Relearning What I Learned about Native Americans
In my earliest memories, I can remember how the Indians were described in classrooms. A collection of facts, dates, and numbers erasing the context in which these events took place. There was one detail which was not missed, however. The European settlers were seen as tempered and benevolent, teaching civilization to the scantily clad savage. The early American colonists were seen as heroic figures beating back the Indian hordes. Columbus, a man from a family of merchants and weavers, who came seeking fortune in Asia was seen as a kind of symbol for the birth of America. It might as well have been the birth of some abominable, demonic creature for all the blood which was spilled as an offering to the god Columbus paid homage to.
When Columbus made contact with the Arawak people in what is now known as Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, this is what he had to say:
“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things…. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know of them…. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want” — Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 4.
The legend pales in comparison to the actual man, no? But, this is what he thought of them, and what he did to them was as cruel as you could imagine. Some were made into slaves. Most died by the sword or died in transit to be sold in Spain as slaves. The rest either tried to flee or killed themselves and their children to avoid being raped and/or turned into slaves.
It is eerily reminiscent of the current iteration of US foreign policy and this trend can be traced back to the United States’ founding and was encoded into America’s DNA. Look no further than the 26th president of the United States, “Teddy” Theodore Roosevelt who famously quipped:
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” — See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/tim-stanley/contrarian-teddy-roosevelt-laid-bare#sthash.vqruqwBm.dpuf
American foreign policy to a “T”. Find any way to exploit the foreign folk, and if they resist, kill them all.
“The Indians, Columbus reported, ‘are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone…” — Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 6–7.
A priest named Bartolome de las Casas became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. He described the Indian athletic prowess as agile and attested that they were great swimmers, especially the women. He noted that they engaged in war from time to time, but the casualties were small, and it was over individual grievances rather than the orders of a king or queen. For the most part, they were peaceful, just not completely peaceful. “Women … were treated so well as to startle the Spaniards.” According to de las Casas’ testimony, Marriage laws did not exist. Men and women chose their mates and left them at their own discretion without jealousy or anger. Pregnant women were allowed to work up until the moment of birth and gave birth almost painlessly. They were up the next day, bathed in the river, and were as clean and healthy as they were before giving birth. “If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon man’s head or at his hands” — Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p.7–9.
Casas went on to say that the people had no religion, lived in communal long houses which housed 600 people at one time, and had no knowledge or need for free-market commerce. They were “extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token (coveted) the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality” — Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p.8–9.
This was what the concepts of the“savage” and “primitive” was attached to.
Men too blinded by their own avarice and sense of self-righteousness saw a people with culture hundreds of years ahead of their own, people who more closely resemble the fabled Saviour the Spaniards slaughtered them for, “civilized” them into extinction. Over 250,000 Arawaks gone, slaughtered, with not even a footnote mentioned in children’s textbooks.
This kind of behavior towards people and cultures different than the West bred hostilities towards western expansion. Because the natives would not lie down and submit, the conflict which ensued fueled fears and racial tensions. This solidified in the minds of the “pioneering” Americans and indeed the world, this idea of the primitive savage; however, nothing was more savage than the ravages of unfettered imperialism boasted by an arrogant and ignorant public fawning over the next authority figure to take the reigns.
