Book: American Holocaust by David E Stannard

[Pathless]

This is a book that I picked up a half-year ago and knew that I wanted to read, although I also knew that I didn't want to read it, because I knew it would make me feel mad and blue, and so for a long time I just let it sit on a shelf with a bunch of other books that I am planning on reading someday. Then, for some reason, last week or the week before I decided that I would go ahead and read it. A few excerpts are available online:

American Holocaust - David Stannard

David Stannard is a scholar and researcher who has published several other books on similar topics. This particular one drives home the point that we will never know the extent of culture, human relationships, and diversity that was lost to disease and genocidal violence during the colonization of South and North America by the Spanish and English. Yet there are indications that something like 100,000,000 people died of pestilence and inhumane violence. The diseases that killed the native occupants of the lands that are now occupied by countries like the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, and all the other Latin American countries were things like influenza, syphilis, typhus, and of course smallpox, to name a few. The violence visited on these people and documented by witnesses contemporary to the time include things like smashing babies against rocks; cutting off the hands, noses, and ears of natives; burning people alive; feeding living people to violent dogs of war, who literally ate them alive; and of course, rape.

I bring this to the attention of those who might peruse this post in order to provide some context for the times and lands in which we live, as well as to bring some awareness to the problems inherent in our own histories, even as western Europe and America and Canada (to a lesser extent, I suppose) go about trying to spread civilization to other populations through violence.

Thank you for your attention.

 

[wil]

Namaste Pathless,

Just reading the title and first lines of your post makes me nod in agreement, makes my stomach turn, my eyes moisten and my heart sink admitting yes...this is also a book I don't want to read.

The disservice (yeah, talk about an understatement) we've done and are doing to our native population is disgusting.

I've been on, off and around many a reservation. To see such poverty, alcoholism, life's wasting is awful. But also seeing that some folks choose otherwise to either become productive members of our (white) society or make a living off of tourists expendable dollars, or revert to living off the land in their ways is wonderful...but those lost in the middle I feel deep shame for being part of it.

We owe to these people (and the blacks) to make it right. Not with reparations which will be wasted and continue the problem, but with education, free education, and micro loans to allow them to cut the welfare umbilicle cord. Thirty forty years of this and maybe we could have a generation that grows up not seeing an impovershed beaten people...

 

[iBrian]

So far as I understand it, the disease element was - to a large extent - entirely unintentional, yet the biggest killer of all in the conquest of the new lands. However, I am under the impression that the US government did provide blankets laced with one or more diseases to the American Indians when moving them to the reservations.

As for the violence visited on the people of the new world directly - unfortunately, European history is extremely violent and bloody.

Essentially, what you describe sounds like the very familiar mantra throughout human history, that the rich and powerful will exert their bloody authority over the poorer masses.

European history of the time, perhaps because of the well preserved written historical record, is a testament to this entirely. The horrors you describe were sometimes even visited upon own peoples, let alone foreign ones.

That's one reason why when people complain about the state of the world nowadays, I just look at the historical perspective, and see how remarkably peaceful we've become, and condemning of violence in general.

 

[wil]

As for the violence visited on the people of the new world directly - unfortunately, European history is extremely violent and bloody.

Not really. Yeah maybe they came from Europe...but it is our ancestors ie the Americans the ones that stayed, not your ancestors, the ones that didn't come here...that are largely at fault.

And yes, that is the tradition, but we are a prosperous nation, and leaving a people at a subsistence level for over a hundred years is unfathomable.

I read another issue that befell them, our native peoples. Almost every continent, every people had a form of alcohol...we introduced it to them, they have not developed the tolerance say the Irish or Scotch have over thousands of years...three-four hundred years is all the time their constitution has had to adapt to this product...and it attributed the high rate of alcoholism to that. (despite the fact that poverty and addiction to available substances go hand in hand)

 

[Janz]

With this topic in mind, is anyone else watching the American Experience on PBS: "We Shall Remain"? see:
About the Project | We Shall Remain | American Experience | PBS

Last night was episode #2: Tecumseh's Vision (Shawnee Chief and Warrior) and I wept through most of it. Twice his British Allies betrayed him, and if they had kept their word, he may have succeeded in creating an Indian nation that would have existed alongside and separate from the United States.

Not to cast stones, but Australia, my second favorite country, also has their horrifying history of attempted genocide of the indigenous peoples. See "The Stolen Generation."

Australia - Australian Aboriginal Children - The Stolen Generation

 

[Pathless]

With this topic in mind, is anyone else watching the American Experience on PBS: "We Shall Remain"? see:
About the Project | We Shall Remain | American Experience | PBS

Last night was episode #2: Tecumseh's Vision (Shawnee Chief and Warrior) and I wept through most of it. Twice his British Allies betrayed him, and if they had kept their word, he may have succeeded in creating an Indian nation that would have existed alongside and separate from the United States.

Thanks for reminding me of this, Jamarz. I had seen an ad for it in my local library--and now an ad is at the top of this page--but then it had slipped my mind. I may tune in tonight, as PBS is about the only channel that I get.

 

[Pathless]

As far as the diseases being unintentional, that's not really the point, and I think that old argument is kinda disingenuous and callous, considering the magnitude of what was lost. I'm not interested in apologetics for the horrors of history. What's particular tragic about the topic addressed by the book is that the natives were time and again so welcoming and generous towards the explorers and settlers. Beyond that, there are the accounts that describe how the practice of war among the original Americans was, largely, akin to sport, with few casualties. Many of the coastal natives that Columbus came across were so unfamiliar with the swords that the sailors were armed with that, when allowed to hold them, they cut themselves out of ignorance of the blades' sharpness.

European history has been bloody and brutal, yes. There is at least a chance that the history of the original inhabitants of Turtle Island was much less so; however, regardless of whether they were "savages" or edenic beings--and the truth is of course probably somewhere in between--the vile and violent extirpation of the thousands of cultures that made up the native Americas is a tragedy that remains largely ignored and unaddressed to this day. When we do address it, we often approach it with apologetics for the horrors of that particular era of our history that we do not employ when addressing, for example, the Holocaust of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

 

[Bandit]

There is not a single place this has not been brought up. It is in every forum on this site with anger and makes me wonder how close we are to another big holocaust.

 

[iBrian]

Not really. Yeah maybe they came from Europe...but it is our ancestors ie the Americans the ones that stayed, not your ancestors, the ones that didn't come here...that are largely at fault.

As far as the diseases being unintentional, that's not really the point, and I think that old argument is kinda disingenuous and callous, considering the magnitude of what was lost.

Curious - I'm not trying to be apologetic at all - there seems to be a suggestion that the violence that befell the American continents was somehow unusual - I'm simply pointing out that it's not, in context with European history.

Here in the UK our history is one of invasion after invasion, from Neolithic times, through to the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Saxons, Normans, etc. These were not peaceful by any means - it's been suggested that the Saxon invasion was so brutal that almost every single male genetic line proceeding them was completely wiped out.

Agreeing there was a tragedy on a huge scale, not least because of the impact of disease, is one thing - but the violence inflicted I would suggest follows a pattern Europeans have been inflicting on themselves for thousands of years.

That's simply my point.

 

[nativeastral]

The problem is,then as now, land grabbing and exploitation of resources by capitalist markets hungry for more goods to keep that market going. l pasted a photo of cattle corralled into tiny areas of deforested rain forests [in a greenpeace campaign newsletter sent last week so happenning NOW] in the race/ethnicity thread.

The problem may get worse with this recession rather than better. But are people who may feel compassion and anger at small indigenous tribes losing their homeland and culture willing to sacrifice THEIR lifestyle? to find out where the beef that McDonalds and Burger King comes from? To cut down on their consumerism, to stop buying Gap clothes which exploits other less well developed countries, to put their money where their mouth is and support ecological/fair trade enterprises and basically stop buy,buy,buying?

Have we learnt from history?

 

[greymare]

Ok you bring Australia and the stolen generation into this?
Yes it was a tradgedy that families were broken up, and the resulting Lost cultures that had endured for eaons previous to the white fella coming...

However, the majority of "white people" here in Australia (at the time) were offering their homes and families to these children because they were told and they thought that they were doing them a favour. ( that it was the christian thing to do). Misguided at the very least i accept. Most of the people that opened their homes and hearts were of the very best intentions. The state, (the government) was at fault here not generally the individuals. (of course there are those unsavoury elements that take advantage of these situations..) But dont forget the "other" stolen generations, the thousands of chidren (black white and brindle) that were given up for adoption because their unwed mothers were told that they HAD to, by the government, these women were unwed, of all different ethnic backgrounds, all faiths, or none, .. their children were stolen from them too. Unfortunately these women werent informed until approximately 25-30 years after them relinquishing their child/children that they infact had 30 days after the birth of their child to change their minds.
No one told them that.
I dont want to change the subject of this thread, i only want to add to it.
Also, we cant go back. We cannot change history, all we can do is realize the mistakes of the past and learn from them.
Whatever happened in the past is done. We cant blame previous generations for todays mistakes. If there is a problem today find a way to fix it. Dont go blaming our parents/grandparents/ ancestors....
Thats my two cents

 

[wil]

Also, we cant go back. We cannot change history, all we can do is realize the mistakes of the past and learn from them.
Whatever happened in the past is done. We cant blame previous generations for todays mistakes. If there is a problem today find a way to fix it. Dont go blaming our parents/grandparents/ ancestors....
Thats my two cents

You are correct it doesn't benefit to blame, but to change our ways and not only not continue but work at changing the situation.

The stolen children was amazing. Last Gov't effort was in the 1970's as I understand it. And you are correct as I know it. They told the parents that the children had died, and told the adoptive parents that the parents of the child had died. Horrific.

So the key is in all of this is how to best rectify the situation...and not what is 'white' man's solution, but what is the long range solution for the people infringed upon.

 

[Pathless]

Curious - I'm not trying to be apologetic at all - there seems to be a suggestion that the violence that befell the American continents was somehow unusual - I'm simply pointing out that it's not, in context with European history.

Yet the extirpation of thousands of cultures spread over two continents is certainly a unique and unusual occurrence in world history, and exceptional even in the context of the violence of European history. Furthermore, to attribute the genocide of the Americas to the annals of "European history" is to trivialize and marginalize the amount of human history and culture that once existed on the two continents of South and North America, and which has now been largely lost from the world.

 

[Janz]

I agree with Wil here. We can't change history and blaming previous generations is also fruitless. But we need to understand the reality of what choices our ancestors made instead of studying a biased history written by those in power who justified their actions under "divine rights of kings" or "manifest destiny" doctrines.

I don't think that any of us (meaning white people) really knew what was happening until many Native American Indians raised their voices so as to open our ears and our eyes to the true situation. I think of Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement see:

American Indian Movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What history teaches us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. We must learn from these choices so we will not repeat them. I know I sound idealistic but the wrongs that our ancestors inflicted upon the native peoples of all of the Americas and Australia needs to be acknowledged and rectified. I mean we are talking about recent history here.

From the book,
Ojibwa Warrior, by Dennis Banks

In 1943, while his white peers were warily approaching the local schools reassured by doting parents, Dennis Banks and his brothers and sister were seized by government employees, abducted from their homes, and placed in boarding schools a hundred miles from home with others "just like them": which is to say Navajos, Modocs, and Pawnees as different from them as the French from Arabs but alike in their common sense of rape and abuse. Their heads were shaved, their clothes replaced with uniforms, and they were segregated male and female, denied even their own siblings. And they were taught, with beatings, insults, and solitary confinement, to be white. Charles A. Eastman, writing a hundred years earlier, would describe his time at the same school as "like I was dead." For a taste of the system, read Away from Home, an anthology of memories of boarding school experience, Shaping Survival, four essays by American Indian women who weathered the boarding school system and went on to become teachers themselves. For a general history, read David Adams' Education for Extinction; for a sense of how universal the experience was, thumb through any American Indian autobiography published in the first half of the 20th Century.

To "be white" is to wear "civilized" clothes. It is, as Senator Henry Dawes (sponsor of a notorious attempt to "fix" the Indians) put it, "to cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey, and own property." It is, he added, "to learn selfishness." (And the Dawes Act, his cynical colleague Henry Teller observed approvingly, would get the Indians off that good Indian land.)

To be white is to speak English. This, the national language, was defended, its use enforced, with ridicule and torture. Forbidden his native language, cut off from his traditional grandparents who spoke it, Banks lost his ability to speak Anishinabe for more than a decade. He spent his school career running away. When not running or in solitary confinement, he learned a few manual skills, and as soon as he could, he enlisted in the Air Force. A tour in Japan during the Occupation helped him grasp that his "difference" was not unique, that there were whole worlds of cultured and civilized people who were not pink, loud, florid, and avaricious. He married a Japanese woman. When his tour was up, he was refused permission to bring his wife home with him. He went AWOL to live with her. After fugitive times, he returned to the U.S., a felon for loving an Asian, without her. She disappeared into the chaos of the transition from old to new Japan.
Banks conceived AIM while in prison for stealing groceries. Modeled explicitly on the radical Black Panthers, the organization he founded with Vernon Bellecourt and George Mitchell was to be a neighborhood watch program to protect American Indian citizens of Minneapolis from racist police activity. From this seed would grow one of the most successful pan-Indian movements of the century.

For more see: Some Indians: Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and AIM

 

[Janz]

I think that this is amazing and I don't even know if the United States has even come close to issuing a similar document:

Full text of apology to indigenous Australians
on the occasion of the first sitting of Parliament, Canberra, A.C.T. ​

February 12, 2008 - 4:40PM
​

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

 

[iBrian]

Yet the extirpation of thousands of cultures spread over two continents is certainly a unique and unusual occurrence in world history, and exceptional even in the context of the violence of European history. Furthermore, to attribute the genocide of the Americas to the annals of "European history" is to trivialize and marginalize the amount of human history and culture that once existed on the two continents of South and North America, and which has now been largely lost from the world.

Certainly the scale is unique, but isn't this primarily caused by disease - an accidental factor of the "conquest"? Unfortunately, it does happen when isolated cultures come into contact, and also when isolated diseases manage to move into wider populations (ie, Bubonic Plague in the Middle Ages of European history, which wiped out a third of the European population at least).

You mention destruction of cultures, but we've seen that, too, across Europe and the Mediterranean. We've had empires and peoples turn vast swathes of cultural diversity into monoculture, and then religious revolutions bleach out as much as they could of that remained.

I'm not trying to play down the events of the conquest of the Americas, as much as raise the context by comparison to Europe at least, where the impact of violence and disease has been raged on the common population for millennia.

I'm sure I'd be shocked and appalled if I read the book and the events it describes - unfortunately, it's a reaction all too familiar when reading human history.

 

[greymare]

LOL, Where there is people there is violence.
Old blackfella law is that if two tribes go to war, the dominating tribe takes over lands, watering holes, and peoples.
The losing tribe is gone.

Nothing has changed, just the weaponry

 

[Pathless]

Certainly the scale is unique, but isn't this primarily caused by disease - an accidental factor of the "conquest"? Unfortunately, it does happen when isolated cultures come into contact, and also when isolated diseases manage to move into wider populations (ie, Bubonic Plague in the Middle Ages of European history, which wiped out a third of the European population at least).

You mention destruction of cultures, but we've seen that, too, across Europe and the Mediterranean. We've had empires and peoples turn vast swathes of cultural diversity into monoculture, and then religious revolutions bleach out as much as they could of that remained.

I'm not trying to play down the events of the conquest of the Americas, as much as raise the context by comparison to Europe at least, where the impact of violence and disease has been raged on the common population for millennia.

I'm sure I'd be shocked and appalled if I read the book and the events it describes - unfortunately, it's a reaction all too familiar when reading human history.

I've read a bit of history, too, and I am aware of the context that you are placing the discussion in. Stannard actually addresses the same context that you bring up here in the book. You may have noted that I also mentioned context in my OP, although my intention in contextualizing the topic is, I think, different than yours.

I bring this to the attention of those who might peruse this post in order to provide some context for the times and lands in which we live, as well as to bring some awareness to the problems inherent in our own histories, even as western Europe and America and Canada (to a lesser extent, I suppose) go about trying to spread civilization to other populations through violence.

What I mean by that is that when we normalize our official histories, when we--consciously or unconsciously--continue to use them as the gold standard by which all human societies are judged, we are operating in an ethnocentric way. To me, such an approach lacks imagination. Sure, we can normalize violence and brutality by contextualizing the actions of the past or the present, but the question that occurs to me is: why would anyone want to do that? Why are people willing, even eager sometimes, to normalize warfare and other violence? To justify the same?

I can't understand it. I cannot and do not understand why so many are willing to chalk up human nature to this brutish competition and these hostile tactics of one-upmanship. There are many contexts that we can place our histories in, and the reason that I started this thread was to offer up a book that I think powerfully illustrates how history, as we've been taught it and as we even continue to tell it to ourselves, is not a complete story, but only one limited version of the great human drama. I am trying to point out that our particular version of civilization may not be the golden child that we often make it out to be; indeed, it may not even be the "fittest" civilization. I don't think it takes a particularly fertile imagination to envision a more harmonious, respectful, peaceful, and egalitarian culture than the one that currently dominates the globe, but I could be wrong about that. At any rate, I do envision it, and because I do, I try to communicate alternatives to people. Books like American Holocaust are important, I think, because they allow us to recontextualize history and to expand upon it. If we are ever going to have anything approaching a just and joyful society, we're going to need to begin to think about doing things differently than we have for the course of our official history.

 

[iBrian]

What I mean by that is that when we normalize our official histories, when we--consciously or unconsciously--continue to use them as the gold standard by which all human societies are judged, we are operating in an ethnocentric way. To me, such an approach lacks imagination. Sure, we can normalize violence and brutality by contextualizing the actions of the past or the present, but the question that occurs to me is: why would anyone want to do that? Why are people willing, even eager sometimes, to normalize warfare and other violence? To justify the same?

I quite agree - it's interesting that in historical studies, there is a general rule not to just past societies by modern standards. And yet in more recent histories, few cover topics such as the rise of Adolf Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot, without making some form of judgement call.

I can't understand it. I cannot and do not understand why so many are willing to chalk up human nature to this brutish competition and these hostile tactics of one-upmanship. There are many contexts that we can place our histories in, and the reason that I started this thread was to offer up a book that I think powerfully illustrates how history, as we've been taught it and as we even continue to tell it to ourselves, is not a complete story, but only one limited version of the great human drama. I am trying to point out that our particular version of civilization may not be the golden child that we often make it out to be; indeed, it may not even be the "fittest" civilization. I don't think it takes a particularly fertile imagination to envision a more harmonious, respectful, peaceful, and egalitarian culture than the one that currently dominates the globe, but I could be wrong about that. At any rate, I do envision it, and because I do, I try to communicate alternatives to people. Books like American Holocaust are important, I think, because they allow us to recontextualize history and to expand upon it. If we are ever going to have anything approaching a just and joyful society, we're going to need to begin to think about doing things differently than we have for the course of our official history.

Absolutely - I remain hopeful that humanity more recently has been writing a new chapter in intolerance of war and violence.

 

[Pathless]

I'm still reading this book, and have just finished the epilogue, although two appendixes remain. In regard to the alcohol issue that Wil brought up before:

I read another issue that befell them, our native peoples. Almost every continent, every people had a form of alcohol...we introduced it to them, they have not developed the tolerance say the Irish or Scotch have over thousands of years...three-four hundred years is all the time their constitution has had to adapt to this product...and it attributed the high rate of alcoholism to that. (despite the fact that poverty and addiction to available substances go hand in hand)

Stannard makes the following point on page 257 of the book:

Indeed, so desperate and demoralizing are life conditions on most reservations that the suicide rate for young Indian males and females aged 15 to 24 years is around 200 percent above the overall national rate for the same age group, while the rate for alcohol-caused mortality--itself a form of suicide--is more than 900 percent higher than the national figure among 15 to 24 year-old Indian males and nearly 1300 percent higher than the comparable national figure among 15 to 24 year-old Indian females.

And then there is an end-note related to the above passage:

It must be noted that even these shocking suicide and health statistics greatly understate the desperate reality of life on many Indian reservations, for there are direct correlations between such so-called quality of life indices and the degree of cultural integrity individual Indian peoples have been able to maintain. Thus, for example, among the different Pueblo peoples of New Mexico, those who have suffered the most erosion of traditional values through forced acculturation into American life have two to three (and in one case almost forty) times the overall suicide rate of those who have been able to hold on to more of their customary lifeways.

This note indicates that integration of these native peoples into mainstream American life is not something that is particularly helpful or healthy for them, and that they are able to live better when their cultures have been partially preserved or somehow revitalized or re-envisioned.