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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
 Posted - January 29 2005 : 7:18:55 PM
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| I agree with you Lorenzo that it was a deplorable state of affairs for both cultures. Your information is impressive and you have done a splendid job of research. |
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whistlingboy
Lieutenant
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 29 2005 : 10:54:01 PM
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Great posts.
Mr. Bhist you are right, of course; can't even read my own scribbling...I will fire my proofreader. Good eye.
I understand what you are saying, Wild I, except I look at 'genocide' in its strictest sense. Sure, the Indians' 'way of life' was altered drastically but I don't think it was 'on the books' for all of them to be killed. Massacres were administered by both 'parties' in the Indian Wars. Heinous crimes were committed repeatedly by each warring faction but serve as 'acts of war' rather than a plan of genocide. Your figure of 95% seems high.....was that predicated on losses to the Sioux, Cheyenne and other hostile tribes or was that based on all Indians, to include the ones the government was kind of at peace with? |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 10:09:24 AM
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In evolutionary terms? What are you talking about?
And
Wild, when they got the horse and left it.
DC
You have answered your own question.The horse allowed them to radically alter their life style.
You said no beast of burder, you're wrong, the dog was a mainstay.Iment in evolutionry terms.See your answer above.
This discussion arose out of your claim that the Indian was unable to adapt.
There are two prerequisites for successful farming 1 Domesticated animals and 2 crops which lend themselves to cultivation.In both regards North America was at a hugh disadvantage when compared with Europe Further it has been proven that those tribes who did farm worked harder were less well nourished and were of a smaller stature than their normadic hunter/gatherer cousins.And it was not an either or situation as you seem to indicate.Some tribes were settled hunters while others The Apache was both a farmer and a nomad .
You in support of your contention say the Indians despised the farming tribes.Well did the cowboys not also despise the sodbusters?So in suggesting that the Indian was unable to adapt to changing conditions you are patently wrong.
The point being you inferred they were cleaner than the whites in their cities.
No.Contrasting the two lifestyles not the production of filth.Your sophisticated society was content to live in it.
The finer points of skill in the wild is only that, not economics. They had only barter and were nowhere near able to ascertain material value to whites in order to benefit themselves. They were economically ignorant, as any nomads are.
This is all so silly DC.You are critizing the Indian on his failure to adapt,to have a strategic sense,to have an economic sense.This was not due to a lack of intelligence but rather that at that moment in his "evolution"he was assailed by "civilization" with its attendent guns and germs.
Certainly the women were slaves
I don't think slavery was exclusively an Indian thing.Hmmm
All the faults you percieve in Indian sociey were reflected in White society.We are talking human nature here.
How many Indians really want to go back to that now?
That question is out of its proper time.But I have read that the vast majority of Indians on the LBH in 1876 had experience of the reservations.Does that answer your question?
I used the lint analogy to express the threat level the Indians represented to the Army and nation, which is why the Army was so small, and the soldiers assigned the frontier a ridiculous few.And I borrowed it to show how little effort was required to accomadate both societies amicably
it would take one (1) - puttering about to warn the camp about Custer,It has taken 3 posts to get you to state your case without making grossly inflated claims about the number of sightings of Custers column.Thank you.
given we signed treaties, broke them, signed new ones. You don't do that with people you're going to kill.
It was the intention of the US to destroy his way of life and if he resisted he was to be killed.Genocide DC.
Women and children were slaughtered at Culloden Moor by George III's brother,
Been there.Very moving.Stood where our lads in the French service covered the retreat of the highland clans.
But genocide yes of course it was.As much as the Brit policy of to hell or to Connacht was in the case of the Irish.
Conquest was generally achieved by genocide.Now that we have reached a state of "stability"with the rights of individuals and nations established we can now call such actions genocide. |
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whistlingboy
Lieutenant
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 10:46:23 AM
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| To answer an email, when the band was ordered back to Ft. Lincoln, so went Chief Musician and leader of the band, Felix Vinatieri, whose great-great-grandson, Adam Vinatieri kicked the game-winning field goal for the NE Patriots as time expired in the Super Bowl. He also kicked five game-winning field goals in 2001 to get them there, three of which came in overtime. I bet they are thankful Mr. Custer obeyed those explicit orders. |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 10:58:05 AM
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| Isn't life an amazing series of events. An event occurs that seems to be insignificant at the time of occurrence yet, has a direct bearing on a subsequent event that takes place over a hundred years later. Absolutely an interesting bit of historical trivia. |
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lorenzo G.
Captain
Italy
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 11:15:56 AM
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What I think is that today words have lost their original weight: someone who take in the hand a guitar is called artist, someone that appears in a movie is called actor...the same "hyper" actitude concerns the word genocyde.
From the dictionary: genocidemurder of an entire ethnic group: the systematic killing of all the people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this
The US Government was'nt making this. That it used, somewhere, ways not completely orthodoxes, that it was somewhere wrong, yes it could be, but United States never tryed to kill all the indians and this is showed from my previous post. You can say that you don't agree with American Frontier policy, but not that it was genocide, cause simply it was not.
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If it is to be my lot to fall in the service of my country and my country's rights I will have no regrets.
Custer |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 11:19:30 AM
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By paragraph,
1. They left the east because the rivals told them to and met the horse going west. Coincidence, to a large degree.
2. I'm sorry, you say North America didn't have two crops easy to cultivate? Really, what was the difference in stature between the Pawnee and the Sioux, the Iroquois (who scared the hell out of everyone because of size and strength) and the Sioux, the Wampanaugs and the Sioux? That's blarney. More to the point you keep vacillating between macro and micro to find a winning argument.
3. Wrong on both counts. They had to live in it, and in any case that's a ridiculous claim.
4. No, and when/if I claim all Americans lived a free life, as you imagine the Indians live an exquisitely free life, you can nail me for it.
5. No, because you're predicating the choice between reservation and an unchanged world for them, and that was no longer their choice.
6. Only by values not of the time and place.
7. But the number of sightings is a false issue not relevant to the original argument. You claimed the Sioux were keeping track of the Army. They were not, and the proof is they got surprised.
8. The UN disagrees, Wild. Your criteria. Destroying a way of life of the plains Indian or they would be killed is not genocide. Genocide doesn't offer that choice because genocide's interest is the death of the target regardless. The Jews lost their way of life, their possessions, and were killed anyway. That's genocide. The US is guilty of theft and murder, and as the UN says, that's different from genocide. We got the land? Fine. Live.
9. No, Wild, it was not. It was mass murder, it was slavery, it was awful, but it was not genocide. It was war at the time. It is currently politically correct to claim it as such for the selfish purpose of transposing similar interpretations of not dissimilar events to Ireland, where there was no genocide either, and this even with the English calling the Irish white apes in the 19th century. If Irish lords came over to the winning side, they were more or less accepted as were the Scots. They were no longer an enemy. That doesn't happen in the throes of genocide. Rich, lovely, cute, helpless, no matter. Into the fire with you because of your genes.
At no time was there any effort to exterminate all the Irish (although there were those who thought about it, mostly other Irish)or the Highlanders (although other Scots thought about it). If Sherman or Cumberland had set up extermination centers and shot them and buried them in unmarked graves solely for belonging to a race or nationality and with the intent of completely wiping out that targetted population, it would have been genocide. Instead, they hired them into the Army and did business with them. That ain't genocide, and doesn't reflect recent genocidal impulse. Genocide did not happen there, and was a long ways from happening.
If we had burned cattle brands into the arms of two year old Frasers and McDonalds to id them for slaughter like those in the WWII camps, we could talk about it. Don't claim loss in war and degrees of culture shock as genocide or an attempt at such. It's horribly insulting. What happened to "my" people was awful and what happened to the Indians was worse yet and what happened to kids playing on the beach in Africa when the slavers came was unimaginable. But none of those things were genocide. Those people were needed for, or in the way of, economic forces. Is all. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
Edited by - Dark Cloud on January 30 2005 11:27:28 AM |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 3:13:50 PM
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In civilized warfare (an oxymoron)armies trained and equipped with arms meet on a battlefield and commencense battle. The armies normally consist of men, not women and chilgren. When one group defeats the other, a declaration of victory (cessation of hostilities) is followed by an accord wherein both parties agree to terms.
This over simplification of war is merely a means to point out a critical factor when defining the term genocide; women and children. The indiscriminate killing of women and children, under any circumstances, brings about the end of the group. The group will cease to be if mother's are prevented from bearing children and, children are prevented from experiencing and preserving established culture. In Hitler's Germany, the Jewish people did not resist and were systematically murdered (men, women, and children) until relief came.
In the Indians wars, many Indians did not resist and they systematically murdered(men, women, and children)until their lands were taken.
To differentiate the two the events, based upon the amount of deaths that occurred, negates the inherent horror of the acts themselves. Both incidents are equally devoid of man's humanity to man and, exemplifies Man's Inhumanity to Man.
To imply that the survivors of these events who were allowed to re-join society after hostilities ended and go on living equates that genocide, therefore, never occurred is beyond the pale.
The definition of genocide does not include the completion of the act. You do not have to kill every member of the group to commit this crime, the attempt to do so, regarless of success,is genocide. |
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lorenzo G.
Captain
Italy
Status: offline |
Posted - January 30 2005 : 3:38:03 PM
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| Indeed is what the definition I quote tell. The attempt. Us Government never attempted to kill all the indians. There was a conflit. Both parties had their own faults. In no case genocide. |
If it is to be my lot to fall in the service of my country and my country's rights I will have no regrets.
Custer |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 09:53:37 AM
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I'm sorry, you say North America didn't have two crops easy to cultivate? That's blarney.Etc
The point I'm making DC is that the conditions existing in North America before the arrival of the Europeans were not conductive to the development of a settled exclusively foodproducing society.That is not to say there were no settled communities of Indians but that foodproduction was not a serious rival to hunter gathering.As I have pointed out there were no animals which could be domesticated and the crops available for cultivation could not compare with the European equivlant.[what American crops did the Europeans keep?]
You did offer us the dog as a domesticated animal .Well I'v yet to see a dog plough.And as you stated the women did the carrying.She could carry one child at a time and did not have another one until the first could walk fast enough to keep up.Resulting in a birth rate of one every 4 years.With the horse the birth rate could be doubled.
But what is coming across in your arguement is that the simple basic lifestyle of the plains Indian is evidence of a backward slow wited and slow acting incompetant.Now I might be doing you an injustice in saying that but if that is not the case then there is no disagreement here.
Your understanding of genocide is totally at odds with the UN and the internationally accepted meaning of it.
Examples of your misunderstanding.-----At no time was there any effort to exterminate all the IrishThe UN convention expressily uses the term "in whole or in part" For genocide to occur the total destruction of a group is not required.
solely for belonging to a race or nationality Under the UN convention the perpetrator's motives for wanting to destroy the group are irrelevant.Thus,when Iraq sought in 1987-1988 to purge it's Kurdish minority on the grounds that it inhabited a vital border area it was still genocide.In the case of Rwanda the government claimed that the country's Tusi minority posed a military threat it was still genocide.
Don't claim loss in war and degrees of culture shock as genocide or an attempt at such. It's horribly insulting.
It is horribly insulting and asinine to suggest that if Hitler had claimed that the extermination of the Jews was an economic necessity
we could write it off as some form of culture shock.
Those people were needed for, or in the way of, economic forces. Is all.There is only one word for that statement and it is totally inadequate SHAME.
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 12:46:13 PM
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Wild, you simply haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, period. Just blarney. Start with corn and tomatoes and tobacco, Wild. "Corn, potato, tomato, bell pepper, chili pepper, vanilla, tobacco, beans, pumpkin, cassava root, avocado, peanut, pecan , cashew, pineapple, blueberry, sunflower, petunia, black-eyed susan, dahlia, marigold, quinine, wild rice, cacao (chocolate), gourds, and squash." Potatos, Wild. Ireland.
The dog was fine for the plains Indians as a pack animal.
Start with Mexico City's (you knew Mexico is North America, right?)extensive irrigation and cultivated fields as much of South America was. Start with the written testament of the Pilgrims about the stockaded villages and extensive fields under cultivation, the huge city outside of what is now St. Louis of pre-Columbian earthen pyramids. You're totally, utterly wrong. In any case, I have never said the Indian was slow witted, nor have I said more than that his culture was incompetent to face the white onslaught, and for specific reasons: they could not unite, they could not imagine, they would not adjust until too late.
Yes, Wild, and before that there's that reference to "INTENT," of which the United States had nil.
That would be true about Hitler, Wild, but I did not suggest that.
It's shameful and true. But that doesn't assist you. The Indians were not subject to genocide. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
Edited by - Dark Cloud on January 31 2005 12:53:50 PM |
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whistlingboy
Lieutenant
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 5:50:50 PM
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Wild I, genocide, in its micro image, is no doubt inherent in all wars. Certainly there are attacks by military forces that have, imbedded in their mission objectives, goals that are genocidal by their very nature. But I am sure and agree with Dark Cloud that 'intent' has to be the strong motivating factor. Hitler's intent was to kill all Jews and resistance didn't have anything to do with it. I'm sure there were some, but most Indians who didn't resist weren't killed just because they were Indians.
This was 100 years into the New America---land of the free, home of the brave. Where it was intended for all peoples to be able to live where they wanted to and worship whoever they wanted to without government interference. It was a new republic. At least that was the principle. How could a plan of genocide be planned against a race of people in this new America? What shadow would that have cast on our idea of 'freedom?'
I have to agree with Mr. Wiggs and Mr. Lorenzo's fine posts and DC's similar ideas. Our government has made some dastardly 'calls' at times, but exterminating the Indian race was farthest from anybody's mind; bringing them 'to their knees'...well, that was another thing. |
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whistlingboy
Lieutenant
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 6:05:33 PM
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It is nearly impossible to force a dog to do much of anything once they become temperamental, isn't it? Carrying a heavy load or just a load must have taken a lot of patience on the part of the dogs' masters. Pulling things was probably how they were mostly utilized, don't you think?
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hunkpapa7
Lieutenant
United Kingdom
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 6:41:03 PM
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It is true that different tribes cultivated there lands,but when they where moved[by force by the military] to Indian territory,say Oklahoma alot of this work would cease.they then had to change direction,which didn't suit many,and the loss of life was horrendous.
To the plains tribes the Buffalo where there main diet,and all parts used for different things,and apart from a few vegetables and fuits growing wild,was there main diet.The killing of the Buffalo en masse was encouraged by the government. T stop them eating,to stop them breeding,no robes for winter,no covers for Tipis,no anything.The result the people starved,froze.they signed treaties not worth the paper they where written on,and finally as a last resort went to a reservation,where they were ripped of even further.Even White farmers couldn't survive,crops ruined every year.The horse adopted to the Indians way of life,not the other way about.the dogs where still used for small weight carrying.Of all things used against the Indian,the military where the least successful. |
wev'e caught them napping boys
Aye Right ! |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 8:34:15 PM
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| I agree sir, the word "force" is the operative word in this entire equation. To live a life forced upon you, regardless of intent, is death. |
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BJMarkland
Colonel
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 8:46:28 PM
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quote:
It is nearly impossible to force a dog to do much of anything once they become temperamental, isn't it? Carrying a heavy load or just a load must have taken a lot of patience on the part of the dogs' masters. Pulling things was probably how they were mostly utilized, don't you think?
Don't forget that tempermental dogs likely ended up as dinner for many tribes.
Billy |
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whistlingboy
Lieutenant
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 11:05:56 PM
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| That was surely the case, Mr. Markland. Good point. |
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movingrobewoman
Lt. Colonel
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - January 31 2005 : 11:20:30 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by whistlingboy
It is nearly impossible to force a dog to do much of anything once they become temperamental, isn't it? Carrying a heavy load or just a load must have taken a lot of patience on the part of the dogs' masters. Pulling things was probably how they were mostly utilized, don't you think?
My guess would be to substitute "pack mules" for "dogs ..." and we'd see the very same descriptions. But fortunately for the Seventh (and the pack train) on the LBH push, I think Custer only threatened, upon leaving the supply depot June 23rd, that they might be forced to eat some horse 'afore it was through ... not Barnum and pals ... whew!
Regards, |
movingrobe |
Edited by - movingrobewoman on January 31 2005 11:24:09 PM |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - February 01 2005 : 1:44:46 PM
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DC
I think it is an exercise in futility to continue this discussion as a point scoring debate .Neither you nor I are on more than nodding aquaintance with tha subject.The topic covers thousands of years of evolution,We haven't even set the time parameters.You post a list of nuts,flowers and fruit to prove a point and I can reply that those crops only made up 20% of diet or that anyway the alfa male of the tribe scored better with the chicks if he returned to camp with the carcase of a bull buffalo rather than a bag of nuts.All reciprocal blarney.
Yes, Wild, and before that there's that reference to "INTENT," of which the United States had nil.
That would be true about Hitler, Wild, but I did not suggest that.
It's shameful and true. But that doesn't assist you. The Indians were not subject to genocide.
First of all DC you are to be commended for now accepting that the total annilation of the group was not necessary for genocide to have occured.However your ludicrous suggestion that the US had no intention of deliberately inflicting on the Indian any of the actions described in artical 2 of he UN convention leaves us with a little more persuading to do.
It was the intention of the US to deliberately destroy the way of life of the Indian.The actions undertaken killed members of the group deliberately ,removed them from their homeland,and confined them, resulting in the destruction of practically all the functions social,cultural,economical which are the charactistics of a distinct ethnic group.These actions amount to genocide.
Your suggestion that the Indians just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and that it was really nothing personal offers a defence to every genocidal scumbag from Stalin to SH.It renders the convention meaningless.
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 01 2005 : 2:51:42 PM
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By paragraph:
No, Wild, I do not share your utter ignorance. Your quote: "The point I'm making DC is that the conditions existing in North America before the arrival of the Europeans were not conductive to the development of a settled exclusively foodproducing society.That is not to say there were no settled communities of Indians but that foodproduction was not a serious rival to hunter gathering."
First, hunting gathering is a condition pre-agriculture, and many Indians were deep into settled agriculture. They also hunted, but quite often operated from agricultural communities. You can't sorta/kinda raise corn and potato. You have to keep the animals out, fence the field. It was not only conducive to the development of "food producing" communities (as distinguished from?) but they had a lot of them. You don't know that.
2. Again, you deliberately misstate my position. I never said that "the US had no intention of deliberately inflicting on the Indian any of the actions described in artical 2 of he UN convention", and in fact state the opposite. The US engaged in mass murder and moved them around and tried to convert them. But there was no INTENT to kill them all off, the key element and the one missing, for example, in Dafur, accourding to the UN last week, where much that happend to the Indians happened and is happening to tribesmen there. And despite the efforts of those like Ward Churchill here in Boulder, the wealth and social status of modern tribes defies the contention they were subject to genocide.
Genocide is a desired goal in and of itself. The Jews weren't killed for gold fillings or clothing or property, but because they were Jews. The Indians were subject to Grand Theft, brutality, murder, and debasement so we could milk the material value of the land, but nowhere near ALL the Indians within reach were no threatened, and when all known value was then wrenched from them they have, in many instances, prospered. Sherman was named for an enemy warrior chief and Grant had a full blooded Indian on his staff, and we named states after them. You simply don't see that sort of thing when genocide is in the wind. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
Edited by - Dark Cloud on February 01 2005 2:52:50 PM |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - February 02 2005 : 05:47:29 AM
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DC
For all your self proclaimed expertise on the subject you seem unable to grasp the simple fact that without domesticated animals foodproducing would never supplant hunting.I cannot think of any settled tribes who did not have their hunting grounds and guarded them jealously.
First, hunting gathering is a condition pre-agriculture,Of course but as agriculture in the Americas lagged thousands of years behind Eurasia it is fair to say that it was never a serious rival to hunter/gathering.In fact hunting in nothern America was so good that many of the new "settlers" prefared the nomadic hunting life.
Add to this the inability to plough and a reliance on burn and slash cultivation,its isolation from outside influences and its North/S outh orientation, foodproduction had an uphill struggle to evolve and but for the arrival of the Europeans would never have totally replaced hunting.In fact with the arrival of the horse and modern weapons it would not surprise me if some tribes gave up farming and took to fulltime hunting.
Perhaps the best illustration of the disadvantages facing agriculture in the Americas is that it was the farmers of Europe who invaded America and not the other way around.
I never said that "the US had no intention of deliberately inflicting on the Indian any of the actions described in artical 2 of he UN convention", and in fact state the opposite.
What is one to make of this than---
Yes, Wild, and before that there's that reference to "INTENT," of which the United States had nil.
But there was no INTENT to kill them all off,
ALLIS NOT A REQUIREMENT FOR GENOCIDE
And despite the efforts of those like Ward Churchill here in Boulder, the wealth and social status of modern tribes defies the contention they were subject to genocide.
You are hardly suggesting that because a group survive genocide no genocide occured?Look at Israel today .And your use of the word
tribe is amusing.It is hardly more relevant than the term clan is.
Genocide is a desired goal in and of itself.
The Jews weren't killed for gold fillings or clothing or property, but because they were Jews.
Of course not silly the Germans had those things.They were killed because they were Jews.But Jew is not a name.It is a way of life,a religion,a culture,appearance.He was alien to Hitlers goal of a master race.It is interesting to note that the Jew was regarded as vermin.I believe the Whites used a similar term for the Indian "varmint".
The Indian was attacked because he was an Indian.A name is just an indication of what the man is ,and what he was stood in the way of the whiteman's ambition.The intention of the US was to inforce a policy aimed at the destruction of the Indian as a functioning group.
Nonetheless having said that having a motive for genocidal actions is no defence.You earlier offered us Armenia and Rawanda as examples of Genocide.The Armenians were percieved to be a threat while in Rawanda it was a power struggle.Both cases you accepted as genocide.The US saw the Indian [as such]as a hinderance.Same difference.A motive is not a consideration in determining genocide. |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - February 02 2005 : 09:54:26 AM
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by paragraph
1.Again, anyone who says I've claimed expertise is simply lying. I've repeatedly said I claim no expertise. Your knowledge falls in the ignorant range, and to know more than you on the subject does not elevate anyone to expert.
2. The example you quote of mine says the United States had nil intent - no intent - to kill all the Indians. What are you talking about?
3. That's not true. Intent is the key and stated as such.
4. I didn't offer Armenia and Rwanda. The UN did. You're also now creating new groupings like "functioning group" as meaningful to argue. Elements in the US saw the Indians as a hindrance. These elements' views were not held consistently or prominently by population or establisment. Of course, the UN didn't find the US guilty of genocide against the Indians, either. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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lorenzo G.
Captain
Italy
Status: offline |
Posted - February 02 2005 : 11:16:54 AM
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I would like to show you part of an article appeared on Commentary and which talks about genocide of indians. It's written by Guenter Lewy, a well known historian who teach at the University of Massachussets. I think is very interesting.
The Genocide Convention was approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948 and came into force on January 12, 1951; after a long delay, it was ratified by the United States in 1986. Since genocide is now a technical term in international criminal law, the definition established by the convention has assumed prima-facie authority, and it is with this definition that we should begin in assessing the applicability of the concept of genocide to the events we have been considering.
According to Article II of the convention, the crime of genocide consists of a series of acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such" (emphases added). Practically all legal scholars accept the centrality of this clause. During the deliberations over the convention, some argued for a clear specification of the reasons, or motives, for the destruction of a group. In the end, instead of a list of such motives, the issue was resolved by adding the words "as such"—i.e., the motive or reason for the destruction must be the ending of the group as a national, ethnic, racial, or religious entity. Evidence of such a motive, as one legal scholar put it, "will constitute an integral part of the proof of a genocidal plan, and therefore of genocidal intent."
The crucial role played by intentionality in the Genocide Convention means that under its terms the huge number of Indian deaths from epidemics cannot be considered genocide. The lethal diseases were introduced inadvertently, and the Europeans cannot be blamed for their ignorance of what medical science would discover only centuries later. Similarly, military engagements that led to the death of noncombatants, like the battle of the Wa****a, cannot be seen as genocidal acts, for the loss of innocent life was not intended and the soldiers did not aim at the destruction of the Indians as a defined group. By contrast, some of the massacres in California, where both the perpetrators and their supporters openly acknowledged a desire to destroy the Indians as an ethnic entity, might indeed be regarded under the terms of the convention as exhibiting genocidal intent.
Even as it outlaws the destruction of a group "in whole or in part," the convention does not address the question of what percentage of a group must be affected in order to qualify as genocide. As a benchmark, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has suggested "a reasonably significant number, relative to the total of the group as a whole," adding that the actual or attempted destruction should also relate to "the factual opportunity of the accused to destroy a group in a specific geographic area within the sphere of his control, and not in relation to the entire population of the group in a wider geographic sense." If this principle were adopted, an atrocity like the Sand Creek massacre, limited to one group in a specific single locality, might also be considered an act of genocide.
Of course, it is far from easy to apply a legal concept developed in the middle of the 20th century to events taking place many decades if not hundreds of years earlier. Our knowledge of many of these occurrences is incomplete. Moreover, the malefactors, long since dead, cannot be tried in a court of law, where it would be possible to establish crucial factual details and to clarify relevant legal principles.
Applying today’s standards to events of the past raises still other questions, legal and moral alike. While history has no statute of limitations, our legal system rejects the idea of retroactivity (ex post facto laws). Morally, even if we accept the idea of universal principles transcending particular cultures and periods, we must exercise caution in condemning, say, the conduct of war during America’s colonial period, which for the most part conformed to thenprevailing notions of right and wrong. To understand all is hardly to forgive all, but historical judgment, as the scholar Gordon Leff has correctly stressed, "must always be contextual: it is no more reprehensible for an age to have lacked our values than to have lacked forks."
The real task, then, is to ascertain the context of a specific situation and the options it presented. Given circumstances, and the moral standards of the day, did the people on whose conduct we are sitting in judgment have a choice to act differently? Such an approach would lead us to greater indulgence toward the Puritans of New England, who fought for their survival, than toward the miners and volunteer militias of California who often slaughtered Indian men, women, and children for no other reason than to satisfy their appetite for gold and land. The former, in addition, battled their Indian adversaries in an age that had little concern for humane standards of warfare, while the latter committed their atrocities in the face of vehement denunciation not only by self-styled humanitarians in the faraway East but by many of their fellow citizens in California.
Finally, even if some episodes can be considered genocidal—that is, tending toward genocide—they certainly do not justify condemning an entire society. Guilt is personal, and for good reason the Genocide Convention provides that only "persons" can be charged with the crime, probably even ruling out legal proceedings against governments. No less significant is that a massacre like Sand Creek was undertaken by a local volunteer militia and was not the expression of official U.S. policy. No regular U.S. Army unit was ever implicated in a similar atrocity. In the majority of actions, concludes Robert Utley, "the Army shot noncombatants incidentally and accidentally, not purposefully." As for the larger society, even if some elements in the white population, mainly in the West, at times advocated extermination, no official of the U.S. government ever seriously proposed it. Genocide was never American policy, nor was it the result of policy.
The violent collision between whites and America's native population was probably unavoidable. Between 1600 and 1850, a dramatic surge in population led to massive waves of emigration from Europe, and many of the millions who arrived in the New World gradually pushed westward into America's seemingly unlimited space. No doubt, the 19th-century idea of America’s "manifest destiny" was in part a rationalization for acquisitiveness, but the resulting dispossession of the Indians was as unstoppable as other great population movements of the past. The U.S. government could not have prevented the westward movement even if it had wanted to.
In the end, the sad fate of America's Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values. Despite the efforts of well-meaning people in both camps, there existed no good solution to this clash. The Indians were not prepared to give up the nomadic life of the hunter for the sedentary life of the farmer. The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life. The consequence was a conflict in which there were few heroes, but which was far from a simple tale of hapless victims and merciless aggressors. To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history.
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If it is to be my lot to fall in the service of my country and my country's rights I will have no regrets.
Custer |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - February 02 2005 : 12:23:43 PM
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The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life.
Lorenzo many thanks for that.Very interesting but completly undone by the above.Just who the hell were these master race nazis to grant Indian lands to anyone least of all themselves? |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - February 02 2005 : 12:28:09 PM
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| Really DC. Get some coffee into yourself .Read your last post and then have another go at it. |
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Custer's Orders
