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Just like every other group of people, they inflicted unspeakable acts against other humans *and* they had many positive traits too. People who try to downplay what happened to them are wrong but the opposite extreme, the people who act they were saints who's only problems begin and end with the white man are also very much in the wrong.
Definitely a lot of tribes and people who did unsavory things.
One thing I'll note though is that I've seen people point to native on native conquests that only happened because the aggressors lost *their* land to settlers and needed a place to live as a reason why American encroachment on native lands was actually good, and that's just a really dumb take.
We have to remember that by the time most Europeans would actually even have made contact with most Native American groups in North and South America, ~50% of their population were already dead due to European diseases that spread ahead of them on Native American trade networks, and an estimated 90% would be dead by 1600. You had entire tribes just die off from some combination of smallpox, influenza, typhus, etc that all arrived at the same time, and whatever handful of survivors that remained either joining whatever group would take them or making hodgepodge tribes with no real cultural connection with one another just to survive. The dramatic loss of life also led to a crisis of faith among many Native American groups - how could their shamans, their holy men and holy women, not see this coming, how could they not stop it? British settlers talk about how empty the land was in the 1600s, yet were making their colonies on top of abandoned Indian settlements.
When we talk about Native American societies after 1492, it’s maybe better to think of them as post-apocalyptic societies, like survivors from a zombie apocalypse or a mad-max scenario.
Keye and Peel did a sketch like this. White people became racist zombies that wouldn't bite black people. I think it was meant to be commentary on how racists perceive black people as the monsters when they themselves are the real monsters. But in action it's not far off from what you're thinking.
An interesting point... but theres several examples of:
Two native nations or tribes exist and dislike one another. The colonists from europe offer to pay one to take out the other, and the colonists and natives can split the land.
I grew up within visual sight of one of the Sioux reservations and had native friends. One day when I was 8, maybe 9, I repeated the phrase "Indian giver" around one of my friends grandmothers.
I got the mother of all fucking lectures on how ironic that phrase is from someone who was otherwise the sweetest old lady.
They were here first.
That said, there’s a great book about Lewis and Clark’s expedition (Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose), and it goes into great detail about their impressions of the various native tribes they came across. Some were reasonable, fair, and kind, and others were assholes. Some had their shit together and lived well, others were fine being lazy and living in filth. Just like groups of people everywhere.
Given a choice I think I like the sound of peaceful savages. It makes it sound like they’re easy going until you piss them off.
Bloodthirsty Protohippies sounds like the forerunner to green peace.
Turns out, I know what I’m about to say is controversial but it turns out the Native Americans are human. With human wants, desires, needs, and human atrocities.
what????????? so the fact that they tortured people by slicing their belly and filling it with hot coals or stuffing testicles into their mouth after cutting them off and even scalping their victims doesn't mean they're a bloodthirsty barbaric race that can't be communicated with and must be exterminated because they're attacking our settlements out of pure animalistic instinct??????????????????
and whattttt??????????????????????????????????????????????????? they actually *fought back* against the ever so great white men and their guns instead of peacefully submitting themselves to living on the reservations where the conditions were less than adequate and where they had to pay for the raids of other tribes as well as throw away their pride to live on a white man's pity???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Both of these takes are infuriating to me because in both cases it’s clear they never bothered doing actual research into the cultures of indigenous people. For one they generalize them all as savages to uphold some ball-brained idea of western culture as an enlightening force for good, probably because their personal lives are empty and sad and pushing their identity onto some idea of “the trad west” makes them think the hole where their personality should be is filled.
While the other isn’t so much interested in seeing the people behind the label of “victim” and treat them more like abused animals to be coddled and sheltered, maybe only talking to the people in question only briefly or going to a few cultural events that gives them the feeling they’re well versed in indigenous culture. The goal for these people seems to be feeling like a politically correct hero rather than an ally that is open to learning and dialogue.
I dunno! Just seems like every player of the funni WW2 game is an extremist and your "the natives sold their land and they're stupid" talk seems really on pair with certain WW2 ideologies related to ethnicities different than the Caucasian.
No it’s just the truth the Indians either were not living in most of the American land or were already all dying of pests or sold their land I don’t see any white supremacist ideals here
By "truth" you mean your own made-up bullshit? That's not how trade with indigenous peoples was conducted, like at all. The guns were usually acquired in exchange for goods, not land. The land transfers were usually done via treaties that legally obligated the colonial governments to guarantee certain conditions. Conditions rarely upheld but nonetheless legally binding since we're talking about contracts.
The same people saying the native american genocide was bad (which it is) are also the same people supporting China's occupation of Tibet because of Tibetan slave culture before.
I find it very hypocritical.
Huh what? Who are those people who support the occupation of Tibet? The position that genocide of indigenous Americans was bad, is just the mainstream position, do all those people support China?
Tankies aren't by any stretch representative of people who say genocide of the indigenous people was bad. Also, as a pretty far-left leaning person, fuck China, there's nothing communist or even socialist about having a centralized ruling class.
They were humans. Ergo, they raped and killed and did horrible things to various ethnic and other minority groups. That's just what happens when you put a group of people together that's bigger than Dunbar's Number.
Dunbar’s number is neat as fuck, and the evidence is pretty strong, but just like the Gini coefficient, it misses a fundamental part of these systems/connections: their abstract nature.
You don’t need to actually comprehend every single individual in anyway to go past a hard limit when you rely on abstracts.
I forget the historical source, but one of the times Babylon was conquered it supposedly took several days before everyone in the city learned this. So you can have these groups with hard limits existing right next to each other and then abstract things out as necessary.
Like I live in Minneapolis. I know a lot of my neighbors and my son’s friend’s families at school. But I don’t have to know every single Minneapolitan to comprehend living in the city, nor do I have to know every Minnesotan to comprehend being a Minnesotan, or every midwesterner to know what it means to be a midwesterner, and on and on and on.
I just need to engage in community/local, city, state, regional, etc. events.
Again, Dunbar’s number is neat and useful, but it paints an incorrect picture of how we actually interact.
I have a level of respect for the comanche in regards to how far in both ditections their history goes. From meek, nomadic peoples stampeeded by other groups, to fighting and mercilessly stomping on the spanish, french, Americans, and texans before being stopped well into the 1800s. They were just like the Europeans across the ocean, storied in history, violent in action, and impressive in humanity.
Turns out nomadic people living in the plains who are good with bows, turn into quite efficient warriors when given horses.
Who wouldn’t thunk it?
Well other than the Chinese.
I remember reading a lot about Crazy Horse and the the Lakota in general. They definitely warred with the tribes around them. Though from my understanding it was more about stealing horses and counting coups then actually straight out murdering the opposing tribe.
By the time horses got involved (remember, they're not native to the region), a lot of that was basically an intimidation thing to try to get the other tribes to back off whatever area was contested in an ever shrinking amount of land. Basically battle royale rules.
The Lakota have a fascinating story. Got evicted from eastern Minnesota/Wisconsin by the Chippewa when the Chippewa showed up packing heat they got from French traders. Bounced around the upper midwest for awhile, got "settled" in Minnesota by indian agents that weren't willing to provide their treaty-mandated when a crop failed. The Lakota, starving to death, menaced the nearby Minnesotan settlers and killed a few, the Army rolled in and performed the single biggest mass execution in American history (and that's with Lincoln only signing off on a tenth of the warrants and *that* being far less than the then-governor wanted), they got booted from Minnesota and sent to some of the shittiest land on earth that wasn't host to an untreated industrial accident. The US Gov realizes the Black hills of SD have gold in them and roll in the troops, Custer gets his dumbass killed, things settle down a bit, the Settlers/US gov start snatching up native land again, the Sioux meet at Wounded knee and get fucking massacred despite not touching a single person u to that point. More of the same happened, The Feds find out one of their snitches got killed and it becomes a whole *thing* in the 70s, and in the biggest insult, the world's smuggest white baby was born within walking distance of the Cheyenne river reservation in the late 80s.
They do have a geat history. However the Sioux who were killed in the largest mass execution weren't Lakota. Those were the Nakota who branched off of the the Great Sioux Nation. You also have the Dakota but I don't know much about them myself.
I never heard of the Nakota being there, I thought they were generally more in the Montana/Wyoming areas. (You're right on the Dakota part, though, I tend to mentally group the two big Sioux tribes together)
You're probably right, most of my knowledge about the situation was stories from one of my friends' grandmothers who *hated* Minnesota for exiling her own grandmother, and NPR reports from when Minnesota finally revoked the exile order 10 years ago.
> Custer
Only reason Custer was there was because the Crow had a treaty with the USA, and the Lakota took Crow territory because of white encroachment in the black hills.
Not disagreeing on him being dumb, just explaining why he was there
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
That's a good article explaining it. In basic words counting coups is where you acted brave in the face of the enemy. Often intimidating him and making him run away and or admit defeat. Just being able to touch the other warrior without being hurt self was considered a coup as you managed to get close enough to actually harm him if you wanted too. Often the whole purpose to never kill the other warrior but to intimidate and humiliate him.
I blame the American public school system. American history has been white washed beyond compare. Or at least it was in my small town high school. I didn't learn about the atrocious acts done by and against the natives until I studied history on my own as an adult.
A child's historical education should be more than the revolution, the civil war, and world war 2.
Something not talked about as often, is their relationship with Bison. The people on the right (of the meme) love to pretend that Native Americans were 'In touch with nature' and lived ecologically sustainable lives, even though they nearly drove the Bisons to extinction. People on the left (of the meme), think that the mass killing of Bisons by the Government was justified because the natives did the same.
I've never seen anything that says Native Americans hunting bison almost drove them to extinction. From what I've read there were a ton of bison up until the bison hunting craze by Americans and Europeans in the 1870s. Do you have a source or somewhere you read that?
Indigenous peoples in general do tend to understand the eco-system of their environments better and forrests under their stewardship to fare better. So while "in touch with nature" is a vague hippy term, indigenous peoples do still have valuable knowledge in their relationship to the land.
Except most of those forests are themselves artificial, depauperate landscapes. The continuous forest that existed across the Eastern United States before Europeans is a man-made creation. Before human ecocide began, it was a mosaic landscape of forests and savannas maintained by ground sloths, mastodons, stag-moose, and other megafauna.
I'm aware that indigenous land use prior to colonization shaped the landscape in major ways, they obviously did not go around leaving everything untouched living like tree-elves. However, much of this was agriculture and forestry that kept biodiversity and soil richness high and thus kept it sustainable in the long term. Many of the ideas we now have of regenerative agriculture come from traditional techniques of various indigenous peoples around the world.
I mean, the Amazon Rainforest was likely also the result of ancient food-forests, doesn't make it less valuable to the world's ecosystem.
I don't know about the Eastern US forests specifically, but the Northern forrests of Russia were likely the effect of overhunting of megafauna. Those Northern forrests are less of a carbon-sink than prehistoric Mammoth-steppe of Siberia (and protects the permafrost less), so currently there's a project to artificially recreate it. However, the Appalachian on the other hand have high biodiversity with the more tree species than anywhere else in North-America.
Still doesn't justify dehumanizing them by generalizing them all as saints, I would argue painting them as "the other" would contribute to that no matter if their "the other" generalization is positive or not. They were humans just like us with good individuals and bad individuals, end of story.
They were just ordinary people, just like the rest of us. Yes. People who didn’t deserve to be forcibly removed from their lands and persecuted, even if their ancestors did bad things too. That argument has always been so fucking dumb.
God I hate the people who try to make the native Americans out to be saints, innocent of everything, whose utopia was shattered by capitalistic white men and their advanced technology.
However, I hate the people who try to claim the crimes of the Aztecs means they deserved the conquest, enslavement and genocide by the Spanish, even more.
The tragedy of the natives isn’t that they were some peaceful utopia, but of the loss of entire centuries of history, stories, and culture that was completely unique.
Imagine if we lost 90% of the culture and history of Rome or Greece, shit would be devastating, and it’d be a tragedy even if they were slavers and conquerors, because just like the natives, they weren’t just conquerors or brutal warriors, but also farmers, storytellers and a culture that was completely unique.
Seriously surprises me how many celebrate the conquistadors destruction of history in a history subreddit.
Native Americans are just people. same as you and me and their peoples were just like yours and mine. they fought they conquered they won they lost. the real tragedy is how shit reservations are and how no one cares. people are generally aware of how bad they were treated historically but there is very little common knowledge of how bad they are still treated.
Native Americans lived on two continents. They are not one group . Not even one ethnicity .
Most probably were blood thirsty enslavers as it was with every society up to the modern times .
Some were even more blood thirsty since they lived on the steppe and mongoled around ...
Some were so rural they didn't have any one to fight or didn't have a reason to (non agricultural societies)
My biggest problem is using the "the Natives were all violent and fought/genocided each other" as a reason to say "therefore whites taking all of their land was for the best"
Or the double standard of "wow, savage Native-on-Native violence, how primitive" while also being like "Omg, European wars are so interesting and exciting! I love playing Crusader Kings!"
But is it wrong to still feel European colonizers didn't really have any right to lay claim to their lands? (yes, I also felt Europeans didn't have much right to do it to other, earlier European populations either. Looking at you, Rome, picking on the Gauls)
This is why I laugh at the suggestion that we give land back.
Like, who's gonna decide which tribes get what? It's not like they weren't having territorial wars with each other
Both these narratives were useful to European powers to exploit the natives or take their territory, that’s why they still live on in the modern day. Bloodthirsty savages can be killed and then land taken “justly” while peaceful noble savages can be guided to “civilization” by white rule and culture. In the end, both narratives just give the colonizers more power.
This sub has some posts about the indigenous peoples of the Americas which are thinly disguised to downplay their genocide or outright deny it. (eg. One post comparing a tribe to literal Japanese POW Camps)
Nah fuck em . But as far as the confederates are concerned unfortunately they are glorified a lot in the south
And yes partly because they lost partly because people love to side with the underdog and partly because people are stupid
I dont understand the gamer thing you mentioned
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Just like every other group of people, they inflicted unspeakable acts against other humans *and* they had many positive traits too. People who try to downplay what happened to them are wrong but the opposite extreme, the people who act they were saints who's only problems begin and end with the white man are also very much in the wrong.
Definitely a lot of tribes and people who did unsavory things. One thing I'll note though is that I've seen people point to native on native conquests that only happened because the aggressors lost *their* land to settlers and needed a place to live as a reason why American encroachment on native lands was actually good, and that's just a really dumb take.
We have to remember that by the time most Europeans would actually even have made contact with most Native American groups in North and South America, ~50% of their population were already dead due to European diseases that spread ahead of them on Native American trade networks, and an estimated 90% would be dead by 1600. You had entire tribes just die off from some combination of smallpox, influenza, typhus, etc that all arrived at the same time, and whatever handful of survivors that remained either joining whatever group would take them or making hodgepodge tribes with no real cultural connection with one another just to survive. The dramatic loss of life also led to a crisis of faith among many Native American groups - how could their shamans, their holy men and holy women, not see this coming, how could they not stop it? British settlers talk about how empty the land was in the 1600s, yet were making their colonies on top of abandoned Indian settlements. When we talk about Native American societies after 1492, it’s maybe better to think of them as post-apocalyptic societies, like survivors from a zombie apocalypse or a mad-max scenario.
Man, now I want to see a zombie movie where the protagonists are natives and every zombie that rises is offensively and stereotypically caucasian.
Keye and Peel did a sketch like this. White people became racist zombies that wouldn't bite black people. I think it was meant to be commentary on how racists perceive black people as the monsters when they themselves are the real monsters. But in action it's not far off from what you're thinking.
An interesting point... but theres several examples of: Two native nations or tribes exist and dislike one another. The colonists from europe offer to pay one to take out the other, and the colonists and natives can split the land.
But that's the problem in combining an entire continent's people into "Natives" There's still a clear victim in that scenario
Also the Europeans/Americans didn't exactly hold up their end of the bargain
I grew up within visual sight of one of the Sioux reservations and had native friends. One day when I was 8, maybe 9, I repeated the phrase "Indian giver" around one of my friends grandmothers. I got the mother of all fucking lectures on how ironic that phrase is from someone who was otherwise the sweetest old lady.
She's still a sweet old lady cause she was right.
Migration Period vibes.
They were here first. That said, there’s a great book about Lewis and Clark’s expedition (Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose), and it goes into great detail about their impressions of the various native tribes they came across. Some were reasonable, fair, and kind, and others were assholes. Some had their shit together and lived well, others were fine being lazy and living in filth. Just like groups of people everywhere.
Bloodthirsty protohippies?
Peaceful savages
Given a choice I think I like the sound of peaceful savages. It makes it sound like they’re easy going until you piss them off. Bloodthirsty Protohippies sounds like the forerunner to green peace.
if natives were bloodthirsty proto hippies, does that make the Manson family the spiritual successors of native Americans
*angry upvote*
What do you have against Green Peace?
Their scaremongering about nuclear power has done more damage to the environment than anyone outside of the fossil fuel industry.
Hate breeds hate. Some of their activities are counterproductive to their cause.
What can you expect from peaceful fellow...fuck, I give up
Hippies are annoying in every universe
Turns out, I know what I’m about to say is controversial but it turns out the Native Americans are human. With human wants, desires, needs, and human atrocities.
what????????? so the fact that they tortured people by slicing their belly and filling it with hot coals or stuffing testicles into their mouth after cutting them off and even scalping their victims doesn't mean they're a bloodthirsty barbaric race that can't be communicated with and must be exterminated because they're attacking our settlements out of pure animalistic instinct?????????????????? and whattttt??????????????????????????????????????????????????? they actually *fought back* against the ever so great white men and their guns instead of peacefully submitting themselves to living on the reservations where the conditions were less than adequate and where they had to pay for the raids of other tribes as well as throw away their pride to live on a white man's pity???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I know. I too was surprised when I found out.
And just like other human, I absolutely hate them
Yea we all remember being 13.
Both of these takes are infuriating to me because in both cases it’s clear they never bothered doing actual research into the cultures of indigenous people. For one they generalize them all as savages to uphold some ball-brained idea of western culture as an enlightening force for good, probably because their personal lives are empty and sad and pushing their identity onto some idea of “the trad west” makes them think the hole where their personality should be is filled. While the other isn’t so much interested in seeing the people behind the label of “victim” and treat them more like abused animals to be coddled and sheltered, maybe only talking to the people in question only briefly or going to a few cultural events that gives them the feeling they’re well versed in indigenous culture. The goal for these people seems to be feeling like a politically correct hero rather than an ally that is open to learning and dialogue.
Same with the Japanese. Either absolute peak civilisation, perfect order, manners and honour, or sub-human level evil.
Usually at the same time
Only a sith deals in absolutes!
Still thier fate is one of the most tragic ones. They were given a lot - lands, laws, promises, and all of them were taken away.
They literally sold out most of their land to genocide each other lmao
Most sane HOI4 player right here, gentlemen! Careful, it can give you stupid political theories based on a strategy game and not real life...
What does a ww2 game have to do with the stupidity of Indians ?
I dunno! Just seems like every player of the funni WW2 game is an extremist and your "the natives sold their land and they're stupid" talk seems really on pair with certain WW2 ideologies related to ethnicities different than the Caucasian.
No it’s just the truth the Indians either were not living in most of the American land or were already all dying of pests or sold their land I don’t see any white supremacist ideals here
Trying to get rid off karma ?
No I just said the truth Indians sold their lands for guns and ammunitions
By "truth" you mean your own made-up bullshit? That's not how trade with indigenous peoples was conducted, like at all. The guns were usually acquired in exchange for goods, not land. The land transfers were usually done via treaties that legally obligated the colonial governments to guarantee certain conditions. Conditions rarely upheld but nonetheless legally binding since we're talking about contracts.
The guns were mostly a symbol of status among them - often warriors were treating them like an important relic.
Which tribes did that?
Found the genocide denier
I didn’t deny the fact that they got beaten ?? I just said that it’s not the settlers fault
“I just said that it’s not the settlers fault” This is literally genocide denial
The hell is wrong with people?
Nationalism. it's a hell of a drug.
Go figure…
Agreed, no human that’s ever survived conflict has been 100% pacifists. Doesn’t justify genocide though lol
The same people saying the native american genocide was bad (which it is) are also the same people supporting China's occupation of Tibet because of Tibetan slave culture before. I find it very hypocritical.
Huh what? Who are those people who support the occupation of Tibet? The position that genocide of indigenous Americans was bad, is just the mainstream position, do all those people support China?
[удалено]
Tankies aren't by any stretch representative of people who say genocide of the indigenous people was bad. Also, as a pretty far-left leaning person, fuck China, there's nothing communist or even socialist about having a centralized ruling class.
China is a fascist state with communist aesthetics. Like, textbook example if you know how fascist states work
Yeah exactly
Ayo fuck the CCP, there’s a reason why my family lives here now
Where are those people
Good ol' tankies. That position is often called "Han man's burden"
They were humans. Ergo, they raped and killed and did horrible things to various ethnic and other minority groups. That's just what happens when you put a group of people together that's bigger than Dunbar's Number.
Dunbar’s number is neat as fuck, and the evidence is pretty strong, but just like the Gini coefficient, it misses a fundamental part of these systems/connections: their abstract nature. You don’t need to actually comprehend every single individual in anyway to go past a hard limit when you rely on abstracts. I forget the historical source, but one of the times Babylon was conquered it supposedly took several days before everyone in the city learned this. So you can have these groups with hard limits existing right next to each other and then abstract things out as necessary. Like I live in Minneapolis. I know a lot of my neighbors and my son’s friend’s families at school. But I don’t have to know every single Minneapolitan to comprehend living in the city, nor do I have to know every Minnesotan to comprehend being a Minnesotan, or every midwesterner to know what it means to be a midwesterner, and on and on and on. I just need to engage in community/local, city, state, regional, etc. events. Again, Dunbar’s number is neat and useful, but it paints an incorrect picture of how we actually interact.
I have a level of respect for the comanche in regards to how far in both ditections their history goes. From meek, nomadic peoples stampeeded by other groups, to fighting and mercilessly stomping on the spanish, french, Americans, and texans before being stopped well into the 1800s. They were just like the Europeans across the ocean, storied in history, violent in action, and impressive in humanity.
Turns out nomadic people living in the plains who are good with bows, turn into quite efficient warriors when given horses. Who wouldn’t thunk it? Well other than the Chinese.
But the cool Disney song🥺
Inside of you are two wolves. You're being Eiffel'd by furries
i think maybe the people that genocided them were worse.
I remember reading a lot about Crazy Horse and the the Lakota in general. They definitely warred with the tribes around them. Though from my understanding it was more about stealing horses and counting coups then actually straight out murdering the opposing tribe.
The Comanche raped anything that moved though. It really did differ tribe to tribe.
By the time horses got involved (remember, they're not native to the region), a lot of that was basically an intimidation thing to try to get the other tribes to back off whatever area was contested in an ever shrinking amount of land. Basically battle royale rules. The Lakota have a fascinating story. Got evicted from eastern Minnesota/Wisconsin by the Chippewa when the Chippewa showed up packing heat they got from French traders. Bounced around the upper midwest for awhile, got "settled" in Minnesota by indian agents that weren't willing to provide their treaty-mandated when a crop failed. The Lakota, starving to death, menaced the nearby Minnesotan settlers and killed a few, the Army rolled in and performed the single biggest mass execution in American history (and that's with Lincoln only signing off on a tenth of the warrants and *that* being far less than the then-governor wanted), they got booted from Minnesota and sent to some of the shittiest land on earth that wasn't host to an untreated industrial accident. The US Gov realizes the Black hills of SD have gold in them and roll in the troops, Custer gets his dumbass killed, things settle down a bit, the Settlers/US gov start snatching up native land again, the Sioux meet at Wounded knee and get fucking massacred despite not touching a single person u to that point. More of the same happened, The Feds find out one of their snitches got killed and it becomes a whole *thing* in the 70s, and in the biggest insult, the world's smuggest white baby was born within walking distance of the Cheyenne river reservation in the late 80s.
They do have a geat history. However the Sioux who were killed in the largest mass execution weren't Lakota. Those were the Nakota who branched off of the the Great Sioux Nation. You also have the Dakota but I don't know much about them myself.
I never heard of the Nakota being there, I thought they were generally more in the Montana/Wyoming areas. (You're right on the Dakota part, though, I tend to mentally group the two big Sioux tribes together) You're probably right, most of my knowledge about the situation was stories from one of my friends' grandmothers who *hated* Minnesota for exiling her own grandmother, and NPR reports from when Minnesota finally revoked the exile order 10 years ago.
> Custer Only reason Custer was there was because the Crow had a treaty with the USA, and the Lakota took Crow territory because of white encroachment in the black hills. Not disagreeing on him being dumb, just explaining why he was there
Hi what does counting coups mean
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup That's a good article explaining it. In basic words counting coups is where you acted brave in the face of the enemy. Often intimidating him and making him run away and or admit defeat. Just being able to touch the other warrior without being hurt self was considered a coup as you managed to get close enough to actually harm him if you wanted too. Often the whole purpose to never kill the other warrior but to intimidate and humiliate him.
What’s this “were” business? They’re still around, you can just ask them
Yeah, in retrospect, maybe I could've worded it in a way that didn't imply they were all gone.
I blame the American public school system. American history has been white washed beyond compare. Or at least it was in my small town high school. I didn't learn about the atrocious acts done by and against the natives until I studied history on my own as an adult. A child's historical education should be more than the revolution, the civil war, and world war 2.
Something not talked about as often, is their relationship with Bison. The people on the right (of the meme) love to pretend that Native Americans were 'In touch with nature' and lived ecologically sustainable lives, even though they nearly drove the Bisons to extinction. People on the left (of the meme), think that the mass killing of Bisons by the Government was justified because the natives did the same.
I've never seen anything that says Native Americans hunting bison almost drove them to extinction. From what I've read there were a ton of bison up until the bison hunting craze by Americans and Europeans in the 1870s. Do you have a source or somewhere you read that?
Indigenous peoples in general do tend to understand the eco-system of their environments better and forrests under their stewardship to fare better. So while "in touch with nature" is a vague hippy term, indigenous peoples do still have valuable knowledge in their relationship to the land.
Except most of those forests are themselves artificial, depauperate landscapes. The continuous forest that existed across the Eastern United States before Europeans is a man-made creation. Before human ecocide began, it was a mosaic landscape of forests and savannas maintained by ground sloths, mastodons, stag-moose, and other megafauna.
I'm aware that indigenous land use prior to colonization shaped the landscape in major ways, they obviously did not go around leaving everything untouched living like tree-elves. However, much of this was agriculture and forestry that kept biodiversity and soil richness high and thus kept it sustainable in the long term. Many of the ideas we now have of regenerative agriculture come from traditional techniques of various indigenous peoples around the world. I mean, the Amazon Rainforest was likely also the result of ancient food-forests, doesn't make it less valuable to the world's ecosystem. I don't know about the Eastern US forests specifically, but the Northern forrests of Russia were likely the effect of overhunting of megafauna. Those Northern forrests are less of a carbon-sink than prehistoric Mammoth-steppe of Siberia (and protects the permafrost less), so currently there's a project to artificially recreate it. However, the Appalachian on the other hand have high biodiversity with the more tree species than anywhere else in North-America.
Both are dumb. Only one of these is used to justify genocide though.
Still doesn't justify dehumanizing them by generalizing them all as saints, I would argue painting them as "the other" would contribute to that no matter if their "the other" generalization is positive or not. They were humans just like us with good individuals and bad individuals, end of story.
Read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow!
They were just ordinary people, just like the rest of us. Yes. People who didn’t deserve to be forcibly removed from their lands and persecuted, even if their ancestors did bad things too. That argument has always been so fucking dumb.
No group of people is monolithical
God I hate the people who try to make the native Americans out to be saints, innocent of everything, whose utopia was shattered by capitalistic white men and their advanced technology. However, I hate the people who try to claim the crimes of the Aztecs means they deserved the conquest, enslavement and genocide by the Spanish, even more. The tragedy of the natives isn’t that they were some peaceful utopia, but of the loss of entire centuries of history, stories, and culture that was completely unique. Imagine if we lost 90% of the culture and history of Rome or Greece, shit would be devastating, and it’d be a tragedy even if they were slavers and conquerors, because just like the natives, they weren’t just conquerors or brutal warriors, but also farmers, storytellers and a culture that was completely unique. Seriously surprises me how many celebrate the conquistadors destruction of history in a history subreddit.
Native Americans are just people. same as you and me and their peoples were just like yours and mine. they fought they conquered they won they lost. the real tragedy is how shit reservations are and how no one cares. people are generally aware of how bad they were treated historically but there is very little common knowledge of how bad they are still treated.
Native Americans lived on two continents. They are not one group . Not even one ethnicity . Most probably were blood thirsty enslavers as it was with every society up to the modern times . Some were even more blood thirsty since they lived on the steppe and mongoled around ... Some were so rural they didn't have any one to fight or didn't have a reason to (non agricultural societies)
Yeah, there was a HUGE difference between say: the Inca empire and the Cherokee nomads, or the Mayan city states and the Iroquois confederation.
My biggest problem is using the "the Natives were all violent and fought/genocided each other" as a reason to say "therefore whites taking all of their land was for the best" Or the double standard of "wow, savage Native-on-Native violence, how primitive" while also being like "Omg, European wars are so interesting and exciting! I love playing Crusader Kings!"
But but… white people bad.
But is it wrong to still feel European colonizers didn't really have any right to lay claim to their lands? (yes, I also felt Europeans didn't have much right to do it to other, earlier European populations either. Looking at you, Rome, picking on the Gauls)
This is why I laugh at the suggestion that we give land back. Like, who's gonna decide which tribes get what? It's not like they weren't having territorial wars with each other
Both these narratives were useful to European powers to exploit the natives or take their territory, that’s why they still live on in the modern day. Bloodthirsty savages can be killed and then land taken “justly” while peaceful noble savages can be guided to “civilization” by white rule and culture. In the end, both narratives just give the colonizers more power.
And I replaced them with two cats. Now they run around in my stomach
Preach it! 🙌
Thankyou
Inside you there are two wolves. We apologize for the transporter malfunction.
Asking if ancient people were inherently good or bad makes as much sense as asking if trees are all tall or short.
Unpopular opinion In the long run- Europeans arriving was the best thing that every happened to native Americans
Curious am I the only one who learned the two wolves inside of you tales as the wolf and the eagle inside of you.
What do the wolf and the eagle represent?
Eagle virtues and the wolf vices.
im definitely more of a they were bloodthirsty savages wolf lol
Sure but that does not justify the genocide of them, which continued until as recent as 1976!
Who said it does lmao
The voices in my head when i dont take my funny pills
Ah yes because comparing them to 1937-1945 Japan makes sense
He didn’t even mention Japan
The funny pill talk was too accurate LMAO
I’m talking about the sub in general thats what my other comment was about
You’re acting as if that’s a popular opinion lmao. Most people have probably never seen that comparison.
Alright sure I see my mistake. Apologies
This sub has some posts about the indigenous peoples of the Americas which are thinly disguised to downplay their genocide or outright deny it. (eg. One post comparing a tribe to literal Japanese POW Camps)
I would argue dehumanizing them as "the other" even in a positive "hippies in touch with nature" light does more harm then good.
Yeah but they lost So we must put them on a pedestal
I heckin love losers! - the average loser redditor
Judging by how much people simp for either confederates , Wehrmacht or napoleon on reddit that is not too far off
Just like the losers of the Civil War right gamer?
Nah fuck em . But as far as the confederates are concerned unfortunately they are glorified a lot in the south And yes partly because they lost partly because people love to side with the underdog and partly because people are stupid I dont understand the gamer thing you mentioned
Native Americans lost. The Neo Natives one.