General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A reminder to think before you speak - Israel and Palestine edition [View all]hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Kill? Yeah, there was some killing - on all sides. Killing of Indians by whites, killing of whites by Indians and killing of Indians by other Indians.
What were the whites of Connecticut supposed to do when King Phillip's war started, just throw down their guns and beg for mercy?
Move?
Yeah, there's all kinds of movement. How did the Sioux end up in the Dakotas? They were forced to move there by the Ojibwe. And when they moved there they drove off the Crows and the Kiowa. Blackhawk wrote in his autobiography about the settlement of Saukenuk by the Sauk Indians "They all descended Rock river - drove the Kas-kas-kias from the country, and commenced the erection of their village, determined never to leave it." p. 46
Force onto tiny patches of land?
Indians held 138 million acres in 1887. If their population was 500,000 at the time, that is 276 acres for every man woman or child. One of my ancestors moved to Wisconsin in 1861 with his wife and 11 children (his two oldest having already married and presumably left home, although young married couples often still lived with their parents in those days). He originally bought 40 acres and then later bought another 80. That's 120 acres for a family of 13, less than 10 acres per person.
We sit on land stolen from the natives?
No, time after time, we paid for that land. The natives usually got paid, even though the Sauk did not bother to pay the Kas-kas-kias anything. Nor did the Ojibwe pay the Sioux or the Sioux pay the Crows for the land they took, and so on.
But I know, it is a major heresy to deny the whole "white people are awful" view of history.