<b>rimbaud</b>: I just posted a link which controverted some of the claims people were making. In my first response to you, I said I would find such a claim and "we could call it even." I found the link in 5 minutes and posted it. It may be as legitimate as any other citations made here. I was just pointing out the questionable value of some of the claimed facts and so-called objectivity. Have you so investigated all the other authors in play? Is it a crime to want to preserve American culture? You sure are biased against him in this matter; do you mistrust everything he is for? Where's that open university mind of yours? If a man is wrong about something, is he wrong about everything? What university ideal is that?! My replies were brief not flippant. I was in a hurry to get out of the house. I had to pick someone up. I'm sorry if my enumeration offended. The density appears to be on your part. Rhetorically, you would have me offing your father because he once ate dog. How dense is that and how far a leaping conclusion?!! I think my other assertions are entirely fair and accurate. After all they are mostly just my opinions. What did I misread exactly?
Rich: My intention is not to think for you or anyone else (way too much work, thank you very much). But I am a stickler for the truth and when I see people making false statements (like your "Native Americans taught the settlers to be vicious" claim), I'm going to argue. And until you direct me to a source that provides real support for your claims (and not editorials by a man who thinks Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a town and is flippant enough to describe the conflict between Europeans and Native Americans as "anti-immigration violence"), I'm not going to find your opinions convincing. Nevertheless, I'll still make the time to read your sources. But I also understand that you have other priorities to see to. So here's a deal for you Rich. If you take the time you spend averaging 3.13 posts per day on Clutch BBS (I'm guessing that's about 10-15 minutes per day) and instead use it to read Kim's books on Native Americans, I will spend an equal amount of time reading a different book on Native Americans that you consider credible. I'll even buy the book on my own dollar. And I'll stop posting on Clutch BBS until I've read the book and can discuss it. Are you up to this?
My claim about the settlers learning viciousness from the native Americans should not be taken as the foundatiion of all knowledge. It was a comment and a largely accurate one, I think. Our colonial culture was just not that violent but it seems to have incorporated that violence in the westward ho. Something triggered it. Did the native Americans treat the settlers of the Old West with prejudice because they thought we were the Spaniards all over again? Hmmm, good question. So it could have been "anti-immigration violence!" I waver on your offer because of the time factor. I haven't finished a book in 6 months and I'm about to be busier than ever. Nothing hangs in the balance over one book (except the Bible). It would take more time to ascertain a book that is credible than to actually read it. I'll keep your challenge in the back of my head and if I can casually identify a worthy book, I'll notify you. Read a book <b>instead of</b> visiting CC.NET. That kind of suggestion might get you banned?!
Rich You really make everything so much more fun than it needs to be. I never made a value judgement about the link you posted. I didn't give an opinion, etc. All I was doing was pointing out the problems between you saying that you would not read any historical books because they would be biased, and then using a source that is self-admittedly biased towards a one-sided perspective. In any event, I do not really think an editorial is enough to outweigh the primary sources I have posted. See, that is the difference. When both sides (Native American and English) put on record that the English were more violent, etc, then I tend to believe that. When a chief writes to the English and asks why they take with force what they have already been given freely through friendship, I tend to think that there might be some reason for that (and it does not include thinking that it could be in an "anti-American" history book in 2002). My father has never eaten dog. You have misread just about everything.
<b>rimbaud</b>: "Yet you .... post a link to an article that is found on a website that presents an <b>obvious</b> agenda... " <b>RR</b>: Characterizing an agenda as obvious <b>is</b> an opinion. My refusal to read books from Kim's syllabus was based on inconvenience not subverting the search for truth! You imply that I assert that all historical books are biased. That mischaracterization is absurd. Yes, I am skeptical of most modern scholarship in its liberal bias, but I know that there are also legitimate conservative scholars as well. I told Kim that I couldn't vouch for the legitimacy of the choices on his reading list as a side note to my rejection of the offer due to time considerations. Two observations from any era does not an argument make. As I demonstrated, I can find contradictory sources and YOU reject my conclusion. Why can I not reject yours? Certainly more complete investigation is needed. <b>Journal notes are an interesting tidbit but they are neither objective nor necessarily accurate or representative.</b> Father-in-law not father... big deal... that is <b>immaterial</b> to the point I was making. Do you always fight dirty!!? Sorry, pal, I have misread nothing. Hey, I'm glad your having too much fun. I have got to meet you someday.... Where do you live?
I think to argue that any history book is not intrinsicaly biased is an incredibly large mistake. Consider it like 'mp3 compression'. Your brain works by taking large amounts of data, removing extranious information and filtering out paterns. In the same way that data lost filtering a 'wav' to an 'mp3' is inherently lost forever, as a historian filters out the extra bits and creates a pattern some of the truth is lost, and to varried degrees, the truth is lost or warped. This is why different people write many hundreds of history books on the same subject. If it was possible to create a single objective truth, even by the most ardent acolites of objectability, then we'd only need one book per subject. Omniscence is a trait generaly reserved for god/gods. Falure to see this fundimental truth, even in your self, is the greatest of intellecutal sins. RR: I have learned that it is best not to 'go to the book' and pull references with you. It is very difficult, and generaly frustrating because, as you have stated in the past, you aren't particularly willing to commit the time necessary to go back and forth in a documentated battle of facts. Many of us, however, tend to 'go for the facts' when we get frustrated and involved, but when we do this you refuse to escalate. No problem with this, of course, as you are clear that you don't have the time to do so, but I'd suggest anybody argueing a point with you limit the discussion to the relm of generalised intelecutual theories. I think this friction is the source of many of the 'complaints' that some people on the board that I have seen when people try to argue with you.
<b>Otto</b>: Something published in a book is not necessarily a fact. My impression is that many of you are in the process of formal education. Hell, I think, haven copies and pastes his term papers here half the time! I am not immersed in that and do not have time to delve into matters like so many of you seem to. My formal eduation is behind me. Those "facts" are in there. I have a very adequate IQ. I listen and read a lot, so I don't feel a need to apologize for my "lack of footnotes." I can deal with new fact-finding when it is convenient. I torpedoed iceman's dis-belief about the rather low percentage of slave ownership among the north Georgia population around the time of the Civil War. Where's my congratulations!
No, not greed. The landscape was expansive. Why fight when there was so much available to the settlers? That's a good question, why fight? Provocation perhaps?
My personal theory, which also accounts for the slightly off-kilter nature of all people from California, is that the members of society most fit for living in society were not the ones, for the most part, doing the expanding. The malcontnts and criminals left stuffy old England and its well healed genteel populations to come to the us. Say 1 in 100. Then, of the Americans, perhaps the 1/10th of the population that were too restless to stay around, too anti-social, or were running away from something moved to Tenessee. Then another 1 in 10 to the midwest, followed by the final 1/10th to California. You have, therefore a population is derived from the 1/100,000th most unstable portion of the population of jolly old England having all the interaction with the Indians. While clearly there would be sort of a 'backwash' balancing effect as time went on, and some of those settlers problems would not be transfered geneticaly, you nevertheless would have the most uneducated, cruel, unhealthy, unstable portion of your population doing all the interacting. I believe this theory is supported, to some degree, that after the Civil War, a large number of the combatants who were uneducated and had noting to return to stayed in the army and the army shiped these 'undesirables' to the fronteer.
First off, it is a well established fact that a good portion of the early settlers (especially in the West) were criminals and ex-soldiers looking for a new fight. They were hardly the saints you seem to believe. Second, who provoked who? The settlers plopped themselves onto land that belonged to someone else. Whether the Native American's concept of ownership of land was different than the Europeans is irrelevant - the Natives were here first. To add insult to injury, the settlers consistently broke all treaties and contracts that the Native Americans did make regarding land. Do you mean to tell me that if I came and built a house on your front yard and the law refused to move me, you wouldn't attack me??
Kennewick Man. Someone was here before the "Native Americans", and the "Native Americans" apparently wiped them out and stole "their" land... Guess what? Ethnic groups have been wiping each other out and stealing each other's land since the dawn of mankind. The wonder is that in the past century we have finally come to realize that that is an intolerable act. When I say "we", I mean the West - everyone else appears to still be in the business of ethnic cleansing. We should all be thankful that the US realized its actions were wrong and stopped doing them, not harping on about how evil we are. I do not understand how anyone can hate the US because of something it did over a century ago. I mean, what do you want us to do, move back to Europe? Well, we're not Europeans. Pay the Indians a large sum of cash? Why should we do that, since no one alive has ever tried to ethnically cleanse them? They've got their casinos and turnpikes, anyway. Find something to get pissed about that you can blame on a living person.
Kennewick Man? If you're going to resort to name-calling, at least come up with a decent nickname. You and I are on agreement on mankind's tendency to wipe each other out - haven't you been reading my posts? My only beef is with people who try to excuse such action by the European settlers. Finally, I have never, ever said that I hate the U.S. But at the risk of sounding like a broken sampler (since record players are now obselete), I hate historical whitewashing. The Native Americans used some pretty horrific and abominable techniques to fight the rush of settlers onto the land. But the European settlers did as well. And while I am the descendant of white settlers, I don't have to like everything that happened. But that in no way takes away from my love for my country.
LOL!!! There may be some truth here. …and the law abiding loyal subjects who fought for the King of England came to Canada after the war of independence, where they could remain loyal to the Monarchy. Later, Canada signed treaties with our first nations people instead of fighting wars with them. Later still, Canada instituted medicare, and gun control and abolished capital punishment, while in the US … yeeess, it's all making sense now. (We did sign treaties that, among other things, granted treaty Indians tax free status (income tax and sales tax) to this day, but we also gave them smallpox infested blankets and plenty of whisky. And we did have a couple of small rebellions. So I guess we must have let a few bad apples in with the loyalists. )
subtomic: No, no, no... Kennewick Man was a 9,300 body they pulled out of the ground in 1996 who appears to be of a different ethnic group (likely Chinese) than the "Native Americans". It goes a long way in supporting the argument that the "Native Americans" displaced someone else who was here before them. Wasn't calling you names... I would like it if the European settlers weren't singled out as history's boogeyman, that's all. Every major ethnic group in existence has done what they did at some point in time, and it seems unfair (and pointless) to harp on about the evils they committed. And the "Native Americans" were in no way saints either, not that it's really relevant. I hate historical whitewashing, too. I'm not asking you to like what happened. My only point is that what happened a hundred years ago is irrelevant, and hardly even noteworthy in the scope of history's long string of ethnic cleansings. I don't think it's appropriate for anyone to hold today's US responsible for the US's evils committed last century, since none of last century's Americans are alive today (or at least, too old to walk). I'm not accusing you in particular of doing so, but it is apparent that several people here do. It's just ridiculous. That's all.
Can somebody verify that it was the settler's breaking the treaties or was it the government? Were those racist Indians murdering the Ohio schoolteacher and his family headed west because his skin was the same color as those conniving Cavalrymen? How unkind!
… and we get along so well with our first nations people that they're even sharing their culture with us. They've put up a site where we can acquire our own *Authentic Indian Name.* http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/deaddog/ (For those who are wondering, his was a hilarious radio comedy show that was written and performed by a group of first nations comedians.)
http://pa.essortment.com/whowerethefir_reof.htm http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/1998/scalping.html http://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/research/renotes/rn-09txt.htm
