From: kyle@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Kyle Wohlmut)
Subject: Re: Native Americans
Followup-To: soc.culture.german
Summary: Selber
Organization: Rocking Pig Enterprises
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 23:28:51 GMT

In article <l92bppINNkfq@west.west.sun.com> markk@sagredo.West.Sun.COM
(Mark "Campy" Kampe) writes:
>ritz@brtph95.bnr.ca (Charles "Everything tastes better on a Ritz"
>Ritz P215) writes:
>>    Comparing the Nazi atrocities to the United States policies
>> towards Native Americans is specious at best for many reasons.
>
[lots and lots of gif-gaf deleted]

>> 1) There was never any 'plan' to exterminate the Indians.
>>    In fact, there are nearly 1 million Native Americans
>>    currently living, about as great a number as when white
>>    people arrived.  
>
>	There was never a 'plan' at the Federal level, although
>	there were many plans at more local levels to exterminate
>	particular tribes.
>
>>    Almost every Indian nation that existed
>>    in 1600 still exists today, albeit on reservations.  
>
>	The notion that these tribes are still surving on their
>	reservations is a bizzare ones.  They have been driven
>	to the most god-forsaken parts of the country, where
>	they exist in an economically and culturally impoverished
>	state.  Have you ever lived on a reservation?  Do you know
>	anyone who has ever lived on a reservation?
>
>>    The great majority of Indians that died died as a result of
>>    disease, battle deaths and alocholism, not from planned
>>    extermination.  
>
>	Much of the disease was deliberately caused by the "white men".
>	A particularly novel plan to exterminate one Apachee tribe
>	involved shipping them blankets that had been used by small-pox
>	victims.  It was very effective. 
>
>	It is certainly true, however, that many indian tribes fought
>	with one another as much as they did with the settlers.  We
>	fought with the Brits and latter with the French ... so I guess
>	that would be justification for slaughtering us?
>
>>    The Nazis specifically planned for the extermination of world Jewry.  
>>    There would be no 'reservations' for Jews.
>
>	There were lots of governors and generals who felt the same way
>	about the Indians.  I doubt that they were any less efficient
>	in the massacre of the indians under their jurisdictions than
>	Hitler was in the slaughter of the Jews under his.
>
[more gif-gaf deleted...]
>	
>> 3) Let's face the facts, the Indians were total barbarians
>>    living in the stone age.  Every Indian nation ever found
>>    practiced torture, slavery and, of course, wars of extermi-
>>    nation.  
>
>	Like this distinguished them from the white people,
>	who practiced torture, slavery and wars of extermination?
>	Americans held slaves at the same time that the indians
>	of the mississippi basin were being slaughtered.  Rape
>	and ritual mutilation were commonly practiced by the
>	American settlers.  Genocide has a long history, and
>	the Europeans were much better at it than the indiginous
>	amerindians.
>
[more stuff deleted]
>	And how would you compare this with the culture of the range settlers
>	in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century?  Babys weren't
>	born in a sterile hospital, but in homes - sometimes with an
>	experienced midwife present.  I would bet the mortality rates were 
>	quite comparable - maybe even a little better for the indians
>	who were used to living in their environment.
>
>> They were often killed when (and more importantly, if) they reached 
>> menopause. Of course, all of the crippled were killed as well.  
>
>	Which tribes practiced these acts?  How do you compare this with
>	our sentencing our enfeebled elders to spend their last decade
>	of life in an "old folks home" where they can spend years dieing.
>
>
>I hope you feel better now that you have caughed this vile brew up.  It
>is certainly better to vomit it out than to keep it inside of you, but
>it would now be better still to turn away from it and clean up your diet.

You guys are both spouting out a lot of unsubstantiated gobbledygook.
Neither of you have cited a single source for all these things that
'really happened' and atrocities that were 'common practice,' and so
far I haven't seen any reason to believe anything either one of you
has said.

Not that I expect you guys care overmuch...

-/-/-/-/-/
Kyle
.sig deleted due to cost overruns