From: decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (dean.kaflowitz)
Subject: Re: Kathi, please be careful
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 12:21:04 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.020335.28843@cs.dal.ca> franklin@ug.cs.dal.ca (Steve Franklin) writes:
> In <1992Apr13.201437.2232@cco.caltech.edu> anne@cco.caltech.edu (Anneliese Lilje) writes:
> 
> >In article <1992Apr12.203855.28178@cs.dal.ca> franklin@ug.cs.dal.ca (Steve Franklin) writes:
> >>In <1992Apr12.190500.918@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> kcochran@isis.cs.du.edu (Keith A. Cochran) writes:
> >>>In article <1992Apr12.165452.17782@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> mal11@po.CWRU.Edu (Matthew A. Lewis) writes:
> >>>>In a previous article, gordons@coopsol.com (Gordon Storga) says:
> 
> 
> >And don't forget that their status on this earth was lower than cattle BECAUSE
> >19th century Christians believed they were "unGodly". 
>    Hmmm. i don't seem to remember that. I remember the thousands
> and thousands of priests who were killed because the Indians were frightened

You remember?  Sounds like you were there.

Now, document this claim of "thousands and thousands."  I know
of no text that supports such a claim.  Furthermore, you seem,
from your statements, to be extremely ignorant of the Spanish
conquest of Native Americans.

Are you aware that the made-famous-by-Hollywood practice of
scalping was brought to North America by the Spanish?  Are
you denying that it was a practice of the early conquerors
of North America and its native population to eradicate native
culture and convert by force the native population?

Frankly, considering the circumstances of the arival of
Europeans on North America and their behavior, considering
the native population was considered by Europeans to be made up
of godless savages and the continent itself viewed as a resource
to be raped of its riches, I consider the slaying of the
conquerors by Native Americans to have been justified.

You said in a separate posting, Steve, that you are 19 and
made some strange boasts about your experience.  You are,
in fact, very young and very inexperienced.  I base this
statement on the narrowness of your view and the limits
of your understanding demonstrated in postings such as the
I am following up.  Your viewpoint is one which relies solely
on that which supports your worldview, rather than on the
breadth of information that goes into a balanced awareness
of events that would help you to approach completeness in
your understanding.

> of them and didn't understand what they were trying to bring. The Indians
> saw the priests as white men who had already terrorized them. However,
> the priests continued to come to share the message. That is all we want.
> For everyone to have the message, and then they can accept or deny
> the God we reveal to them through the bible.

The priests generally behaved as agents of those who would rape
and destroy the native culture.  They were not, generally, agents
of the Light of the World, or somesuch.  Really, Steve, the
horrible levels of corruption, ignorance, hatred, and brutality
that accompanied the coming of European culture to North
America seem to have escaped you.  The native cultures were not
perfect, but they were no more imperfect than the culture that
conquered them, and did not deserve, in a moral sense, to
be extinguished.  Conversion by force rather than reason is
not my idea of a moral religion's righteous path.


Steve, have you ever heard of Leonard Peltier?  The rape
of Native American culture continues to this day, as well
as the oppression and suppresion of the descendants of
the original settlers of North America.

Ah, if only Red Cloud were here today.

Dean Kaflowitz

From where the sun now stands, I willnot make war anymore.