Indians and Africans

Writers of African and Indian history take great delight in blaming everything on the white man, but a closer look will show that it was the white man who tried to help both of these cultures.  It is the white men who were desperately trying to help the Indians assimilate into a changing society and it was the Indian's tenacious effort to maintain their old way of life that forced their eventual removal to reservations..

The Africans themselves and then the Portuguese opened up the slave trade and it was the British who started the movement to end it.  In America, abolitionist John Brown sacrificed his life and one of his sons to the cause of emancipation.  In the Civil War it is estimated that 620,000 white Americans died over the issue of slavery!

The Indian way of life was disintegrating long before Europeans arrived on this continent.  Inter-tribal warfare was rampant and some tribes had already been annihilated by their red brothers.  In the Northeast, the Abenakis had fragmented into many small groups, some no larger than 150 individuals.  These small groups called themselves “tribes” but today, we would call them gangs.  Most of these “gangs” found the new settlers to be easy pickings and they perpetrated many atrocities on the unsuspecting pioneers.

Efforts were made as far back as the 1700's to assimilate the native Americans into a changing world but most refused, doggedly hanging on to their old ways.  It was their incessant and savage attacks on the new settlers that finally forced the government into one of two scenarios, either exterminate them or corral them so they would not pose any further danger to those who did assimilate.  History is rife with the tales of atrocities being perpetrated on white settlers but all we hear about is the retaliatory attacks of the white man.

Is it reasonable to think the people of this country could survive today if we had joined the Indian culture?  Could 300,000,000 people still survive as hunter/gatherers?  Maybe, as many think, the Europeans shouldn't be here at all but is that reasonable?  History has always been the story of one culture being infiltrated by another and it will always be that way.  It is happening today here in America with the influx of people from all over the world, but it doesn't mean the demise of our culture; we adapt!