The entirety of the Americas was full of people before Europeans, whole and rich civilizations with cities and artwork and histories that settlers almost or in some cases completely succeeded in destroying. It’s too great a tragedy to put into words.
The intentional genocide never gets talked about so all there is is this sense that everything from before 1492 just kind of petered out. Wars were fought over this land. Horrific massacres of whole populations. Forced conversions and mass enslavement.
In 1537’s Sublimis Deus papal bull, Pope Paul III declared Indigenous Americans to be fully rational beings, which resulted in the Spanish armies reading a Spanish-language statement of Christian dogma to them and making them infidels if they did not immediately convert.
This was a real legal strategy used for conquering the Americas. Every one since has been just as flimsy. Europe never had a claim to any place here. This is stolen land.
As a kid I really paid attention in school. For a while I thought this was to my detriment as the history was false. However now I have a good recall of the propaganda for reference. All this to say: it is taught as a handful of skirmishes and encounters with indigenous populations were rare.
I recall it being said that some colonizers didn't believe in the local populations as they were so sparse. And that encounters were mistaken for ghosts or angry spirits. It's taught as if the land was home to maybe a few thousand people. Most of whom were nomadic conveniently.
Train to hell, killing buffalo everywhere, even from moving trains. From Dead Man movie, only about a little over 4 minutes, shooting starts at the end of video (watch it all) m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtUB...
Reading 1491 got me into this and since then the more I've read the more horrified I've been. Makes me wish I had a time machine and smallpox vax. Every description from a European of first encountering someone here talks about how everyone was healthy and tall and the euros were plague ridden POS.
What struck me recently is how in South and Central America, the indigenous population is much more visible than it is in North America. Does this imply a more genocidal approach by the British vs the Spanish?
most north american indigenous genocide was enacted by america and canada. european colonizers, while genocidal, viewed the peoples here more as direct resources
indigenous people under spanish rule were not allowed to learn spanish, hence the greater use of original languages
An interesting aspect about this is how our school curriculum (back when I went) was sure to mention how brutal the Spanish were, but didn't mention things like Halifax putting a bounty on Micmac heads.
