Dean's World

I know most of you were gone for Thanksgiving and are only now coming back since Wednesday. So, welcome back! We hope you had a good time.

Last week on Thanksgiving I noted the fact that one of the most unpleasant manufactured myths that's gaining disturbingly widespread currency here in the U.S. is the notion that, after the famous Thanksgiving meal with the Indians, the settlers at Plymouth Rock wound up stealing all the Indians' land and slaughtering them. This is a terribly nasty myth. Actually when the settlers arrived at Plymouth Rock the area was mostly empty due to a massive plague that wiped out most of the people there before the settlers arrived (and which of course no one could have controlled). When the pilgrims did settle, the few Indians remaining there were happy to befriend them, and the pilgrims to befriend them. Historically, it was not until 75 years later, when all those people were dead, that the first armed conflicts started between white people (who could no longer be considered "settlers" since they'd been there for generations) and some--some, not all--of the Indians in that region.

Well of course an obnoxious loudmouth had to bust into my comments and basically accuse me of "historical revisionism" and, even worse, of denying the "genocide" if the American Indians while huffing about his own Indian ancestry. Now as it happens what I said was absolutely historically correct; there were no armed conflicts with those settlers. The first significant fighting between whites and reds in that area weren't until the people at that origingal Thanksgiving were long dead and buried, and who exactly did start the conflicts is still unclear to this day. Besides, what you're talking about when you look at the clash between white people and red people in America is something that spanned many different people in many different areas over several centuries. Blaming the settlers at Plymouth Rock for what happened centuries later at Wounded Knee, or blaming Californians for what happened at the Trail of Tears, or blaming Tucumseh for the horrible massacres and mutilations committed by the Pequots against white people in Massachussets, is simply ridiculous.

Don't know what any of what I'm talking about here? Well, a pretty good look at the claims of "genocide" by white people against red people, probably the best high-level examintion, is political science professor Guenter Lewy's Were American Indians The Victims of Genocide? His analysis is really pretty even-handed and doesnt go in for much sugar-coating.

Of course anyone who looks deeply can find examples of atrocities and broken promises and terrible beavior in the vast, continent-spanning, 400 year history of the troubled relations between white people and the original red settlers of this continent. Still, as many others--including a number of full-blooded members of today's remainin tribal nations--have observed, the notion of the American Indian as a pitiful, helpless victim of brutal oppressive whites (such as in Hollywood movies like Little Big Man) isn't just wrong, it's racist, and demeaning to the traditions of many of those people. Every bit as deameaning, in fact, as stupid Hollywood movies where the cowboys were all good guys and the Indians all lying rapacious savages.

While sometimes history is the history of brutality toward the innocent and treachery against the betrayed, the truth is that it's usually a lot more varied and storied than that. So if you're looking for a balanced perspective, I strongly recommend starting with Professor Lewy's piece.

Fair warning: its not really for the faint of heart, since you'll be reading about people being dismembered and flayed alive, innocents being slaughtered, etc. The people of history were rarely saints.

But it does make you realize just how much modern people have forgotten just what savages their own ancestors could be, doesnt it?.