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no need to be bonor'ing anyone. history is history whether you like it or not, warts and all. this need to whitewash history by the left is absurd.
you cannot judge someone who lived 500 years ago by the social norms of today. people used to practice hammurabi's code. they used to stone people in public in biblical times. were all those people bad because we wouldnt do those things today? total nonsense.
You've got it exactly backwards. The whitewashing of history is being done by the status quo, which in this case, are generally rightwing conservatives.
So I guess we should have just accepted slave owning in the 19th century, by your reckoning.
They were here about 15,000-20,000 years before European colonists that's pretty damn native I would say.
I tend to agree American Indians are native to Americas even though they migrated at one time, but mostly native to Pre-Columbia American. That doesn't preclude non-Indians being native to America as well though. I don't think most people want a hierarchy of native.
In some urbanized areas of the Aztec and Inca empires, native Americans suffered 90% loss of life due to old world diseases. It is probably the greatest proportional loss of life ever for a civilization.
Do you blame Columbus for this?
I think that the collapse of native civilizations was going to happen regardless because those populations had not built up immunities and they could not have remained separate forever.
Columbus was only the proximate cause. If the Vikings had had extended contact with the Native Peoples during the former's time in the New World, their infectious diseases would have burned through the Native Peoples too. Perhaps in time for the populations to recover by 1492CE - that's an interesting question in & of itself.
See
1491 : new revelations of the Americas before Columbus / Charles C. Mann, c2005, Alfred Knopf.
Subjects
Indians -- Origin.
Indians -- History.
Indians -- Antiquities.
America -- Antiquities.
Length
xii, 465 pages :
Which discusses this very issue - whether Europe was to blame for the devastation to the Native Peoples in the New World.
Columbus never made it to the mainland. De Ayllon and DeSoto did. They, and all who followed them, came in the name of greed and stole the land from its rightful owners.
Anyone making the argument that they were entitled to because they were technologically more advanced and better armed shuold ask themselves if they would be okay with being run out of their homes by someone with more firepower. My guess is "no".
No, the Spanish quickly discarded their heavy wool & flaxen clothes, & adopted the smooth, light cotton that the Aztecs used. & the Spanish also adopted the lighter armor - padded/quilted cotton? - that the Native Peoples used. Steel & gunpowder weapons & horses were new to the Native Peoples, but it was the European diseases that truly tipped the scales towards the Spanish. The Spanish were dismayed that expert Aztec archers could fire accurately over longer distances, & faster, than Spanish guns. See 1491, C. Mann.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Any old world people to settle in the America's - whether Europeans, Arabs, Asians, or Africans - would have brought the same diseases and caused a die off rate of 90%+. It is not logical to accuse people whose most sophisticated medical treatment was bleeding out bad blood of coordinating a thought out campaign of disease warfare. It is totally fair to hold people accounting for things they had control over and did, like murdering people who refused to become Christian, forced labor in mines, forcing the assimilated Cherokee people on the Trail of Tears, etc etc. Good societies admit their mistakes. Bad societies don't, such as Turkey still acting like what they did to the Armenians just 100 years ago wasn't genocide.
In my opinion the mass die off was accidental and unavoidable at the time and is not a true genocide, but there were smaller scale genocides that did occur.
before Columbus got here, all of the 2,000+ tribes were killing, raping, stealing, conquering and making slaves out of each other. The strong tribes like the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas and the rest ruled by force and intimidation. The Spaniards and later other Europeans just came and slapped them to reality and told them who is going to be calling the shots around here and if you don't agree to kiss their powder guns and cannons.
This has been the way of the world for centuries. The stronger tribes survived and the weaker ones vanished regardless of race or skin color. To complain about it now and cry why the Europeans won and have white guilt is ignorant and being a snowflake. If Columbus didn't arrived then some other European would but if they never would have come, over 90% of us and our families wouldn't be alive today. It would be like the last movie of the Avengers, we would BE GONE. Never existed.
In terms of city planning, population density, provision of water & sewage handling, Tenochtitlan was superior to anything the Spanish were familiar with.
In the New World, there were no large domesticated animals that the Native Peoples lived with, & swapped diseases & infections with. The NP had also passed through a genetic bottleneck @ some point - they didn't have the full spectrum of the human genome, & so didn't have all of the human responses to infection that other peoples had. Cortes was dead lucky in his timing - & the Spanish had had near 800 years of practicing warfare against Islam. The Spanish were adept @ political & military maneuvering, & they exploited the near civil war in the Aztec polity - they recruited NP troops who were unhappy to be under the Aztecs. Those foot soldiers were the bulk of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Nahuatl (the language of the Aztec) is still a live language & culture in Mexico, with around 1.5 million speakers, & Maya speakers in Yucatan & nearby. & I believe Inca is still a live language in the Andes.
Everything Columbus did to the Natives, the Natives were already doing to eachother.
No, the Native Peoples didn't fight to exterminate the other nation. In the case of the Aztecs, they fought to capture prisoners, to sacrifice to ensure the continuance of the universe. When there wasn't war (in this limited sense), the Aztec would sacrifice some of their tribute (persons) from vassal states, or select well-born individuals from their own elites.
& the waves of infectious diseases that the Europeans brought with them to the New World caused massive die-offs among the Native Peoples. That is something that the Native Peoples apparently didn't do to each other.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cuebald So, then - If I overpower you and take your house you are okay with that? Might makes right and such...?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtl1
That's a false analogy. But that is how Pre-Columbian America operated. It's how Indians operated against settlers too.
That's a gross oversimplification. Read Charles Mann, 1491 - for a much more detailed look @ how the Native Peoples tried to incorporate Europeans into their political system.
The millions alive today owe a debt of gratitude to those who displaced the indigenous stone age culture, their inefficient means of food production, and incessant fighting to expand/defend hunting grounds.
Yes, there is a moral imperative to relocate 1000 so 100,000 can live.
In terms of land usage, hunter gatherers require the most, followed by nomadic herdsmen, followed by sedentary farmers.
The Europeans, with their advanced agriculture and exclusive ownership of land clashed with the Amerindians, whose culture and lifestyle was incompatible.
The leftists have a goal to destroy traditional authority and thus its history, so revisionists will concoct nonsense to revile anything that opposes their magnanimous plans to confiscate all property and enslave all people.... for our own good.
The Native Peoples in the Americas developed corn, potatoes, chocolate, rubber trees, vanilla, tomatoes, tobacco & others. Disease, more than force of arms, struck down the Aztec, Maya, Inca & many other NPs. There are indications that the NP's large cities (mostly south of the current US/Mexico border) had massive populations, & they raised crops or otherwise fed those masses for a long time.
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An Rx for melancholy
