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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (217318)	2/9/2007 8:57:45 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Amerindians who were shoved off their land Some were, some weren't. Some died of European diseases to which they had no resistance, like smallpox, tuberculosis, gonorrhea (the syphilis apparently was endemic before the Europeans came). Some sold their land and then regretted it. Some traded land for other land, but didn't keep their end of the bargain so wound up losing the benefit of the bargain. Some of the Amerindians doing the selling and the trading were acting outside their authority, and feathering their own nests at the expense of their tribal cohorts. But the Amerindians were constantly fighting each other over land themselves. Tribal land boundaries were in a constant state of flux. In my home state of Virginia, tribes which were willing to make deals with the English were considered weaklings by other tribes, who set out to exterminate them. And then the way they waged war was extremely brutal. A hostage, English or from another tribe, could expect to be scalped, flayed, have his fingers and toes cut off, his nose bitten off, splinters of fatwood shoved into his flesh, and then be set on fire. The proper way to respond while this was happening to you would be to mock your torturers, tell them they were pussies who had to squat to pee, and why were they holding back? Which would anger the torturers so much they'd knock the victim on the head with an Indian club and finish him off right then and there. The British, Dutch, French, etc., not being properly taught, had a bad tendency to scream and beg for mercy, which only added to the fun. The British who emigrated to America were tiny due to disease and malnutrition. The Indians were well fed and so tall that to the British, they looked like giants. They looked down on the immigrants, figuratively and literally, but did not have advanced technology. They could trade for guns but not repair them nor make powder, much less make their own guns. The colonists who succeeded mingled European science and technology with Amerindian agriculture, adaption to the environment, and hunting and became a new race of men, taller and stronger than their European ancestors, more technologically advanced than their Amerindian rivals. With decent food, they had the highest rate of reproduction in the world. Because American immigrants, even the lowest of the low, owned their own land, they had a completely different point of view about private property and autonomy than any other culture the world had ever seen. In contrast, in Latin America, the land belonged to the caudillos.