Indian Wars
Our literature, especially that of Hollywood, sometimes paints the Indians as a major obstacle to our settling of the Continent. A close look at history shows that to a great extent this was not the case. Our European culture was simply far superior in the ability to make war. To the south, Francisco Pizarro defeated the empire of the Inca with a force of 90 troops. Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico with 500 troops and conquered the great Aztec empire. Cortes little army had steel swords and armor, plus muskets, cannons and cavalry. The Aztecs had weapons with cutting edges of copper and stone. Their armor was made of thick cloth. They had never before seen a horse. The military technology of the Aztec culture was so inferior that they lost their empire to a small force.
In North America, the Indians used bows and arrows with points of stone, and occasionally copper. The English colonies began with muskets and cannons, and advanced to rifles. The Indians sometimes were able to capture or buy rifles, but it was difficult to supply them with ammunition that would match the caliber of the weapons. Further, the Indians often treated warfare more as a sport than as a serious business.
As mentioned in the essay on Human Cultural Evolution [See blog entry “Book”.], peoples who lived in a culture close to the Paleolithic style tended to be less warlike than people in more “advanced” cultures. Considering the bellicose ways of the white men, the Indians usually were surprisingly friendly. If the Indians were as fierce as portrayed in our movies, the Lewis and Clarke expedition would not have crossed half the continent of wilderness, and back, successfully.
If we look into history, we find that most successful Indian “massacres” do not show the Indians organizing and conquering in an impressive battle against the odds.
The earliest such events were the “massacres” at Wyoming and Cherry Valley. In these two events, which occurred during the American Revolution, the British and their supporters suckered the Indians into going with them to attack American settlers—the Indians did not attack on their own volition, nor alone.
At a later date, a fool known as “Captain Fetterman” boasted “Give me 80 men and I will ride through the whole Sioux nation.” A bigger fool gave him the 80 men. Fetterman rode against a force of around 2000 Indians, under command of a couple of the Lakota’s best leaders, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. Fetterman and his 80 men died, plus only maybe 10 Indians, in spite of the fact that many of the Indians used bows and arrows instead of rifles.
A decade later, in the most famous of the battles of Indians against US troops, George Custer led a couple of hundred men into an attack on thousands of Lakota under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The Seventh Cavalry under Custer fought hard and never tried to surrender.
Later still came Wounded Knee. A couple of hundred Indians were surrounded by hundreds of well-armed soldiers. The troops attacked the Indians, most of whom were disarmed men, women, and children, and slaughtered almost all.
Fetterman’s defeat and Custer’s defeat were called “massacres”, and the affair at Wounded Knee a “battle”, by the American media. No, the Indians were not a major obstacle except in our propaganda.
* The peoples called “American Indians” might roughly be described as people descended from the inhabitants of America 600 years ago. No, it was not called “America” then. These many groups, tribes, or nations considered themselves members of their own groups, and not citizens of a continent. Thus they did not have a name for the group that we call “Indians”. We had to invent names for this group, and we did not do it well.
The name “Indians” was used by Columbus, who mistakenly thought he was in India. [World record navigation error? Off by around 10,000 miles. ]
“Native Americans” means people born in America. Thus the “Navajo” people of Arizona are Native Americans, as are Donald Trump, Jesse Jackson, and I.
“Aboriginal Americans” or “Indigenous Americans” are peoples whose earliest ancestors lived in America. There are no such people—we are all immigrants or descended from immigrants, some who arrived in this century and some who arrived millennia ago.
We do not have a logically reasonable name for the ethnic group we call “American Indians”.
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