Chuck,
The tragedy of the American Indian was/is that it was a classic case of economics and technology, not to mention culture. The Indians represented late stone age, early bronze age cultures occupying a vast territory with inefficient methods (hunting, gathering, modest agriculture)--there was no way that their inefficient land use concepts (forest burning, buffalo stampeding, etc.) was going to triumph over the age of horsepower, domesticated animals, gunpowder, and the nascent industrial age. The question was not could they remain and thrive, but merely how long before they would be supplanted, and by whom. Their culture, their attitudes and their technology was so inflexible that the die was cast a thousand years before the white man landed in Vineland. In short, it sounds cruel, but we simply had a better use for the land, and we came and (brutally, I will admit) put the laws of economics to work.
The second act of their tragedy is their apparent inability to alter their culture and mindset enough to partake in 20th and 21st century American economic opportunity. Think about it, genetically speaking, your Korean greengrocer, your Japanese pediatrician, your Chinese entrepreneur (assuming North China with a fair amount of Manchurian DNA) is no different than your Navajo or Arapaho reservation resident. Why do the former drive Mercedes and Lexuses and send their kids to Ivy League schools, and the natives of this land are relegated to reservations and reaping the economic benefits of that great native American tradition, casino gambling?
Kb |
