Genocide the term "genocide" is a harsh word. It is a word used to describe the decimation of an entire people and culture. Sadly, this word has also become common cultural and political parlance in the vocabulary of America and the world today, given the horrific events that transpired during World War II in Europe, and later, during the 20th century in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. But is the present American nation, long before these chronicled events of recent memory, stained with a similar historical blemish of cultural eradication? Were the words spoken by one English colonist, "the only good savage is a dead savage," (Relle & Madras, 2003) merely hyperbole or representative of the English nation's entire ideology regarding the native peoples of the Americas? David Stannard says yes, what transpired between the colonists and the natives was genocide. Specifically, he states of the war between the colonists of Connecticut and Massachusetts and the Pequot Indian tribe, that death and cultural annihilation were the only goals of the representatives of the English nations. As early as the first colonies in 1500, there was debate...
(Stannard, cited in Relle & Madras, 48) The Indians were always judged by Western European standards. Thus, their methods of fighting were often scoffed at. (50) They were inferior peoples, clearly, because of the "leaping and dancing" they engaged in, although Stannard suggests that rather than a winner take all strategy in Indian warfare, the braves were attempting to demonstrate their prowess at shooting arrows in a way that the English colonists did not understand.
" (Sage, 1) This is a matter of its emergent identity, which echoed so many of the trespasses of the British Crown. Indeed, we can see that in its vying for independence, the United States would still demonstrate in some ways its immediate cultural relationship to Europe while explicitly seeking an evolution in the terms surrounding this culture. Most certainly, the manner of treatment to which Native American inhabitants were subjected
Because under the first Navigation Act" all American exports had to pass through British ports, and other foreign traders were not allowed to come into American ports, the higher price of imports hurt most American consumers and American businesses. On page 16 Newton quotes from a book by Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell: "Americans paid higher prices and earned smaller incomes than would have been the case if they had
This would result in a proliferation of German success and influence throughout the continent and an effective solidarity amongst German immigrants. 5) What was the "wolf by the ears" quandary that Takai suggests late century American slaveholders found themselves to be in? What were they afraid of? What solutions to the problems created by slavery were possible considering the existing conditions and mentalities in American societies at the time? The problem
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