PeakOil is You
THE Native Americans Thread (merged)
Re: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from
by Chesire » Sat 22 Dec 2007, 14:04:05
They can always pack the fuck up and move back to their ancestral homelands . In Kamchatka
-
Chesire - Lignite
- Posts: 245
- Joined: Fri 13 Jul 2007, 03:00:00
Re: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from
by PenultimateManStanding » Sat 22 Dec 2007, 14:15:42
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chesire', 'T')hey can always pack the fuck up and move back to their ancestral homelands . In Kamchatka
This is pretty rich. We all come from the African Bushmen who emigrated 55,000 years ago. They spreaded out and populated the world. It's well established. And those cats are still there. Amazing.Turn those Machines back On! - Don Ameche in Trading Places
-
PenultimateManStanding - Expert
- Posts: 11363
- Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
- Location: Neither Here Nor There
Re: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from
by Loki » Sat 22 Dec 2007, 14:50:58
On missionaries and Indians: I know nothing about missionaries in Canada or among the Lakota, but I do know a fair bit about the missionaries that operated here in the Pac NW. Read a lot of their writings, in some cases the original texts in their own handwriting. Not surprisingly, their motives were quite mixed. There was some of the idealism that Denny ascribes to them. A desire to "convert the heathens" and to save their souls from darkness was certainly one of the motivating factors.
But that seemed to quickly dissipate when they came to the Oregon Country and actually experienced life on the frontier. The vast majority of Indians had no interest whatsoever in what the missionaries were peddling. I read the diary of a Methodist missionary who spent 2 or 3 years on the Oregon coast in the early 1840s and didn't convert a single Indian. He spent most of his time trying to feed his own family and dealing with his and his wife's constant ill health, which they suffered in near total isolation. Plus he couldn't learn their notoriously difficult language, so his ability to communicate with the Indians was severely constrained.
The Indians generally didn't give a damn about religion, they wanted what we'd call today "economic development." When they realized that the missionaries could barely feed themselves, the Indians lost interest in them. Since most Indians were completely disinterested in Christianity, many of the missionaries focused their attention on white settlers, a lot of whom were only nominal Christians. Or they just gave up and moved back to the east coast.
Most of the missionaries here in the Oregon Country c.1830s-50s explicitly stated that they were paving the way for civilization, which was what their god wanted. The destruction of Indian populations through disease was part of their god's plan. Whites were generally horrified by these epidemics (which killed off 75-90% of the Indians in this region), but they saw this die-off as a necessary evil that would pave the way for a new people to come and civilize the wilderness. This was what their god wanted.
While most of the missionaries may have come to the frontier to "save heathen souls," they also wanted to facilitate white settlement, i.e., to take Indian land and resources for their own people. They didn't see these an incompatible goals. Convert the Indians before they go extinct, then use their land to build a glorious Christian civilization.
But that seemed to quickly dissipate when they came to the Oregon Country and actually experienced life on the frontier. The vast majority of Indians had no interest whatsoever in what the missionaries were peddling. I read the diary of a Methodist missionary who spent 2 or 3 years on the Oregon coast in the early 1840s and didn't convert a single Indian. He spent most of his time trying to feed his own family and dealing with his and his wife's constant ill health, which they suffered in near total isolation. Plus he couldn't learn their notoriously difficult language, so his ability to communicate with the Indians was severely constrained.
The Indians generally didn't give a damn about religion, they wanted what we'd call today "economic development." When they realized that the missionaries could barely feed themselves, the Indians lost interest in them. Since most Indians were completely disinterested in Christianity, many of the missionaries focused their attention on white settlers, a lot of whom were only nominal Christians. Or they just gave up and moved back to the east coast.
Most of the missionaries here in the Oregon Country c.1830s-50s explicitly stated that they were paving the way for civilization, which was what their god wanted. The destruction of Indian populations through disease was part of their god's plan. Whites were generally horrified by these epidemics (which killed off 75-90% of the Indians in this region), but they saw this die-off as a necessary evil that would pave the way for a new people to come and civilize the wilderness. This was what their god wanted.
While most of the missionaries may have come to the frontier to "save heathen souls," they also wanted to facilitate white settlement, i.e., to take Indian land and resources for their own people. They didn't see these an incompatible goals. Convert the Indians before they go extinct, then use their land to build a glorious Christian civilization.
-
Loki - Expert
- Posts: 3509
- Joined: Sat 08 Apr 2006, 03:00:00
- Location: Oregon
Re: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from
by Denny » Sat 22 Dec 2007, 15:07:21
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SpringCreekFarm', '
')The comments about the clergy having the natives best interest in mind when they come over here is possible, but to a larger extent the underlying motivation was to assimilate and therefore control the native population. It's sort of like gathering more flies with sugar than with salt. It was paternalistic and the truth is, the natives were doing just fine beforehand, thank you very much.
')The comments about the clergy having the natives best interest in mind when they come over here is possible, but to a larger extent the underlying motivation was to assimilate and therefore control the native population. It's sort of like gathering more flies with sugar than with salt. It was paternalistic and the truth is, the natives were doing just fine beforehand, thank you very much.
Well, is that your idea or that historic fact? The reality is that various tribes practiced what we call terrorism today against other tribes and the residents of New France and New England. This form the writings of Father Isaac Jogues who would die in the course of his mission work, from The Catholic Home Study Service:
"...the following excerpt from one of his few letters to his superiors reveals his wholesome regard for mankind in general, and souls in particular. During his imprisonment while the Dutch tried to ransom him, he wrote: "Let not regard for us prevent you from doing that which is to the glory of God. The design of the Iroquois as far as I can see, is to take, if they can, all the Hurons; and having put to death the most considerable ones and a good part of the others, to make one nation of these poor people, several of whom are Christians, the others Catechumens and ready for baptism; when shall a remedy be applied to these misfortunes? I become more and more resolved to dwell here as long as it shall please Our Lord, and not to go away even though an opportunity should present itself. My presence consoles the French, the Hurons and the Algonquins. I have baptized more than sixty persons, several of whom have arrived in Heaven. That is my single consolation, . . . "
HIS PRIORITIES
His total concern is for all those within reach of his love and compassion: the governor, whom he asks not to extend himself, for the two young Frenchmen who accompanied him, for the souls of his catechumens; none whatsoever for himself. He was noted for his long hours of quiet prayer on his journeys and for saying the rosary with his companions. This prayer life must have given him the vision to, as we say, "put his priorities in the right place!" He understood by the grace of the Holy Spirit, that each and every soul is of incalculable value before God. God's grace had taken care of his soul; it was now his duty to take care of the souls of others!"
And, when you write "the natives were doing very fine beforehand", do you mean in this world or the next?
-
Denny - Heavy Crude
- Posts: 1738
- Joined: Sat 10 Jul 2004, 03:00:00
- Location: Canada
Re: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from
by PenultimateManStanding » Sat 22 Dec 2007, 16:26:07
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', ' ')Convert the Indians before they go extinct, then use their land to build a glorious Christian civilization.
I'm pretty much a humorist, but this is serious stuff. Indians. What are they up to now? The past is the past, but how about the present?Turn those Machines back On! - Don Ameche in Trading Places
-
PenultimateManStanding - Expert
- Posts: 11363
- Joined: Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:00:00
- Location: Neither Here Nor There
Re: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from
by Loki » Sat 22 Dec 2007, 18:36:13
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', ' ')Convert the Indians before they go extinct, then use their land to build a glorious Christian civilization.
I'm pretty much a humorist, but this is serious stuff. Indians. What are they up to now? The past is the past, but how about the present?Here in my neck of the woods, there are fewer Indians than there were 200 years ago. But they certainly didn't go extinct, though many in the 19th century thought that they would. This was not an entirely unreasonable conclusion. Here in Oregon there are accounts of entire villages dying of disease, their bodies left to rot on the beach, where they had crawled to die. This was in the 1830s---one of these decimated villages was just a few miles from my current location, and just downstream of the largest fur trading post in the region at that time. As horrifying as it must have been, it's easy to understand why whites would have seen this as Providence.
As for their current status, many Indian nations are not doing well at all. Some reservations are literally Third World countries---mass unemployment, mass crime, mass hopelessness. Some are doing OK. A small handful are doing spectacularly well. There has been a cultural renaissance of a sort among Native America, which is definitely a positive development. Fedgov policy has also definitely gotten better, though certainly not perfect, especially when it comes to managing Indian assets.
Here in the Pac NW some tribes that have been re-recognized by the fedgov, which is a positive development. But exercising their fishing, gathering, and hunting rights has become a lot more difficult over the decades due to habitat degradation, overfishing, etc. And some reservations were either eliminated entirely by the fedgov, or the were chopped into little pieces, making them much harder to manage. And of course, social indicators are much bleaker for American Indians than they are for white Americans.
-
Loki - Expert
- Posts: 3509
- Joined: Sat 08 Apr 2006, 03:00:00
- Location: Oregon
