
Indian children were forcibly taken from their families and sent to far away white Christian schools to be educated in the white man’s way (read civilized?) They were forbidden to speak their native language, and were severely punished if caught using it even in private conversations.
They were Christianized. Their culture was deemed unfit for civilized people. They were savages to be tamed.
The tribes were moved from their ancestral lands and put on reservations—land that nobody else wanted because it was worthless land. All treaties that were signed in good faith by the Indians were systematically abrogated, unilaterally.
But guess what? Some of the land wasn’t so worthless after all. The Cherokees in Oklahoma are sitting on one of the largest oil deposits, and consequently have become a very rich nation. They have schools. They have doctors and lawyers. And teachers who teach about their culture, as well as the academics of the White World. They have medical care. And the government can’t take it away from them, because the government gave it to them and they have enough money and power now to protect what has become rightfully theirs.
When the Indians tried to fight back, our brave Cavalrymen raided their camps and killed women and children, along with the braves. And killed women and children even when the braves weren’t in camp.
Now let’s go back several centuries. Remember the Crusades? These great knights were going to liberate the Holy City Jerusalem from the paynim, the Saracen, the heathens. OK, go read your history.
A century or two after that came the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. Jews were forced to accept Christianity or die. Or leave the country. If they could. Go read your history.
Check out the Spanish Conquistadores and what they did to flourishing empires in South America, Central America, then the indigenous peoples in the lands that are now the USA. Go read your history.
Is it any wonder, then, what happened to the Native Americans when the great civilized White Man came to this country?
Don’t bother about reading the history books. You won’t find any criticism of the treatment of the Indians in any of the history books the school children read.
But I still say…Custer got what was coming to him.
Shalom