Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Theodore R.
There is not one square inch of North America, not Plymouth Rock, not Jamestown, not Manhattan Island, that was not at one point inhabited by the Indians prior to the arrival of the white man. The entire continent, and South America as well, was stolen from the previous inhabitants by Englishmen, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Portugese, and Dutchmen, and later by white Americans. Despite the image of maltreatment of Indians being confined to the West, what happened on the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in the late 19th Century replicated the events on the Atlantic coastal plain and the Appalachian Mountains in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

However, the fact remains that the Indian nations themselves dispossessed each other. The Comanches, originally from Wyoming, invaded and occupied much of Texas in the 1700s. The Aztecs, who ruled much of Mexico at the time of Columbus' discovery of America, may have migrated to that country from Utah in the 11th Century. There is also evidence that the first human inhabitants of this hemisphere were not of the Northeast Asian stock from which today's American Indians are mostly descended.

This pattern is not confined to the Americas. The ancestors of the English migrated to Britain from northwest Germany, Denmark, and the Frisian Islands, expelling or killing the earlier Celtic inhabitants over a period of two centuries. The English lost control of much of their country to the Vikings in the 9th and 10th Centuries. In 1066, the English were conquered by the Norman French and became a subject race for several centuries.

The bottom line is that there is nothing unique in history about the defeat and subjugation of the American Indians by the whites. Any memorial at the Little Big Horn is nothing more than pandering to minority voters and yet another reason for liberals to trigger white guilt.

7 posted on 06/24/2003 5:35:30 AM PDT by Wallace T.
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Wallace T.
One disagreement, though slight:

There were PLENTY of square inches of land that were not at one point inhabited by Indians. The latest estimates put the population of Indians at the arrival of the first whites in the lands above Mexico at less than 5 million.

That doesn't mean plenty of land wasn't stolen(or conquered is the better word, otherwise Alexander "stole" and Caesar "stole") but just that it's not even so simple as saying all the land here belonged to the Indians.

That's simply not true and it ignores the large segments of nomads that can never really lay claim to a land.
13 posted on 06/26/2003 5:02:02 AM PDT by Skywalk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson