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Happy unwoke Columbus Day! — 59 Comments

1. Columbus was one of the truly great and significant men of history. Yet, he too, was more replaceable than some (Washington or Einstein, for instance), since many others sort of “knew” the world was round, and that it would be possible to sail West to arrive in the East.

   Columbus was very very wrong about how big the round Earth actually was, where many skeptics were more correct. Tho neither he nor skeptics knew of the Americas between – imagine a world without. And he, in his tiny ships, would have failed to reach Japan, much less India, were the Americas all sea joining the Atlantic to the Pacific.

   But I came to say – Bravo Christopher! There is a good question about who to praise, and why, and how much. He’s probably in the top 100 for the last 1000 years.
   The Admiral, for his courage and conviction, deserves unending praise.

   And Christian Capitalism, the belief-economic system from America’s 20th Century, is so far unsurpassed in support of virtuous human behavior AND prosperity. And most other axes of evaluation.

2. On the topic of slavery, Sowell has written that “the emergence of the idea that conquest per se was wrong (as slavery per se was wrong), regardless of who did it to whom, was a slowly evolving notion, as a corollary to a sense of individualism pioneered by Western civilization” (Intellectuals and Society, p. 227). Few indeed are those (whether inside or outside the academy) who can study the past without abusing the record for contemporary ideological purposes, but rather to describe, as objectively as is possible, some part of human nature and to illuminate some part of the human condition.

3. The english killed so many indians they had to import slaves so whose legend was worse

4. Las casas was my introduction to the matter, the story of hatuey i linked in the other thread

5. Columbus was wrong about longitude, fortunately for us. It was several hundred years before Longitude could be determined with any accuracy. There is a pretty good book by Dava Sobel that tells the story. Columbus, and other explorers of the time, did what is called “latitude sailing.” Latitude was easy to find with the sextant and previous similar devices. They would choose a latitude. Columbus chose that of China. and sail along that latitude using noon sights until they hit land. They just did not know how to determine longitude and had no idea of the Pacific Ocean.

6. Morrison’s book about Columbus was written after a series of expeditions to try to recreate his voyages. They were done in the late 30s and ended with the second world war. It is a wonderful book that I have read multiple times. Morrison was then commissioned by the US Navy to write a history of WWII and spent years on Navy ships observing, His history is about 50 volumes but there are abridged volumes.

7. If the encomienda system did in fact resemble feudalism in Europe, then the Spaniards only did to the Tainos what Europe’s elite did and were still doing to its peasants at the time, and although that is bondage it’s not slavery.
   _______

   Not so. The trouble is the abuse of the word “feudalism”, which was a system of relations among the military class, and had nothing whatsoever to do with serfdom. Really. The notion that it did arose in the French left, and was adopted by Marx, from whom it spread. It is necessary to the Marxist picture of history, with economics at the center. But it doesn’t work.

   In fact, I have a book of Marxist essays, The Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism, which reluctantly admits this. In an appendix to the first article, it addresses the fact that non-Marxist historians are contemptuous of this usage, and defends it on the ground that it’s utility outweighs its lack of rigor.

   That was 1950. Unfortunately, that’s another area that the Commies’ influence has spread. Now that usage is common.

8. Eeyore:

   Whatever the history of the word, the use you are describing is not its customary English usage during my lifetime so far.

9. I’ll second Eeyore’s view. ‘Manorialism’ is a more precise term for he agrarian order, ‘feudalism’ for he political order.

10. To j e’s point on “slowly evolving notions”

    https://www.atlassociety.org/session/anti-slavery-in-the-americas-a-primer

11. Actually, if you look at how the Spanish reconquered the Iberian Peninsula you see they used the exact same method in the New World. Minor nobility raised companies of troops and, if they conquered a territory, they were granted governorship over it.

    The problem they encountered was that Amerindians were not European peasants. They didn’t function at all like feudal serfs and so the European farming methods and what-not broke down.

    That problem, along with disease, was one of the major reasons Spain started rationalizing the slavery of Africans (the birth of racism as we currently know it) and bringing them to their colonies.

12. Thank you neo for an informative and clarifying view of Columbus.

13. Think about the differences between the Europeans and indigenous American natives.

    Europeans had resistance to germs that the native Americans didn’t.
    Europeans had iron and guns.
    Europeans had domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, and horses.
    Europeans had a knowledge of navigating by the sun, moon and stars.
    Europeans had invented the wheel and used it to move many useful things.

    By those facts alone, the contact of the two cultures was bound to lead to a major change for the native Americans. That the northern native Americans chose not to assimilate, as they did in South/Central America, has led to the insoluble native American nation/reservation problem that still festers. And the unfair charge that native Americans have been treated unfairly.

    Most of the land they lost was purchased or won by right of conquest, a principle that goes back into the mists of human history and was considered legal up until the latter part of the 20th century. So, only by today’s standards were they treated unfairly.

    In the Pacifici Northwest, the tribes are now wealthy from casino gambling and cigarette stores, but they suffer from the high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, and diabetes. It’s a mixed bag.

    Due to the1974 Boldt Decision the tribes have been overfishing the salmon runs for years and the salmon fishery is now depleted. But no one will say that’s what ‘s happened. Wouldn’t be PC.
    https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/unintended-consequences-boldt-decision

    Some say the tribes are finally getting their revenge for being dispossessed of their lands. Maybe so, but IMO, the tribal nation/reservation has created problems that seem insoluble in today’s atmosphere.

    There is no such system in South and Central America. The natives have assimilated. Unfortunately, they also have inherited Spanish governing and systems of law. That’s another can of worms.

    All things considered; Columbus did the world a favor by discovering the American continents. I have no problem with praising him. But remember, I’m a deplorable.

14. Miguel cervantes,

    “The english killed so many indians they had to import slaves so whose legend was worse”

    That is not at all accurate. The violence of English settlers to native Americans was initially reactive. Relations between the English colonists and Native American tribes was peaceful in the early stages.

    Tribal lands had no formal boundaries, tribal lands being essentially what could be held through force of arms. Native Americans had no concept of private property and legally enforceable boundaries. They also had no concept of mercy and saw the very idea as a contemptible weakness.

    But with the arrival of more and more European immigrants, English colonies started to expand into those lands and the eastern Native American tribes made war upon the English colonies in the most brutal of ways. Which was their customary way of dealing with other tribes that began to encroach upon a tribe’s lands.

    Native American tribes attitude was… deal harshly enough with another tribe encroaching upon their tribal hunting lands (the defending tribe’s only source of protein and thus a matter of tribal survival) and you eliminate the possibility of any future threat from that direction.

    The brutality of Native American War created a reactive development among whites, one of a general attitude of hostility to Native Americans. Innumerable stories of white colonists being attacked and tortured, baby’s heads smashed in, women raped with their breasts cut off, pregnant women’s stomachs sliced open with the baby/fetus thrown on the ground throats cut and the elderly slaughtered… left few whites with the impression that native americans could be civilized.

    As the former English colonists, now Americans expanded Westward, they brought that commonly held hostility with them. Relatively peaceful tribes like the Shoshone were painted with the same brush by many whites. That hostility and greed led to the repeated violation of treaties by whites.

    Later Christian reformers argued that Indian tribes could be held on reservations and succeeding generations educated and introduced to civilization. But of course, Native American resistance to cultural elimination and the prevalent racism of the time derailed Native Americans being assimilated into white society.

15. I don’t have anything to contribute regarding Columbus. But a related topic, the romance of the American Indian, has always left me cold. Here’s a pertinent quotation from a splendid 1992 book Dictatorship of Virtue: How the Battle over Multiculturalism Is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, and Our Lives, by Richard Bernstein. (Amazingly when seen from 2022, Bernstein was a NY Times staffer.) Bernstein:

    “The most popular text of the first half of the twentieth century, David Saville Muzzey’s An American History, was first published in 1911. In its several editions Muzzey’s book treated blacks only as slaves and hardly even made an attempt to deal with the vast influx of immigrants from 1890 to 1920, who were seen as utterly different from the Americans in place and not likely to be assimilated. There were shades of multiculturalism in his treatment of women and of Indians, however, but faint shades.

    “Muzzey, for example, chronicled the protests of women at the denial of rights and opportunities that went automatically to men. He provided a powerful description of the treatment of the Indians, who, he said, ‘were cheated by rascally government officials, fed on rotten rations, debauched of whiskey, and robbed of their lands.’ Muzzey, however, portrayed the Indians as primitives and savages. In his 1941 revision, he talked of the treatment of the Indians as ‘a chapter of dishonor’ for white men, but the Indians themselves, he said, ‘nowhere advanced beyond the stage of barbarism … They had some noble qualities, such as dignity, courage, and endurance, but at bottom they were a treacherous, cruel people who inflicted terrible tortures upon their captured enemies.’

    “Even the great revisionist historian and liberal hero Charles Beard, writing in the prologue to his History of the American People, published in 1918, had to explain why he gave so little space to the North American Indians. ‘They are interesting and picturesque, but they made no impression on the civilization of the United States,’ he said, showing a tough-mindedness that would be excoriated now.”

    Further debunking the woke romance is a piece from 2018 by the very careful writer Jim Goad, “Those Poor, Helpless Indian Savages”: https://www.takimag.com/article/those_poor_helpless_indian_savages_jim_goad/

    Batting clean-up on the matter of vile, invasive whites scourging non-white, indigenous innocents is Jared Taylor, writing in 2011:

    “Whites certainly used to throw their weight around, but they made a big dent in history because of their technology, not because of their nature. Over the course of about 100 days in 1994, Tutsi and Hutu killed about 800,000 of each other—800,000—mostly with machetes. Just think what they could have done with a few Panzer divisions.

    “And what about the Mongols, or the Arab conquerors of North Africa and Spain, or the Turks before the gates of Vienna? With a little mustard gas they could have gone all the way to Spitsbergen.”

16. From Neo’s quote: In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan promoted negative characterizations of Columbus in order to vilify Catholics and immigrants, many of whom celebrated Columbus not only as a source of ethnic and religious pride but also as a symbol of the free and diverse society that resulted from the European presence here.

    One of the targets of the Klan’s wrath was the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal order for Roman Catholic men (women have their own auxiliary), which was started in the basement of St. Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven in 1882 by Michael J. McGivney– a priest whose Irish parents had immigrated to Waterbury, CT. McGivney started the K of C as a mutual aid society to provide assistance to working men’s families in the event of their untimely death. His own father had died at a relatively young age in 1873, and McGivney had to interrupt his seminary education (he was studying for the priesthood in Quebec) to return to Waterbury and help raise his younger siblings. He finally finished seminary and was ordained in 1877.

    (Interesting side note about McGivney’s years in the Quebec seminary: he started a baseball team among the students, and was considered a “naturally talented baseball player.”)

    The K of C had grown large enough by the 1920s to be targeted by the Klan because of its Roman Catholic identity. Even though the organization was known for its charitable activities outside the Catholic Church– it sponsored soldiers’ welfare centers during WWI and employment programs for veterans after the war– the Klan spread a rumor that the Knights swore an oath to exterminate Protestants and Freemasons. The Knights sued the Klan for libel in 1923, and published a series of books on the contributions of other racial and religious minorities in the United States. The “Knights of Columbus Racial Contributions Series” of books included The Gift of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois; The Jews in the Making of America by George Cohen; and The Germans in the Making of America by Frederick Schrader– this last book an answer to the anti-German sentiment that was widespread in the country during WWI.

    One obvious question is why Fr. McGivney and the largely Irish members of his first K of C council (16 of the original 28 had been born in Ireland) chose Columbus as the patron of their organization. They did so as a challenge to Anglo-Saxon Protestants who upheld the explorer (a Genovese Italian Catholic who had worked for Catholic Spain) as an American hero, yet simultaneously marginalized recent Catholic immigrants. What set the Knights apart from some other Catholic organizations of the day was their emphasis on their American Catholic identity rather than on European Catholic identities. Patriotism is still an important value in the K of C, as is the organization’s emphasis on marriage and family (the Knights must be men of good character, which includes being faithful husbands and good fathers). Yep, not a woke organization. It had about 2 million members as of 2020.

    Personal note: I visited St. Mary’s Church on a number of occasions, as one of my friends in grad school was one of the Dominican friars responsible for running the parish. He pointed out McGivney’s tomb at the left of the church’s front entrance as well as filling me in on the history of the K of C.

17. Michael Knowles did a good piece on the whole thing:

    CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS ACTUALLY WAS A GREAT MAN
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MshsZPD2aNs

18. In the rush to judge and deface, few remember that it was Spain that forbade slavery of most Native Americans and made them Spanish citizens.

    But there were huge differences between the English, French and Spanish with respect to colonization.

    The English bought land and lived as neighbors with the Indians, and didn’t come in conquest. Hence there was no point to forbid slavery, since it wasn’t imposed in the first place. There was at least one exception, when Indians who had waged war against the English were sold as slaves, an event that involved perhaps several hundred natives, but it was a one-off event, not business as usual.

19. Miguel cervantes on October 10, 2022 at 4:38 pm said:
    The english killed so many indians they had to import slaves so whose legend was worse

    The first slaves in Jamestown came in 1619, the first major war between the natives and English was in 1622 when the natives launched a surprise attack, slaughtering men, women and children.

    The slaves of 1619 were from a Spanish slave ship seized by pirates. At Jamestown, they were sold as indentured servants since the English didn’t have chattel slavery.

    The English bought land from the natives and attempted to live in peace with them. That didn’t work out. But they didn’t come in with conquest, forced conversions, or anything like the encomienda system.

    Since the English had no such systems, there was no need for England to ban the enslavement of native Americans, but also the English settlers wrote their own laws and were not controlled in the centralized manner of Spanish control. English settlers in America were free men.

20. Geoffrey Britain,

    It’s also the case that whites could show respect for natives, even the more violent ones. Rain-in-the-Face was claimed to have killed and mutilated Custer’s brother Tom (modern historians think it probably wasn’t him, but he was happy to tell whites he did it), and he went on a Wild West tour with that notoriety. In fact, an upset bystander attempted to shoot him in Florida but another bystander knocked the pistol aside saving his life.

21. Also, on disease:

    Disease was brought by the Spanish to the East coast of what is now the US. This actually helped English colonization. I doubt the English could have dealt with large native populations the way the Spanish did.

    The English settlements, at least the way they were done, would not have conquered the Aztecs or Incas. It is not clear to me that the conquests of the large native civilizations could have been done by the English. The much later English, perhaps, like those who much later colonized India.

22. JJ on October 10, 2022 at 7:01 pm said:
    By those facts alone, the contact of the two cultures was bound to lead to a major change for the native Americans. That the northern native Americans chose not to assimilate, as they did in South/Central America, has led to the insoluble native American nation/reservation problem that still festers. And the unfair charge that native Americans have been treated unfairly.

    As in Jamestown, at the Plymouth colony the English bought land from the natives. This wasn’t a short term trick, but a process that took place for about 50 years.

    The basic economic fact was that the natives had a huge demand for muskets but only had land in return. So the process left the natives with less and less land. The English attempted various laws and agreements to fix this, but the underlying economic realities remained leading to eventual war. King Philip’s War. King Philip was an Indian chief who did assimilate to take an English name.

    The decision to assimilate was not left to the natives in Latin America, who were given no choice by the Spanish, but in English America generally the natives had that choice

23. I have an old copy of Morrison’s biography of Columbus, might have to drag it out and read it again. Probably haven’t touched it in 50 years or more.

24. I’ll also add in that none of the Europeans were as bad as the modern claims. The Spanish were worse than the others, with conquest, forced conversion, rape, and the encomienda system.

    That post Reconquest Spaniards were brutal shouldn’t be surprising. One should note that the Spanish began their settlements before 1500 and the English in 1607, so over a hundred years later. The history of Spanish brutality continued into Mexico and the conquest of the Incas.

    Cortez was actually an impressive man and not cruel as often claimed. He opposed the encomienda system when he was in Cuba, but had to use it himself in Mexico. Reality can force you to use the tools you have even if you don’t want to. The Aztecs were much more brutal than the Spanish. But Cortez’s plan was to hand the Aztecs over as a vassal state to the king, not destroy them. That didn’t work out.

    Also note that the Spanish butchered a settlement of French protestants in Florida. They were not just brutal to natives.

25. Yep
    https://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/happy-columbus-day-t23242.html

26. @miguel cervantes

    The english killed so many indians they had to import slaves so whose legend was worse

    Actually that started with the Spanish; about a century before the English or most of the non-Iberian powers had a solid foothold in the Americas the Spanish (under the leadership of men cast in the mold of Columbus’s successor and rival de Ovando) had utterly devastated the Amerindian populations, sometimes to the point of extermination. This is what de last Casas talked about.

    This is also why the use of African slaves in the Americas pre-dated the settlement of the English and most other non-Iberians. Indeed, the first Blacks to arrive in the English colonies (in 1619) were actually freed slaves on a Spanish slave ship that had been bumped off by either a British or Dutch (will have to check) raider and who were basically given indentured status in order to work off the costs of transporting them.

    This isn’t to say the English or others were particularly saintly in their involvement with the Amerindians; they could be every bit as brutal and exterminatory as the Spanish. But the simple fact is that they had far less of a head-start (since they arrived later) and settled in the areas of the continents that had a lower Amerindian population density than where the Spanish and Portuguese did (with the result that you had a lot more depopulated land).

    I’d also say there was probably something to be said for the English (and to a much lesser extent Dutch and French) authorities generally being less authoritarian and centralized than Spain and Portugal did and the growth of more self-governing societies that generally had a schizophrenic approach of wanting more land for settlement but not wanting to genocide the Amerindians wantonly.

    It’s also really hard to underestimate the importance the Spanish had of the idea of Universal Monarchy and proto-absolutism, which led to a bunch of nasty stuff.

27. @Don Well said on the whole. That said, a point of order:

    The first slaves in Jamestown came in 1619, the first major war between the natives and English was in 1622 when the natives launched a surprise attack, slaughtering men, women and children.

    The slaves of 1619 were from a Spanish slave ship seized by pirates. At Jamestown, they were sold as indentured servants since the English didn’t have chattel slavery.

    Pretty much. Though the status of indentured servant was not meant to be analogous to slavery (even if it often turned out) and in this case was basically an attempt to defray the costs of rescuing and then eventually freeing them. This is what annoys me with the 1619 project.

28. Don,

    Though in the minority, there were many, many whites who were friendly to Native Americans. As one example, the West’s Mountain Men would not have survived had they not found friendly tribes.

    Miguel,

    Great link.

29. Great link ObloodyHell. Thanks for posting.

30. Well written Neo. Honestly Colombus is a fascinating character, and one I wish was understood better. And I’ll be honest: THERE IS a lot you can criticize on him and to an extent I am glad that we have taken off some of the rose-colored glasses we looked at him and his voyages with in order to assess them, even if it was partially the responsibility of the Klan and Leftoids. That said, a lot of the “revisionist historiography” about him is naked character assassination and not even honest critical history.

    Now, Columbus was an egotistical sailor who either was wrong or at least pretended to be so about the distance to Asia. He was- and I think this often is ignored- essentially a mercenary commander in the pay of the Iberian Monarchs, and he routinely used torture and execution as matters of discipline (as was typical of his time). This was not exactly a man who we’d view as a saint, even if we set aside how his mission goal was to conquer any “undiscovered” areas for his liege lords.

    That said, nobody should be able to deny his great historical achievement or his skill as a sailor and manager of men. Which is more than anything what we remember him for.

    But even if you go beyond that, he was apparently a remarkably reasonable and in some ways even moral man. For instance, he apparently was pointedly not racist or bigoted. He spoke very scathingly about those peoples like the Carib whose behavior he believed was barbaric (and given the nature of the Carib he was pretty right about that) but he lavished praise upon peoples like the Arawak for their moral qualities and hospitality (which ironically has now been turned against him by a malicious mis-translation claiming they would make good “slaves” when the original term is more analogous to “servants”, and was on par with his usage elsewhere about being “servants of God.”). He gave a great deal of trust to those Amerindians he formed alliances with, and fought alongside them loyally against enemies like the Carib. And many of his more infamous cases of execution and torture were in response to his underlings nakedly abusing the Arawak and others. Suddenly cutting off hands sounds a lot less arbitrary and tyrannical when you realize it was in response to things like rape and murder.

    Unfortunately, he chronically underdelivered to his sponsors and he had powerful enemies (not the least of which over things like his decision to not exploit his Amerindian allies) such as Nicholas de Ovando and Francisco de Bobadilla, who were real monsters (especially the former). Which is not helped by the fact that many of their atrocities or those of others are conflated to Colombus (for instance, the “feeding Amerindian flesh to hunting dogs” thing people like Ward Churchill and Howard Zinn accused him of doing was actually something done by Francisco de Montejo during his conquest of the Yucatan decades later; which should be unsurprising when you realize hunting dogs are a luxury on ships like Columbus’s and you wouldn’t want to keep them TOO full). It was men like that who Bartolomo de las Casas wrote to condemn, and did so by highlighting (and in some ways perhaps elevating) Colombus as a just and honorable counter to. And while de las Casas’s work is unquestionably propaganda and more than a bit of invective, it’s also recognized as largely accurate and based on what evidence he had found personally.

    Columbus also poisoned his own well to some degree by making concessions to them with things like granting control of Amerindian labor to some rebels in Western Hispaniola only to get overthrown anyway, and also by his stubborn public insistence he had found Asia in contrast to any evidence. He also apparently was not an easy man to get along with and suffered from being an Italian.

    In short, he was a brutal warlord and egotistical sailor who engaged in more than a bit of nepotism and did things that churn the stomach as most mercenary adventurers would, but he was also incredibly skilled and generally tried to give the Amerinidans who would tolerate him a fair shake as a loyal ally, and was probably about as good as you could hope for in his position. He wasn’t the best European explorer or colonial leader either in general or in the pay of the Spanish Crowns, but he was also far, far, FAR from the worst, and indeed his imprisonment and replacement spelled disaster and death to many Caribbean Amerindians because by any metric, people like de Ovando were worse.

    Barto

31. @Don

    I’ll also add in that none of the Europeans were as bad as the modern claims.

    I’d say some came close. In particular de Montejo- conqueror of the Yucatan- comes across almost like a cartoon supervillain were it not for how much of his actions were attested by his own hand or by other more or less reliable sources. And Nathaniel Bacon went about randomly murdering Amerindians as part of what I can only call a quest for a sort of great settler ethnostate while clashing with the Crown authorities.

    But most fall well short of people like Zinn allege about Colombus.

    The Spanish were worse than the others, with conquest, forced conversion, rape, and the encomienda system.

    Agreed, though I’d say the Portuguese gave them a run for their money. The English, French, and Dutch seem to have been more “bipolar”, alternating between attempting peaceful co-existence or outright genocidal extermination without as much of an “in the middle” as the Iberians had (though that eventually changed with the subjugation of peoples like the Powhattan).

    That post Reconquest Spaniards were brutal shouldn’t be surprising. One should note that the Spanish began their settlements before 1500 and the English in 1607, so over a hundred years later. The history of Spanish brutality continued into Mexico and the conquest of the Incas.

    I mean, we shouldn’t be surprised that ANYBODY involved in this was brutal. The people involved were basically medieval mercenary adventurers trying to establish control of a foreign, non-Christian land. Even the best of them would have viewed things like summary execution and mutilation as perfectly normal and just punishments to deal with extreme disobedience from their own men and who viewed slavery as a natural fact of life.

    And of course the Amerindians were much the same, with their own centuries (if not millenniums) of development and brutality.

    Cortez was actually an impressive man and not cruel as often claimed. He opposed the encomienda system when he was in Cuba, but had to use it himself in Mexico. Reality can force you to use the tools you have even if you don’t want to. The Aztecs were much more brutal than the Spanish. But Cortez’s plan was to hand the Aztecs over as a vassal state to the king, not destroy them. That didn’t work out.

    Agreed there.

    Also note that the Spanish butchered a settlement of French protestants in Florida. They were not just brutal to natives.

    Indeed, and this is something I think people forget. Especially since the discovery of the Americas is way, way better known on a global scale than-say- the Ming-Qing Transition or the assorted Italian Wars (first between factional parties of Italians and their foreign supporters and then into a no-holds-barred series of wars between the Habsburg and Valois dynasties for dominance of Italy). Brutality and cruelty on scales that are hard to imagine were very much the coin on both sides of the Atlantic and the European/American divide.

32. @PA+Cat

    Well said PA+Cat. Also, one thing I learned relatively recently (in part due to my wargaming and other research) is that among the KKK’s more typical and well known atrocities, they made quite the radical alliance aimed to exterminate the Knights of Colombus and the Catholic Church in Mexico. To the point where during the “Cristero War” (prompted by the extremely left-wing*, revolutionary, anti-clerical Callas government’s laws against religious freedom), the Klan actually mobilized volunteer units to fight alongside the Calles government in an attempt to crush the rebels in spite of their supposedly white American, traditionalist, Christian focus.

    * It got to the point where people seriously questioned if Calles was a Bolshevik or other Communist, though that faded after a kind of detente.

33. @Paul Nachman

    Well said, though I loathe TakiMag. And I have very little love for Charles Beard or his wife Mary (who fortunately have fallen out of favor given how catastrophically wrong they got shilling for Fascists and even trying to whitewash the Japanese in the leadup to WWII, though who still blight other parts of histriography like WWII).

    Also regarding going “all the way to Spitzbergen” I’ll note that the Ottomans actually got most of the way there historically. Their vassals the Barbary Corsairs launched a major slave raid on Iceland in 1627.

34. Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Bandying around terms like assimilation and civilization from a specifically Eurocentric view….how quaint and unbalanced. Scrape together a bunch of citations of how great a Genoan navigator was (?) and gosh they weren’t that intentionally terrible yada yada. I continue to acknowledge Columbus Day. I do also hold a government-issued CIB card. So subjectively I honor the change in today’s new naming a lot. Reminds me of the old cartoon strip where The Lone Ranger and Tonto are under siege. The caption read (from Tanto). “What do you mean, we?” Non-Native people have skewed concepts and notions about Native people. The best, most accurate scholars can relate all that resulted from colonization. The cultural; linguistic; diversity and centuries-old investments in Turtle Island life ends poorly—tie it all up in a bow and soothe your (mostly) European justifiable sentiments. I have the vantage point of celebrating both Columbus and Indigenous Peoples’ Day. However a spitting match over who and how was more or most “savage”….most posters pre-decided that one: the non-assimilated, the savage and the less “civilized”, right?

35. @Copperdawg

    Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

    This is another thing that annoys me. Because truth be told I’m actually not opposed to the existence of an “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” (though the phrasing is so goddamn wooden). Indeed, in particular with the Colombian Exchange a lot of people don’t seem to understand how transformative in good and bad ways it was, or the remarkable, wonderful and horrible world with thousands of years of history that existed West of the Atlantic, and which was irreversibly changed and all but ended after 1492.

    But what I DO object to is the blatantly dishonest and petty iconoclasm of putting it on the same day as Colombus Day for literally no other reason than to try and “own” the “Bad Genoan Navigator.” Which is all the more perverse because- to be really brutally honest- we do not remember Colombus Day or its place in history because of the role of the Amerindians, AS IMPORTANT AS THOSE ARE AND HOWEVER MUCH WE SHOULD RECOGNIZE THEM. We remember it for the discovery of the new continents, linking them back to the “Old World” of Eurasia for the first time in centuries after the extremely sporadic, short-lived, and all but unknown Norse visits.

    Honestly, I’d say Pick another Date and I’d be happy to recognize and respect “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

    Bandying around terms like assimilation and civilization from a specifically Eurocentric view….

    Oh joy. Compared to what, dare I ask?

    And this is before I get into the fact that most concepts of assimilation and civilization today ARE heavily influenced by “specifically Eurocentric” views (though by no means isolated to them; just ask scholars of Classical Chinese Civilization what “Beyond the Passes” means Go on, I’ll Wait).

    (Or for that matter, let’s talk about the utter failure of the Mexica-led Triple Alliance or the Maya to actually assimilate the people living under them, leading to perennial bloodshed and hardship not at all unlike what we see with the Mongols in Russia and China or the English in France during the Hundred Years’ War).

    how quaint and unbalanced.

    Compared to you? Hardly.

    Your snide remarks belie a lack of understanding or balance. In contrast to myself, who just finished talking EXTENSIVELY (though by no means exhaustively) of Colombus and his less-than-palatable actions and beliefs (and how they differ from both the hagiography of him that dominated in traditional “Eurocentric” accounts and the utter demonization by “revisionist” liars like Zinn and that on the whole he was pretty decent and fair by the standards of ruthless Spanish Crown employed Mercenary Adventurers, and indeed actively went out of his way (to the point of probably fatally compromising his political leverage and administration) to keep on good terms with his Amerindian Allies.
    .

    Scrape together a bunch of citations of how great a Genoan navigator was (?) and gosh they weren’t that intentionally terrible yada yada.

    Yadda Yadda Yadda?

    I hate to tell you this, but even those who don’t believe (as I do) that Colombus was relatively GOOD morally don’t doubt that he was GREAT. And that is especially true if you have any clue at all what a terrifying and difficult feat he did was.

    And also, the problem you run into is that those citations are actually on solid ground, in sharp contrast to a lot of the hagiographies of Colombus before and the “Indigenous Peoples” today. Hence why Zinn got utterly BTFO’d on the Colombus.

    I continue to acknowledge Columbus Day. I do also hold a government-issued CIB card. So subjectively I honor the change in today’s new naming a lot.

    Well, my sympathies for whatever our differences. I do not envy anybody who has to deal with the BIA in any significant capacity.

    Reminds me of the old cartoon strip where The Lone Ranger and Tonto are under siege. The caption read (from Tanto). “What do you mean, we?”

    Ok, fair.

    Non-Native people have skewed concepts and notions about Native people.

    Yeah, not surprising. But here’s the thing: Non-Native people had and have skewed concepts and notions about Non-Native people and Native people have skewed concepts and notions about Native people. There’s a REASON why a vast number- and likely a plurality- of Amerindian ethnic or tribal names most commonly known in English are *insults or smears from the languages of their neighbors and rivals* who the English/Euro-Americans/who have you asked about “So, who’s over there?

    Just ask the Haudenosaunee why they don’t call themselves “Iroquois” except as an expedience or matter of convenience.

    And this is before I even get into the almighty Mouse Hole of who is and isn’t “native”, such as whether or not the Mexica were Native to the Valley of Mexico (Answer: Depends on how you define it, but meaningfully probably not). Because it turns out that genocide, colonialism, displacement, and bigotry were prevalent throughout the Americas long before the first Longship came to Newfoundland looking for timber.

    A good and honest attempt to understand this should be able to acknowledge all of this and address it.

    The best, most accurate scholars can relate all that resulted from colonization.

    Absolute fucking bullshit and I dare you to point out who the “best, most accurate scholars” are or were.

    Because we have abundant evidence of skewed concepts, bigotry, or raw ignorance running riot among Amerindians, in many cases even by a given people or peoples about their ancestors. The Mississippians went almost completely unknown and even more profoundly misunderstood even among their many ancestors such as the Chahta throughout Greater Muskogee.

    And this is before we get into the abject hatred and fear the locals of the Valley of Mexico (and outlying areas) held for the Mexica and their Triple Alliance, or even that remained between the rival Mayan city-states of Calackmul and Tikal.

    The idea that you need colonization to explain skewed concepts at a time when across the Atlantic in largely literate societies, Protestants erroneously believed Queen Catherine di Medici to have instigated the Saint Bartolomew’s Day Massacre and the Ming didn’t understand the Burmese very well underlines it.

    Colonization often didn’t help (especially in terms of humanitarian concerns, though as far as understanding it could), but it is hardly necessary to explain how hugely diverse, far-flung, and diverse people from across at least three continents didn’t understand one another and had skewed views and concepts.

    The cultural; linguistic; diversity and centuries-old investments in Turtle Island life ends poorly—

    At least when you’re dealing with the closest thing to an alien invasion recorded history has, complete with ultra-devastating diseases that managed to be worse than all the genocidal, expansionist colonizers (OF WHICH THERE WERE A LOT, don’t get me wrong I can talk ALLLL day about things like the Norridgewock Massacre) put together*

    That’s also why I actually support an Indigenous Peoples’ Day, or a festival to remember the pre-Colombian Americas and Americans, including their history- with all its boons and busts, sins and salvations- and the influence it has on us today.

    tie it all up in a bow and soothe your (mostly) European justifiable sentiments.

    Fair.

    I have the vantage point of celebrating both Columbus and Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

    To which I salute you.

    However a spitting match over who and how was more or most “savage”….most posters pre-decided that one: the non-assimilated, the savage and the less “civilized”, right?

    I’m not sure “most” posters did. Indeed, Don pointed out the frequent atrocities among Europeans.

    And in any case, I find the argument to generally be daft. As I pointed out: different individuals were different, and even as far as “averages” went different cultures and nations among the “European” and “Amerindian” pots had very different track records.

    This is a point Colombus himself was astute to note. He was even more Eurocentric and European than most posters here, as well as a colonist, evangelist, and mercenary to boot but he “somehow” was able to tell the profound differences between different Caribbean cultures and peoples and in many cases forged lasting bonds (whether of alliance or hostility) that remained in place for years.

    We can all do better, and that’s also why I dislike being too broad stroking. I may be an unashamed Westaboo and Euro-American colonist, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep my eyes completely closed as to the problems with it. And I do find the likes of Beard and co often did greatly undervalue the contributions and legacies of Amerindians- for both good and bad- in comparison to those of the European colonists.

    * That said, I do think while a lot of people among the “anti-Colombian” side of the line seriously underestimate the literally apocalyptic devastation caused by the diseases, a lot of the “pro-Colombians” overestimate it. And indeed one thing they tend to ignore is that while it took decades upon decades for the traumatized Amerindian survivors of the great pandemics to do it (in part due to disease travel lag), those well away from the landing sites slowly recovered and were generally in the process of rebuilding their societies and civilizations by the time European/Euro-American colonists came in, usually kicking them just as they were getting up (with this being by design or by accident depending on a given case; Jackson certainly did not want even friendly Amerindians to recover). With disasterous consequences.

36. Don:
    “The decision to assimilate was not left to the natives in Latin America, who were given no choice by the Spanish, but in English America generally the natives had that choice”

    Yes, and I should have pointed that out. Actually, the white Americans tried to bring the native Americans into society by offering them education at special boarding schools. The native Americans resisted that, although a tiny few did assimilate. I worked for an Apache who had become a Naval Aviator and rose through the ranks. Also, with a Blackfoot who became a National Park Service ranger. But they were exceptions.

    The local newspaper recently ran a three-part series on the supposed horrors of the 1930s native American boarding schools here in the Puget Sound. Most of those young native Americans scholars would be my age or older, but the abuses were written about as if they happened fairly recently. Some of the abuses consisted of making them wear shoes, insisting on cleanliness, teaching dental hygiene, etc. – white man’s ways. Not PC.

    IMO, I think they would have done better had they assimilated. Not going to happen now. Juist wish they would quit playing the victim.

37. Turtler said, “Brutality and cruelty on scales that are hard to imagine were very much the coin on both sides of the Atlantic and the European/American divide.” Reminds me of the atrocities of the Thirty Years’ War, which started 11 years after the foundation of Jamestown and two years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, but took place an ocean away from the Americas. I read C.V. Wedgwood’s The Thirty Years’ War in high school, and was shocked by her accounts of such events as the 1631 sack of Magdeburg– which resulted in the deaths of 20,000 civilians, a major death toll for the period. The destruction of the city was so complete that the verb magdeburgisieren entered the German language as a synonym for the utter annihilation of a city (it was used to describe the destruction of Warsaw in WWII). Reading Wedgwood gave me a basis for comparison when I came across accounts of European settlers’ conflicts with the Amerindians in New England, New France, New Amsterdam, and New Spain.

    Among other things, Wedgwood’s analysis of Richelieu– a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church– bringing France into the war in 1631 on the side of Protestant Sweden– is telling; she pointed out that by so doing, Richelieu turned the conflict from a primarily religious war to a Bourbon-vs.-Hapsburg dynastic struggle. Richelieu also persuaded Louis XIII to subsidize Samuel de Champlain, who became the explorer and later administrator of New France in the years after 1608. Champlain had a lot more trouble with English and Scottish merchants raiding the French settlement in what is now Quebec City than he had with the native tribes.

    As for Richelieu– I’ve always found it interesting that the French Navy is the only major navy to have a succession of warships named after a Roman Catholic cardinal (because Richelieu is considered one of the major founders of the French Navy): an ironclad built in 1873; a patrol boat built in 1915; and a fast battleship launched in 1939. The aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, launched in 1994, was originally to be named Richelieu, which would have made it the fourth in the series.

38. Ha, color me a daft victim. As if being a child rounded up to boarding school, cut their hair, isolated from family bond, forbidden to speak their language, some unspeakable horrible abuses is commendable. How’d that sit with you to be done to your own? Amerindian is a scientific terminology. Most Native people refer to themselves by their tribal lineage. Yippee you get to wear shoes though. Also, equating Woke and this newly recognized Day…yeah I’m super woke!

39. Couldn’t give a fig about Zinn

40. Sounds like the folks who were burning down churches in canada encouraged by the lies that trudeau told

41. @PA+Cat Well said indeed.

    Turtler said, “Brutality and cruelty on scales that are hard to imagine were very much the coin on both sides of the Atlantic and the European/American divide.” Reminds me of the atrocities of the Thirty Years’ War, which started 11 years after the foundation of Jamestown and two years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, but took place an ocean away from the Americas. I read C.V. Wedgwood’s The Thirty Years’ War in high school, and was shocked by her accounts of such events as the 1631 sack of Magdeburg– which resulted in the deaths of 20,000 civilians, a major death toll for the period. The destruction of the city was so complete that the verb magdeburgisieren entered the German language as a synonym for the utter annihilation of a city (it was used to describe the destruction of Warsaw in WWII).

    Indeed. I still periodically use it (along with “Copenhagenization” to refer to attempts to seize an enemy or neutral nation’s ships in port). It is absolutely horrifying stuff, and as one of the relatively rare people who frequently studies and wargames the Thirty Years’ War and its kin it is hard to do it.

    Reading Wedgwood gave me a basis for comparison when I came across accounts of European settlers’ conflicts with the Amerindians in New England, New France, New Amsterdam, and New Spain.

    I’d say it gives about half. But I’d also suggest looking at the other side of the coin and studying things like the Beaver Wars (for the Great Lakes) and other accounts, since the Amerindians were very much their own actors (with their own casts of heroes, villains, and victims) and often times were more focused on their own conflicts rather than those with the Settlers (at least until the settlers really got hold).

    Among other things, Wedgwood’s analysis of Richelieu– a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church– bringing France into the war in 1631 on the side of Protestant Sweden– is telling; she pointed out that by so doing, Richelieu turned the conflict from a primarily religious war to a Bourbon-vs.-Hapsburg dynastic struggle.

    I have to disagree with Wedgwood here. I think it was always primarily a dynastic struggle- primarily about Habsburg attempts to build and then retain a kind of universal empire- rather than a primarily religious war. Though not helped by how those two were often viewed as interchangeable by the most stalwart partisans. However, while the war proper began as a result of Habsburg attempts to fully subjugate the Bohemian Estates by destroying their churches, they were aided in this by the Protestant Elector of Saxony (mostly due to money). And there was a long and often baffling and horrifying prelude in things like the War of Julich Succession.

    Indeed, I’d argue that the Thirty Years War isn’t REALLY or at least shouldn’t PRIMARILY be viewed as a War of Religion. It was close, but unlike other things like say the French Huegenot Wars or the Hussite Wars imperial and dynastic power took priority.

    Richelieu also persuaded Louis XIII to subsidize Samuel de Champlain, who became the explorer and later administrator of New France in the years after 1608. Champlain had a lot more trouble with English and Scottish merchants raiding the French settlement in what is now Quebec City than he had with the native tribes.

    Indeed, and this is what a lot of people I find forget. That there was a lot of ramifications that spun on both sides of the Atlantic.

42. @ Copperdawg > “As if being a child rounded up to boarding school, cut their hair, isolated from family bond, forbidden to speak their language, some unspeakable horrible abuses is commendable.”

    Turtler didn’t say it was commendable, and it isn’t.
    He noted that bad behavior by the colonizers wasn’t unique, and it wasn’t.
    The English did similar things to the Welsh (particularly the “forbidden language” part), and to the Scots, Irish, Indians, Africans … all supposedly to make them “better civilized.”
    It was a different era, in so many ways.

    That the Wokerati are actively engaged in promoting a RETURN to that type of racism and bigotry, but from the other direction, is not commendable either.

    “Couldn’t give a fig about Zinn” – glad to see we agree on that.

43. @ Turtler > “That’s also why I actually support an Indigenous Peoples’ Day, or a festival to remember the pre-Colombian Americas and Americans, including their history- with all its boons and busts, sins and salvations- and the influence it has on us today.”

    Agreed, although to be fair, the Amerinds should get an entire month to be on par with the other Wokerati-approved identity-appreciation celebrations.

    Inflation has hit so many things: money, grades, holidays…

44. @ Turtler > “he lavished praise upon peoples like the Arawak for their moral qualities and hospitality (which ironically has now been turned against him by a malicious mis-translation claiming they would make good “slaves” when the original term is more analogous to “servants”, and was on par with his usage elsewhere about being “servants of God.”).”

    I believe Neo got the quotation correct in her post.

    On the other Columbus thread, PA Cat linked a post about Whitman’s poem honoring Columbus. In that article was this section about the motivations that Columbus himself described. (Paragraphing & emphasis
    added.)

    https://christophercolumbus.org/2008/10/11/the-prayer-of-columbus/

    As for the faith and piety of Columbus which the poem celebrates, an excellent source of information will be found in the “Libro de las Profecias” (“The Book of Prophecies”), Columbus’s own notes and reflections on biblical passages supporting his understanding of his own vocation as the “Christ-bearer” (“Christopher”) chosen and fitted by God for a special mission in the expansion and renewal of Christendom. (Throughout every period of his life his writings and book notations consistently show that he saw himself as missionary and crusader.)

    The material for the Book of Prophecies was collected and organized and the notes dictated by Columbus over several months at a monastery near Seville, where he was awaiting an audience with the monarchs to clear himself from the charges that had brought him back in chains in November, 1500 after his third voyage. The work was intended to be the means by which he explained himself to the king and queen, and appears to have been written between September 13, 1501 and March 23, 1502.

    (However, notes were added later, such as relating to the lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504, while he was marooned on Jamaica, the setting for Whitman’s poem. Apparently there was also an earlier, smaller version of the work dating to 1481.)

    He called it a “Notebook of authorities, statements, opinions and prophecies on the subject of the recovery of God’s holy city and mountain of Zion, and on the discovery and evangelization of the islands of the Indies and of all other peoples and nations.” It was his intention, never realized, to use this notebook to prepare an apocalyptic poem to present to their majesties.

45. Thanks to everyone for contributing to today’s History Seminar.
    I learned a lot, and it was a nice change to discuss ancient wars, atrocities, and propaganda, instead of the current instances in Ukraine.

46. AesopFan says, “Thanks to everyone for contributing to today’s History Seminar.
    I learned a lot . . . ”

    Neo really does host a first-rate cultural salon here, doesn’t she?

47. Some people just can’t let other people alone.
    https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2022/10/10/crusading-liberal-reporter-calls-police-on-racist-mom-celebrating-columbus-day-n641017

    At first blush, this story seems so ludicrous that it can’t be true—and yet it appears to be. A reporter triggered by the thought of celebrating Columbus Day claims he tried to call Child Protective Services on a mother who was honoring it with her child—but get this, the “reporter” then claims the hotline won’t answer because it’s overburdened. Perhaps it’s overburdened because whackos like him are tying up the phone lines with idiotic calls?

    Here’s how it started: today, which many now call Indigenous Peoples Day, Virginia Senate Candidate Tina Ramirez tweeted, “Wishing you and your family a Happy Columbus Day!” Innocuous stuff for a candidate to say.

    Blue-check Twitter user David Leavitt, who writes in his bio that he’s an “Award-Winning Multimedia Journalist” with bylines at CBS, AXS, Yahoo, and Examiner, was deeply triggered, writing: “Why are you celebrating torture, rape, murder, and enslavement?”
    …
    Ramirez replied: “Mighty bold and liberal of you to lecture a Hispanic mother with a black daughter on racism. What’s next? Are you going to lecture me on women’s rights?”
    …
    Leavitt can hold all the anti-Columbus views he wants; that’s his prerogative. Somehow he’s amassed over 330,000 followers with his vitriolic tirades and harassment of other users. Wasting state resources and making a mockery of child abuse, however, is taking it to a whole other sickening level, which seems to be his stock in trade.

48. @Copperdawg

    Ha, color me a daft victim. As if being a child rounded up to boarding school, cut their hair, isolated from family bond, forbidden to speak their language, some unspeakable horrible abuses is commendable.

    Indeed, which is why I have never pretended that was a good idea. Learning foreign languages is nice, and I have my own opinions on religion, but coercion and force- especially by forcing people onto squashed, confined areas- to do it is an act of evil and not good.

    How’d that sit with you to be done to your own?

    See above. You’ll also note I didn’t claim that the colonists were that better.

    Amerindian is a scientific terminology. Most Native people refer to themselves by their tribal lineage.

    Well, my experience is academic and we’re making broad generalizations about an entire, diverse array of humanity spread across two continents. Hence my logic.

    Yippee you get to wear shoes though. Also, equating Woke and this newly recognized Day…yeah I’m super woke!

    Didn’t make any mention on that, and I didn’t object to Indigenous Peoples’ Day itself as “woke.” I think it should be on another day fitting to reflect the history and suffering of the people of the Americas before and after contact, but that is myself.

    Couldn’t give a fig about Zinn

    Indeed, and I didn’t claim you did.

49. No day is complete without the Bees (although without the Gees)

    https://notthebee.com/article/happy-columbus-day-especially-to-all-the-lefties-that-are-triggered-by-the-absolute-chad-who-sailed-the-ocean-blue

    https://babylonbee.com/news/paypal-to-automatically-pull-2500-in-reparations-from-all-white-peoples-accounts

50. Copperdawg celebrating
    Indignent Person Daily. He’s not at all happy about it either! Colonizers! Discoverers of naught!

51. Pretty much. Though the status of indentured servant was not meant to be analogous to slavery (even if it often turned out) and in this case was basically an attempt to defray the costs of rescuing and then eventually freeing them. This is what annoys me with the 1619 project.

    But with time and a series of legal decisions indentured servants became chattel slaves. In fact, in one case it was a black “owner” who obtained a legal decision that made his “servants” lifetime slaves.

52. Copperdawg is snide because he lacks facts to argue from.

53. Indeed, I’d argue that the Thirty Years War isn’t REALLY or at least shouldn’t PRIMARILY be viewed as a War of Religion. It was close, but unlike other things like say the French Huegenot Wars or the Hussite Wars imperial and dynastic power took priority.

    Agreed. And I’d say Christianity was a force of good, really.

    I will note that in the 1600s the English were moving in a good direction culturally, and I would argue that the 30 Years War may not be a good model to understand the English in America.

    On the other hand, the English American way, generally was peace first, but when war came it tended to be total war, sort of like flipping a light.

54. Ha, color me a daft victim. As if being a child rounded up to boarding school, cut their hair, isolated from family bond, forbidden to speak their language, some unspeakable horrible abuses is commendable. How’d that sit with you to be done to your own?

    Much more common was for the natives to seize white children in raids, after slaughtering their parents.

    And also, on of the Jamestown settlements destroyed in the 1622 massacre was setting up a school for the joint education of English and native children. I doubt the natives would have appreciated that, although I don’t think the intent was to force the native children to study there. In a way, not much different than modern liberal ideas about education and such things.

55. JJ on October 11, 2022 at 12:08 am said:
    Yes, and I should have pointed that out. Actually, the white Americans tried to bring the native Americans into society by offering them education at special boarding schools. The native Americans resisted that, although a tiny few did assimilate.

    That was a much later thing. Lots of things happened between 1607 and the 1920s when all natives became citizens. The English / US get blamed for not assimilating them or for doing so. But the main “model” was for natives to have their own societies and live as they wished as separate internal nations.

    I did mention the effort to build a school for native as well as English children in the early Jamestown settlement. The natives argued religion with the English, and didn’t appreciate that the English were condescending on that issue. Of course, the Spanish simply would not have tolerated the native religion as the English did.

56. Copperdawg on October 10, 2022 at 11:26 pm said:
    Bandying around terms like assimilation and civilization from a specifically Eurocentric view….how quaint and unbalanced. . . . However a spitting match over who and how was more or most “savage”….most posters pre-decided that one: the non-assimilated, the savage and the less “civilized”, right?

    Those who cross oceans, who make steel tools and muskets, and have written language are clearly the more civilized. The natives had the misfortune to have a more primitive society and find themselves faced by more advanced societies.

    What’s telling is how bad it worked out for them, despite the significant difference in behavior of the advanced societies. The Spanish used forced conversion and forced assimilation to a centralized system while the English bought land and attempted to live in peace without forced assimilation. Both systems destroyed the native societies.

57. The schools Copperdawg describes having been a victim of closed over a hundred years ago. So perhaps he’s over 100 years old?

    Nor is anyone here defending those schools at this point, as far as I can see.

58. Did you mean to imply that the KKK, the Antifa/storm trooper violent arm of the Democrats for over a century, were on the right?

    The same KKK to whom Justice Hugo Black was beholden for his senate seat?

    The KKK that one Senator Robert Byrd(D), praised so highly by Joe Biden, was a proud member and former leader of?

    Being violent doesn’t make a group on the “right” in the United States. Being racist doesn’t make a group on the right. Being hateful doesn’t either. Leftists love to spread those lies. But they’re just more nasty slanders.

59. neo on October 11, 2022 at 3:27 pm said:
    The schools Copperdawg describes having been a victim of closed over a hundred years ago. So perhaps he’s over 100 years old?

    Nor is anyone here defending those schools at this point, as far as I can see.

    Those schools were a late development. The whole process started back in 1607 (or even before if you want to include failed attempts at settlements). They are much closer in time to us then to Columbus.

    As I mentioned above, there was an early attempt at a school for English and native children at Jamestown, but it was aborted by the 1622 massacre. It was no doubt well intended, although the natives likely wouldn’t appreciate it.

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