Greatest Indian Killer !

Great Debates
1

This is the thread to put in your bid for your favorite Indian Killer in US history.

The competition will be hopefully limited to kills within the present borders of the United States of America. While submisions of killers whose exploits occured outside the US are OK (providing the details are horrific enough), I would appreciate it if only All-American Killers recieve votes. However, I would hope that efforts such as the 1st “Indian War” on US soil in Acoma, New Mexico in 1599, would not be excluded merely because the perpetrators spoke Spanish. Also, while actual blood on the hands of the claiments is a plus (Particularly the blood of noncombatants- women, children, tribal Elders…), it should not be seen as a requirement.

The Criteria:

[ul]
[li]Body Count. Sheer numbers of Native dead. The higher the better.[/li][li]Psychological Impact. Demoralizing the savages with particularly cruel tactics or policies. Also, encouraging further abominations by his fellows.[/li][li]Longevity. It takes time to become a Great Indian Killer. Some people are not man enough to stomach a career in genocide.[/li][li]Incorrigibility. The greatest of killers are unrepentant to the end.[/li][/ul]

The Judging:

Simple Democracy.
Every poster may name anyone. This will be considered a vote for this killer. No evidence need be posted for your candidate, although evidence could swing voters. Your candidate will still be subject to debate, of course. I would think that lavish praise of the deeds of you favorite might gain him support.

Lurkers in particular, are encouraged to simply post a name, if shy about tooting the horn of their choice. The winner of the title, Greatest Indian Killer in US history, will be the killer with the most votes, at the time. Please feel free to change your vote whenever you wish. If frivolous entries are made, I ask that other posters not vote for them, even if they are humorous, as these votes will count toward the title. If you name more than 1 hero in your post, please indicate which you are voting for.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
( but please remember, this is not the Pit )

2

My candidate, as I stated in another thread, is Jaksa Chula Harjo, also known as President Andrew Jackson.

At his feet I lay this crime:
The Creek War of 1814 - Jacksa set a pretty high standard in leading his 1st major campaign of terror, killing warriors and noncombatants alike. A favorite tactic from the early carefree years was to simply set buildings on fire when Creeks refused to come out and fight fair. This was very effective also in destroying Ecunchate, the most holy of sites for the Creek. But to say that Jacksa had no use at all for the Creeks is an exaggeration. His cavalry found the skin of dead Natives useful as reins for their horses and boots for themselves. In the aftermath, Jacksa profited as well. As a treaty commisioner, he managed to confiscate around 1/2 of the Creek lands, which he and his cronies “speculated” might be undervalued, as they sold the lands to themselves.
“Jacksa Chula Harjo” is a Creek phrase meaning “Jackson, old and fierce”.

If anyone mounts a serious counter argument, there is more. More attrocities, and more nicknames.

But until then, since I voted 1st…

The GREATEST INDIAN KILLER IN AMERICAN HISTORY IS:

Jacksa Chula Harjo !!!

3

OK, a few points in defense of Andrew Jackson:

[ul][li]The Creeks started the war, by attacking the settlement at Fort Mims (located near present-day Mobile).[/li][li]The Creeks started the killing of civilians. They slaughtered men, women and children at Fort Mims. Depending on the account you read, 200-400 settlers were killed. The Creeks were supposedly incited and encouraged by the British, who wanted to put a stop to America’s westward expansion.[/li][li]In general, it was the Indians who first made war on civilians across the board. (Not just the Creeks.) This was an ongoing problem for folks living on the frontier in colonial days. Cabins were burned, women and children kidnapped or slaughtered,. How do you think the natives earned the moniker “savages?” British settlers were not accustomed to the idea of warfare conducted against women and children. They learned it from the natives.[/li][li]Jackson’s war against the Creek nation was as much a punitive campaign as anything. Jackson certainly had no love for the Indians, and wanted to teach them a lesson about attacking settlers.[/li][li]I will accept your account of atrocities committed during the war (though I have never heard of anyone using Indian skin to make reins or boots). Such conduct is barbaric, if it happened, but it is hard to control what individuals may do in wartime (particularly when their blood is up because of Indian atrocities). Unless you can show that Jackson knew about and either expressly or implicitly consented to these practices, I don’t think you can lay them at his feet.[/ul][/li]
That said, Jackson had absolutely no use for Indians. There’s no question about that. He did treat natives with disdain, and even outright cruelty.

My vote still goes to William Tecumseh Sherman (he of the ironic middle name) as the man most responsible for any “genocidal” crimeas against Indians. Jackson fought a war. Sherman, on the other hand, carried out a systematic policy designed to “tame the West,” a process which resulted in the slaughter of countless Indians, as well as the destruction of bison herds, to prevent Indians from maintaining their traditional way of life. It was a purposeful destruction not only of lives but of cultures, which more closely fits the idea of “genocide” in my view.

4

I nominate George Custer, more for his single-minded ambition than his actual body count. After the Civil War, where he was an admittedly brave and capable general, if foolhardy (had a tendency to charge in the front of his cav and get his horse shot out from under him) he made Indian raiding a fairly successful career, with women and children among the butchered. There’s one well-known one-sided massacre he pulled off that I can’t remember offhand.

He planned more career-building, of course, but got a little in over his head at Little Big Horn.

5

For sheer volume you gotta go with Columbus and his crew who brought smallpox and a few other goodies which wiped out about 90% of the indigenous population. It wasn’t deliberate, of course, but the Spanish and successive waves of colonizers didn’t lose much sleep over it when they disovered that the natives made lousy slaves.

6

I have no wish to defend the (often) outrageous conduct of the white settlers of the Americas. However, I have seen all kinds of numbers bandied about, concerning how many native inhabitants killed by the invaders. To my mind, we haven’t a clue as to how many people inhabited this continent (before Columbus landed in 1492). I suspect that most of the high numbers (>5 million) come from a group of leftist/revisionist-type historians, who equate anything the Indians did as “good”-conversely, anything the europeans did was bad.I prpose a different story: N. America was originally (before 1000 AD) inhabited by extremely small numbers of people-New England probably was home to less than 50,000. These natives were mostly nomadic, so their travels left the european settlers with the appearance of a much larger population. I also believ that these (indians) migrated west as well-the Navajos of N. Mexico/Arizona are almost certainly the descendants of Athabascan indians from Minnesota/Canada. The indians wre also engaged in wiping eachother out as well-they had inter-tribal wars long before the europeans came.

7

It is generally believed that the first introduction of European diseases into what is now northeastern North America came not intentionally but through the peaceful trade between European fishermen and native Americans.

Though there may have been some clashes, the fishermen (Basques & Bretons) weren’t interested in setting up colonies and the local natives were happy to trade for deep sea fish. STD’s may have been transmitted as well due to a native belief that one could capture superior skills and technology through sexual intercourse.

Some historians believe that these contacts predate Columbus.

anyway…

Following the train of this “debate”, the winner must be Hernando Cortez, who after his initial loss to the Aztecs, deliberately allowed the Aztecs to sieze the body of one of his men who had fallen to smallpox.

Making sure that his native allies were kept from his infected men, Cortez watched as the plague swept through Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Ten months (and countless deaths) later he (and his allies) attacked again and won in two months. Mexico, which may have had as many as 25 million inhabitants, witnessed a precipitous population decrease. Some believe that 3.5 million died from smallpox over the next two years (1521-23).

Back to reality…

Tossing the dead over the walls of a city under siege was a common practice in European warfare.

Population estimates in native America might well be inflated but on percentage terms, European diseases were a crucial factor in the conquest of the New World.

It didn’t work for Europeans in Africa or Asia, those populations had experienced (by dying) the same plagues.

Cortez was aided by a large number of native tribes that felt that loyalty to Spain was preferable to slavery under the Aztecs. The Aztecs’ reliance on human sacrifice didn’t help relations with their neighbors. And those loyal tribes were well treated by Spain - so long as they converted to the Catholic Church. Loyal or not, they too were decimated by disease.

It could have gone the other way. Columbus lands in the West Indies & Cuba, goes home, millions in Europe, Asia, & Africa die. Over time, native American cultures reach east into Europe, invade, discover Europeans have no resistance to American diseases, take over the world.

Over time, segments of the victorious native American population develop feeling of guilt over past and current historical injustices.

8

My vote has to go for: Other Indians.

Estimates (I’ve seen) say that at the time Cortez was sneezing on people, there with approx. 5 million Indians in North America, of which nearly 2-3 million perished to smallpox and other European diseases.

Archeologists estimate the Mayan empire, at it’s height, was nearly 25 million strong - and that’s just the Mayans. Indian population in the Americas had been shrinking due to internal conflicts for decades before Cortez ever showed up.

More death occured due to tribal warfare and conquest before the Euorpeans showed up, then can be attributed to any single individual.
inkblot

9

I recommend that anyone interested in American history read James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. His premise is that high school history books are full of missconceptions. And he makes this point quite convincingly. I have never heard anyone seriously dispute his ideas, and would be interested to hear if someone has.

The following are quotes from this work.

I had intended also to tout my candidate here. This post got longer and longer, even without commentary on the quotes. But, you cure ignorance where you can. So, my reply to the challengers will have to wait until tommorow. But in the meantime:

Please vote for JACKSA CHULA HARJO as Greatest Indian Killer in US History!
(you can always change your vote later)

Newbie questions.
Is it OK to quote this much from a copywrited work?
Should I cite the works quoted within a quote?
If so, where?

10

2sense-

Sounds like the author you cite may have a bit of an agenda, to put it mildly. I do have some sources which provide a different perspective (and which will back up some of the points raised in my earlier post), but I will have to track them down over the weekend. Stay tuned…

Quick point: By the time the early settlers landed, the diseases brought over a century earlier by the Spanish had swept through the Americas, and decimated the population.

Thus, the fact (if it is a fact) that New Englanders used fields which had been previously used by Natives does not establish that the settlers “appropriated” Indian cornfields (at least in the sense of taking them from Indians by force). They may have simply been working cleared land which had been abandoned by Indians as their numbers declined.

The same logic applies to this quote in your post:

The fact that two thousand Indians had lived around the bay “in former time” does not prove that the colonists displaced those Indians by force. “Former time” may be a reference to the time before the Indian population was cut low by European diseases.

The writer may be passing along information he has gleaned from local Indians about the population of the area long before the settlers arrived. There is not enough information in the quote to draw a conclusion one way or the other (though that hasn’t kept the author you cited from leaping to the conclusion he is so obviously eager to draw).

OK, maybe that wasn’t such a quick point.

11

As long as we’re on the subject of the Creek War, here is a web site with some information on that conflict:

http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~cmamcrk4/crkwr1.html

There are several descriptions of Creek atrocities there, including attacks on unarmed women and children. Some excerpts:

(From the account of the Creek attack on Fort Sinquefield:)

(From the description of the Kimbell-James massacre:)

12

[Moderator Hat ON]

Looks like “fair use” to me. Quoting a copyrighted work in whole or a significant portion thereof will likely get the post edited by the mods, but that looks like minor excerpts, and you cited the work. (Posting the link if it’s found online is a good thing.) Citing the works quoted within the quotes in not neccesary, I believe, but it can bolster the credibility your source (or give opponents ammo to use against you, if the sources are suspect). If you want to post cites, do so wherever in the post you wish.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

13

I’m going to have to vote for Cortez on this one. He was absolutely without mercy, he was greedy, he was cruel, and he was bloodthirsty.

14

Hi spoke-,

Your interpretation of that quote is correct. I started typing the quotes in my post and then I was going to comment on each. It took me a long time to type ( I am a terrible typist ). So I just posted the quotes, figuring that they stand on their own. Sorry for the confusion.
I had intended this quote to show that if 1 town had 2,000 people, it was unlikely that “New England probbly was home to less than 50,000”.

The town in question is Plymouth, formely called Patuxet. The inhabitants of the town had been wiped out by the plague a couple years before. The writer knew full well what had happened to the townspeople. It was known before the Mayflower sailed that a plague had emptied much of the area.

I want to point out that this is not an anti-White thread.
People are people. Europeans do not have the only cultures that dominate and destroy other cultures. The examples are legion. European cultures ( and White culture here in the States ) simply are at the top of the food chain at the moment. Pointing at White people and saying that they are bad, is as incorrect as doing the same to Red or Black people.

People are not guilty for the crimes of their ancestors.
We cannot change the past. However, our perception of the past can and does change. In order to move forward we need to understand how we got here.

You are also correct that Dr. Loewen has an agenda. It is not hidden. He is trying to cure some ignorance. If his facts and conclusions were slanted, I would expect to have read “Lies that Dr. James Loewen told me!” by now.

The Creek War
The Creeks did not start the war. The war began with the Battle of Burnt Corn Creek. It occured when some Alabama militia, under Colonel James Caller, ambushed a party of Creeks returning from Florida with trade-goods ( including guns ) purchased from the Spanish. The Creeks were dispersed, but regrouped and drove the militia into flight. This attack caused the Creek to retaliate by counterattacking Fort Mims. Where, as you say, “They slaughtered men, women and children at Fort Mims”.

The Creeks needed no encouragement from the British. The Creeks had a much more compelling reason to stop the US’s westward expansion. The Creeks were in the way.

Thank you for reading my post.
I would like to ask people to remember to…

Please vote for JACKSA CHULA HARJO as Greatest Indian Killer in US History!

15

I will go with Hernando de Soto, whose murderous expedition through the future southeast states devastated the local poulations. Try reading accounts of his atrocities, if you can keep your gorge down. He made Cortez or Pizarro look like boy scouts.

Bill

16

I’m voting for the Amerinds themselves. True, the White man did better in a short time, but over the long haul (10,000 yrs) the natives have it. War, genocide, slavery, and human sacrifice. The White man at least is not guilty of the last, at least in America.

17

2sense wrote:

You are partly correct, and I was partly mistaken. Armed conflict did not begin with Fort Mims, but with the earlier skirmish at Burnt Corn Creek.

However, it was no secret that the Creeks were preparing to make war on the white settlers (which is why they were obtaining guns). The Battle of Burnt Corn Creek was intended as a sort of preemptive strike. I don’t think it is correct to characterize the attack on Fort Mims as strictly retaliatory. The Creeks had been planning for war all along, and it is fair to assume they would have attacked with or without the prior skirmish.

What the Fort Mims Massacre did was provoke a large scale response from the U.S. government; so in that sense, Fort Mims did start the war. (Or started it in earnest.)

No question, the white settlers were moving into territory largely occupied by the Creeks (though I’m not sure the Creeks claimed “ownership” of the territory, which is more of a European concept.)

I only meant to point out that atrocities in that war were a two-way street. You had pointed out a number of atrocities allegedly committed by Jackson’s troops. I was simply trying to show that the picture is not quite so black-and-white. It was not a simple case of “oppressive white leader commits genocide against peaceful tribe.” There were two sides to the story. I say that without trying to minimize in any way the ill treatment of Indians in that war, or generally.

Interesting debate, though. I’m still voting for Sherman. Jackson’s actions at least occurred in the context of a war. Sherman seems to have had a truly genocidal intent.

18

I found a couple of primary sources on the propensity of Indians to attack women and children, and the beffuddlement of the Colonists at this approach to warfare.

First, from the Journal of Richard Cartwright, Jr. (1779):

And from the Declaration of Independence, among the list of grievances against King George III is this:

And here’s a link to a secondary source, an account of Indian atrocities at New Bern, North Carolina in 1711:

http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/im/im011.htm

Here’s a tidbit from that account:

I guess the point I am making is that before you adjudge Andrew Jackson to be some sort of genocidal maniac, you have to understand the history of warfare between Indians and settlers up to the point the Creek War broke out. Note also that the Creek atrocities I describe in my earlier post occurred before any of the atrocities you ascribe to Jackson’s troops.

While none of this excuses any vile and cruel actions of Jackson’s troops, it does lend some perspective as to how they formed their attitudes toward Native Americans.

19

I am not arguing that Jacksa Chula Harjo was a maniac. His views were held by many in his day. The man did win the “popular” vote in 3 Presidential elections. I am merely arguing that he was a genocide. In fact, I am arguing that he was the most effective genocide in US history.

I disagree with your understanding of this historic period. Colonists believed that Natives were inferior because it was in their interest to do so. It is unsurprising that this racist lie found its way into their propaganda ( D of I ). It was necessary for this to be true for their own behavior to be unsavage. This justification was and is false. Europeans had no moral right to eliminate Natives and appropriate their lands. You acknowledge this, but you still are influenced by the justifications. They are still around, and need to be eliminated as they are ignorant and harmfull.

1 of these justifications is that “Indians didn’t really own land. They didn’t even understand what that meant”.
Different societies have different ideas of land ownership. Does this mean that our society may with clear conscience impose our idea of ownership on the other society? I say no.

Also, the statement that Native societies did not claim ownership of land is false. The land was theirs. They were tied to it in ways that few Europeans could understand. It was the land of the spirits of their ancestors. The nearest White concept is to consider it holy ground. To state that the Natives merely occupied the land demostrates a lack of understanding, and contributes to the survival of this unjust “justification”.

You are correct in pointing out that in the Creek War, women and children were slaughtered by both sides. This was not the case in all Indian Wars. I would be very interested in an example of a war where White women were killed but not Red women, if 1 exists.

If there are 2 sides to choose from here, I submit that 1 of the choices is bigoted and wrong. I am claiming NO moral superiority over you, spoke-. I also believed that “Indians hadn’t owned the land”, until I learned better. I have still more bigoted opinions masquerading as reality inside my brain, that I have yet to recognize. When I find a misconception, I do my best to discard it. It lessens my ignorance.

And that after all, is what this place is all about.
PEACE

20

Since smallpox hasn’t killed any Indians in, perhaps, 50 years, I think the award goes to Alchoholism, which is still killing thousands of Native Americans every year.