Posted on 08/28/2010 7:51:41 AM PDT by the OlLine Rebel
Whatever.
In recent years, historians have turned renewed attention to the profound radicalism of the American Revolution. Not only did colonists from Europe create a distinct new society, but they rebelled and won a hard fight for the right reasons. They then crafted a Constitution that is as close to fulfillment of the best of the Enlightenment as has ever been realized.
Contrary to what you seem to assume, there are excellent professional historians who are conservative and who specialize in that era. Forrest McDonald is the most prominent, but there are numerous others.
The inescapable lesson was that the Indians could not hope to continue with their traditional hunter gatherer way of life. They had to change and yield to a more powerful people whom the Indians feared and in great measure scorned.
In the cruel way of the world, between different peoples, land belongs not to those who claim it or who live on it but to those who have the power to seize and hold it.
They got kicked out anyway when the State of New York decided to steal their land and sell it to illegal aliens.
Anyway, an Indian named John Met-Oxen (many ways to spell his name) was one of Jefferson's friends. He and jefferson worked out the logic of the way things were going and decided, together, that Indians were not going to survive biologically in the Eastern states so they'd have to move West.
The Kickapoo Indians came to the same conclusion. Their efforts to get Indian people to move West were, at first, met as if they were just excessively xenophobic.
I met a gentleman on a plane years ago. He was named Joseph WInchester and it was his to find the remainder of the Eastern Kickapoo and obtain for them tribal recognition.
I guess he did that because Michigan's Eastern Kickapoo got it.
I keep the Oneida situation in the back of my mind ~ two reasons (1) I probably personally qualify for membership since I've "dug up" (that is, "found") dozens of relatives and ancestors who lived on Oneida land BEFORE the Revolution, and (2) I can bring several thousand others into the tribe with the same evidence ~ and the Oneida need more people.
Now, do they need "white people"? I have no idea, but that decision was made back in the mid 1700s ~ the Oneida themselves offered land and business to highly skilled European people. Central New York can only be improved by expansion of Indian lands!
Alas, the depredations of corrupt legislatures are not at an end. Nevertheless, the revival of vestigial Indian tribes based on dodgy ancestry for the sake of casinos and land claims strikes me as more a con than a measure of justice.
Resurrection of the lost tribes is more important than whatever advantages it might gain for their members.
In Britain, those who paint themselves blue and put on animal skins as if they are ancient Celts are correctly regarded as a bit kooky. But they do so only as a leisure activity and do not assert a land claim to all of England.
As it is, the supposed members of the resurrected tribes live like lottery winners if they can and do not try to adopt a tribal lifestyle. In other words, the resurrected tribe is about the cash, not being a tribe in any meaningful sense.
What New York needs badly are more reservations covering more territory. It cannot help but be improved.
I know of few instances of Indian reservations that are anything other than enclaves of poverty, social decline, and chronic welfarism. Even when there is a flow of cash from casinos, the underlying social pathologies tend to continue and may even become more destructive.
Moreover, I know that my boyhood was the better for two friends who were half Indian (Apache and Cherokee) in their ancestry. That meant nothing to them or me and we treasured our friendship. Call me selfish, but I would never have known them if they had grown up on a reservation instead of in suburban central Florida.
I grew up in the suburbs in a neighborhood that half a dozen tribes represented ~ and a couple of the brothers found it a great location for jumping off to rob banks around the Midwest.
Who said anything about LIVING on the reservation. California tribes use theirs to sell water rights to Angelinos.
Are you hearing?
A lot of the Indian reservations are populated and mired in poverty, squalor, substance abuse, violence, and family breakdown. Whether in Detroit and inner city Washington, or among Russians, Chinese, Africans, or American Indians, collectivism produces similar results.
How about deep cuts in taxes, regulations, and spending so that the entire state and its population benefits?
How about deporting the illegal aliens and bringing down the costs of literally every public service?
That too. But cuts in the burden of regulation and taxation are even more essential.
The British did not burn churches with people inside during the Revolution. The director of the motion picture “The Patriot” explained in an article that he knew such an event never happened in the Revolution, but he wanted to convey the shock and outrage that burning a church produced in Revolutionary America. So, he explained, he borrowed a travesty from the SS in World War II. That much is Hollywood, not history.
However, British troops looted or burned numerous EMPTY churches during the Revolution as a terror tactic to neutralize Patriot/Whig communities. In South Carolina, for instance, during the 1780 campaign conducted by British Major James Weymess, British troops burned churches (and homes) from the Santee River delta all the way to the backcountry town of Cheraw.
Dissenter congregations (members of congregations that dissented or worshipped outside the Anglican Church) were favorite targets for church burning by British troops — especially the Prebyterians with their anti-royalty roots in the English civil wars.
The British church burning practice in South Carolina — no people, just buildings — was indeed shocking, and the tactic backfired, converting droves of potential Loyalists into supporters of the Revolution. It increased Patriot resistance, undermined the British Southern strategy and ultimately contributed to American victory.
Thanks for the info.
But gees, this was 2 years ago!
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