History: Bottom Lines: Native Americans

Showing posts with label Native Americans. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Let’s put one more thing in context….

In America in 1877, 101 years after the Declaration of Independence:

Minor league baseball was organized

The first Easter “egg roll” was held on the White House lawn

President Hayes withdrew federal troops from New Orleans, ending military involvement in Reconstruction in the South

A horse named Baden-Baden won the 3^rd Kentucky Derby

10 members of the Molly Maguires were hanged in coal country in Pennsylvania

The San Francisco Public Library opened

The New York Athletic Club staged the first American amateur swim meet

Thomas Edison announced his “talking machine” (phonograph) invention

The first issue of the American Bicycling Journal was published in Boston

Sketch of Crazy Horse

….and a U. S. soldier with a bayonet murdered the Oglala Sioux chief, Crazy Horse, outside a cell in an Army prison at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Crazy Horse was one of the Sioux leaders whose warriors wiped out Custer’s Seventh Calvary at the Little Bighorn in 1876.

Before comic books there were....

"Blood-and-thunder" for only 10 cents

"What's for dinner, Mom?"

When the next step is a jump....

Chautauqua, revisited....

....another 3rd grade tour

Friday, November 13, 2015

Book review: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

Book review: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Boston: Beacon Press, 2014

This is a book about the history of the United States, and the concurrent histories of the indigenous peoples who lived in North America before there was a “United States.” Surely you already know, deeply or vaguely, that these are violent histories of conflict, betrayal and subjugation.

Full disclosure: this is not an easy book. If you are an American historian or a student of American history, you should read it. Don’t expect to enjoy it. Dunbar-Ortiz frankly admits that she had “grave misgivings” about her mandate to “write accessibly so it would engage multiple audiences.” She uses the word “genocide” a half dozen times in the first few pages, and repeatedly thereafter, and this sets a tone for the entire book.

Here are selected chapter sub-headings—they’re not a representative sample, but they are illustrative:

White Supremacy and Class
Roots of Genocide
Settler-Parasites Create the Virginia Colony
Career Building Through Genocide
The Genocidal Army of the West
Greed is Good
North America is a Crime Scene

Dunbar-Ortiz concludes by endorsing a Native American historian’s observation that “…while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past.” The author argues for “honoring the treaties…restoring all sacred sites, starting with the Black Hills and including most federally held parks…[restoring] all stolen sacred items and body parts…payment of sufficient reparations for the reconstruction and expansion of Native nations.”

That is a conclusion of historic proportions that engages multiple audiences. Dunbar-Ortiz had grave misgivings before she wrote this book. I think many readers will feel the same.

Did the British really commit to winning?

"Mr. Jeppers, send a telegram to San Francisco."

The first "Indian" treaty

Brokeback Mountain

It's not in the cards

Friday, April 11, 2014

Columbus didn’t “discover” America

Yeah, I know what I learned in school, and you know what you learned….

Fact is, though, Columbus never set foot on the North American mainland—strictly speaking, he didn’t “discover” America.

He “discovered” Cuba, Haiti/Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, other islands in the Caribbean, Central American and South America during his four voyages from Europe in 1492-1504.

Strictly speaking, as far as we know, Ponce de Leon was the first European to put a footstep in the sand on a North American shore, in what we now call Florida, in 1513.

….and, strictly speaking, none of the Spanish conquistadores discovered America.

The First Peoples of the American hemisphere got there first.

There were tens of millions of Native Americans in the North, Central and South Americas at the time of the first Spanish contact and conquests. In the Viceroyalty of New Spain—including Florida, the American Southwest, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean—an estimated 25 million indigenous people had already created advanced cultures and civilizations. Perhaps there were a similar number in the South American Empire of the Incas before the advent of the Spaniards. Within 100 years, 95% of these original people of America were dead as a result of war and disease.

The Spanish adventurers did not invade an empty wilderness. They conquered and killed millions of the original inhabitants, and took their riches and their land.

Let’s call it as it was.

Source:

Bernard Bailyn, Robert Dallek, David Brion Davis, David Herbert Donald, John L. Thomas and Gordon S. Wood, The Great Republic: A History of the American People, 4^th ed. (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), vol. 1, 7-14.

Chautauqua, revisited....

....another 3rd grade tour

Gee willikers, six miles an hour!

Women who pioneered electronic music

"Blood-and-thunder" for only 10 cents

"...the peregrines..."

The umbrella thing....

Global climate change: ka-ching!

Chautauqua, revisited....

....another 3rd grade tour