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!
