Happy Native American Sport Shooting-Distributing Infected Blankets-Westward Expansion-Day Everyone!!!

mb666Don't blame us 100%.

Exactly. I too was shocked when I learned the real, full story. However, in the spirit of hisorical accuracy: estimates are that somewhere in the range of 95% of the deaths were inadvertant, and due to the indtroduction of diseases that they had no immunity to...independantly of the wars, displacement, and diseased blankets. BTW, the diseased blankets were the policy of a handful of players, and not the official policy of the government.

I DO have some sympathy for the American Indians though, and I DO acknowledge that Europeans came here as a conquering population. History is largely written by the winner/survivor, and even then, the narrative has an unexplained 'break' between the first chapters filled with helpful natives that literally saved the colonists asses...and the later chapters where the natives are the 'problem'.

To balance things out, it should be noted that hostile conquest was the dominant theme throughout much of history, in all cultures, and the Indians frequently went to war with one another; the Europeans just happened to be more advanced and better organized. I support the reservation casinos and other such measures recognizing that the Indians were subjugated (flat out Un-American), they were stripped of THEIR land (they didn't have a deed...so fucking what, it was still theirs), and their culture was destroyed (also Un-American) and the decent and fair thing to do at this point in history is to extend an olive branch with the realization that "What goes around, comes around." I feel no guilt simply because I was not around and had absolutely nothing to do with that period of history: just as I don't feel entitled to anything else I was born into and I can only work with what I have.

It's ironic that Americans [and I am an American] complain about other countries taking jobs and resources and disrupting the 'American' way of life considering that's exactly what happened to the original inhabitants of this land: karma is a motherfucker. But that's just an aside. America is the driving force of developement in the world at this point, and will be so for a very long time.

I will say this much: Thank you to the first colonists for coming to America, and a warm thanks to the American Indians who made their very survival possible. I hope this debate eventually concludes with the realization that life is hard and peope did terrible things to each other, so I'm in favor of putting the past to rest as best as possible. Let's continue to build on the vision our founding fathers had.