In case anyone thinks that no one other than the posters are paying attention, this humble thread-lurker is pleased to see that perhaps this thread is actually becoming more rational rather than less.
(spoke-, well done post.)
tamerlane, regarding the chesapeakes…
-http://www.mariner.org/chesapeakebay/colonial/col002.html
“Chief Powhatan is believed to have killed all of the Chesapeake Indians as well as any English colonists living with them. If there were any colonists left, they may have died in that attack.”
most accounts i was able to find mimic that sentiment at worst, but there are other theories offered as well. fact is, no one knows, so to have framed it in such a manner that someone actually did is irresponsible. the others i won’t bother with, at least for now.
-I think you go to far with comments like this one. White-supremacy? Really? Sheesh.
oh, i’m sorry… you’re right. i guess this country hasn’t had a long fixation with ideals of white supremacy. absolutely. what could i have been thinking of…
My cat’s breath smells like white supremacy.
snort!
-There were in fact instances of villages being burned and crops being destroyed which pre-date the 1622 massacre. However, I did not find instances of wholesale massacre prior to the 1622 attack on the colonists. That seems to have been the first. Furthermore, in every instance I can find of a village or crop being burned, it appears to have been in response to an Indian attack. Here’s one example from 1608:
and that indian attack was probably preceded by an attack on indians, and that, an attack on jamestown, and that, an attack on the indians, and… it went back and forth for a long time, even after relative peace was had. some of the events i found were precipated by the murders of indians, naming specific ones, or the stealing of corn, or by the english thinking they could take over cleared fields and so forth. either way, the jamestown colonists were guests. it was on them to act within the bounds of powhatan law.
-Well, here’s an account of the first encounter between the colonists and the Indians:
and here’s one for you:
"On January 12, 1608, Smith’s boat reached the small village of Werawocomoco… The Indians put them up and fed them bread, turkey, and venison. They then marched by foot to Powhatan’s (Wahunsunaock) village…
Powhatan told Smith he did not have corn to give him and that he doubted the Englishman’s purpose: " Yet some doubt i have of your coming hither, that makes me not so kindly seek to relieve you as i would. For many do inform me your coming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my country, who do not dare come to bring you corn, seeing you thus armed with your men. To cheer us of this fear, leave aboard your weapons. For they are needless, we being all friends and forever Powhatans."
so, the beginning was civil, though they were suspicious of the Englishmen. and rightfully so. they knew about slavetraders and whatnot from other nations. yet they received them all the same, and even fed them what they could when they starved that first winter, even after some of the colonists had raided Powhatan cornfields. the colonists were so arrogant though they thought these gifts were tribute to the crown and a reflection on their superiority. it’s no wonder things deteriorated with attitudes like that.
-This encounter set the tone. Now were the Indians justified in attacking? Maybe. Maybe their earlier experiences with the (by-then-vanished) Roanoke colony had convinced them that white settlers should not be trusted. Regardless of possible justifications for the attack, however, jac’s description of a warm welcome just doesn’t wash.
it just did. read about smith’s meeting with powhatan, and then of subsequent gestures by the indians toward the colonists. i’m sure there’s something in your book. while there were some skirmishes with local indians, they nonetheless did not represent the confederacy. smith’s meeting with powhatan is what’s important here, because only powhatan and the subchiefs had authority to act on behalf of the confederacy.
-I certainly do not mean to downplay the tragedy of what happened (ultimately) to Native American peoples, or the rapacious and violent actions of white settlers. I am just bothered by folks who attempt to resurrect the myth of the “noble savage.”
let me tell you something spoke; so am i. that’s never been mine nor puma’s intent. romanticization… stereotypes, good and bad alike, take away the humanity of a people. you won’t find many native people embracing that kind of sh*t for the simple fact they know better. they live it on a daily basis and don’t need to be taught such lessons by outsiders.
i think what we here have a problem with is the inability to focus on what the colonists did without mitigating that by mentioning what natives have done. it takes away from what all occurred, and it has been swept under the rug enough as it is. like i said before, you don’t see people talking about the european holocaust like that. you don’t hear a group of people talking about it and then one pops up and goes (ignoring the other groups affected) “yeah, but it wasn’t like the jews have been saints either.” that’s insane. it’s unacceptable, and it should be here when we’re talking about an american holocaust. american indians never asked anyone to come here. they never asked to be invaded, pushed aside, enslaved, killed, to be made to fear life everyday in their own lands. it should not even need to be mentioned that natives did some foul things. that’s a device used to justify the killing, one employed by anyone from the klan on down to mainstream america. so forgive us if we happen to notice the similarity of thought between avowed racists and those who think they don’t house any racist sentiment whatsoever. that does not make on the same as the klan, but in that instance it does not make them any better either.
-Indians were no better or worse than anybody else.
this much is true. but don’t then go and turn that into “european colonization and its subsequent effects were equal to the actions of american indians,” because that cannot be done, and that’s the strategy you’re trying to use.
-I really don’t think the use of this word adds in any meaningful way to the discussion of these and subsequent events.
i think it’s meaningful to call something what it is. it’s especially meaningful to those who’ve had they and their relatives’ horrors downplayed.
-I think the word is thrown into the discussion like a bomb.
i’m sure that’s how it comes across to many people who never thought to consider america genocidal, or whom consider even the thought some sort of national blasphemy.
-It is a rhetorical device, used to inflame passions.
the passions were already inflamed. life did that. history did that. we now only seek to place that in its proper context.
-But as this thread demonstrates, the word can be defined so broadly, or so narrowly, as to render it ultimately meaningless.
not so. this seems like an attempt to get out of a difficult question i asked you regarding the definition you used. i want to know why the definitions i gave are something bordering irrelevant, and at best considered no better than what you found at dictionary.com. i want to know why the u.n.'s wrong. i want to know why the very person who created and defined the word, is wrong, and why dictionary.com is right.
i also want to know what happened to all those nations i mentioned, and the hundreds of others i don’t have the patience to go through, if exterminationist genocide did not occur at least on some level in what we now call the united states… what happened to them?
-Really makes this thread read quicker if, like me, you simply scroll past the messages from posters who can’t be bothered to adhere to such meaningless conventions as capitalization.
works the other way as well if you just cut all the assholes out.
i’m amazed at the number of people with that short of an attention span.
jac: You’re basing this entire inaccurate tirade on “probably preceded?” That’s laughable. Sad, too, in a way.
And that’s part of what caused the problem between the two groups, because the colonists didn’t recognize Powhatan control of the land. Outside of native settlements, the English saw the land as wilderness, not settled, not being used, and therefore, open to settlement.
You said, or at least implied that the English were greeted with civility. They were not. They were attacked on their first trip ashore. (Spring of 1607.) Please note that this was before the Indians even knew whether the English intended to stay. They didn’t ask or wait to find out.
The meeting with Powhatan you describe occurred eight months later. And that meeting was not, as you imply, the settlers’ first contact with the Powhatan confederacy. The attack I described earlier (which occurred on May 26, 1607) was carried out by one of Powhatan’s lietenants, of the Paspahegh tribe.
Powhatan had his own agenda. He wanted English weaponry, for one thing.
Just the opposite. Too many historians over the past thirty years or so have focused almost exclusively on white atrocities against Indians, and have left Indian atrocities against whites out of the equation entirely. This leaves the false (and racist) impression that whites were just a race of bloodthirsty killers, descending on their poor unsuspecting victims. While that view of the matter might serve certain agendas, it is not good history.
The site you linked earlier is a good example of this phenomenon. Here’s a quote from that source:
True enough, I suppose, but it leaves out the pertinent fact that Indians attacked first, and that each side attacked the other at various times. No mention at all is made of the 1622 massacre, as the author focuses exclusively on white atrocities against the natives.
Someone reading that, who has no other knowledge of the history of the colony is going to draw some pretty dark conclusions about the colonists, conclusions which would be mitigated by a more balanced reading of the facts.
Presenting only the atrocities committed by one side is both misleading and dishonest.
Has it occurred to you that it is not only native people reading this thread. I hope that anyone who reads the thread (even “outsiders”) might come across some information they didn’t have before.
re: “genocide”:
Please note that dictionary.com is not itself a dictionary, but rather links the user to other dictionaries. The definition I provided is from the American Heritage English Dictionary (2000).
Don’t like that one? Here’s one from Princeton/Wordnet:
Here’s one from Webster’s II:
Dictionary definitions are helpful because they provide the *commonly understood meaning of the term. If you say “White Americans are guilty of genocide,” then people are going to have these definitions in mind, and are going to call you on your statement. If you want to use a broader definition, fine, but don’t be surprised at the puzzled reaction you get.
Which gets back to my point that the word can be defined so broadly or so narrowly as to be nearly useless. To label actions “genocidal” does not add in any way to the debate over those actions. It adds heat, but no light.
There are many ways, other than intentional extermination, that a tribe may vanish. It may succumb to disease. It may have its numbers reduced and be absorbed into another tribe. It may be absorbed into the larger white culture and vanish through intermarriage. It may wind up a victim of its own violence if it attacks another group and is wiped out.
Have tribes vanished? Yes. Does that fact, in and of itself, prove that white America has committed genocide? No.
If you have an example of a tribe that white people intentionally exterminated (a whole tribe, now, not just a story of an attack on a particular village), then bring it forward and let’s discuss it. I don’t rule out the possibility. I just want to see more evidence and less hysterical hand-waving.
-jac: You’re basing this entire inaccurate tirade on “probably preceded?” That’s laughable. Sad, too, in a way.
point out where something i said’s been inaccurate, then explain how you came to the conclusion i was basing the entire ‘tirade’ on “probably preceded.” it’s clear you didn’t understand the context of those words nor do you show excellent grasp on the general discourse.
run along now…
-You said, or at least implied that the English were greeted with civility. They were not. They were attacked on their first trip ashore. (Spring of 1607.) Please note that this was before the Indians even knew whether the English intended to stay. They didn’t ask or wait to find out.
you’re right. it could’ve been read like that from how i stated it. i should’ve worded it better.
-Just the opposite. Too many historians over the past thirty years or so have focused almost exclusively on white atrocities against Indians, and have left Indian atrocities against whites out of the equation entirely.
what about prior to those 30 years though? that’s a good 400+ filled with rationalization of actions against natives, so, i don’t see how even that gesture balances anything out. but indian atrocities against whites cannot fully be understood outside of a context excluding european actions against natives which provoked those. and for most of history here, that’s been an equation missing the latter variable as a nation struggled to purge itself of its sins. i think maybe the trend in the other direction is a mere counter to that. one which was long due.
-This leaves the false (and racist) impression that whites were just a race of bloodthirsty killers, descending on their poor unsuspecting victims. While that view of the matter might serve certain agendas, it is not good history.
it also isn’t the way everyone would read into even a one-sided agenda, were it one-sided. not everyone reads into things as such… however your approach is just as racist as you think that is. you’ve gone to the other extreme with it entirely, and neither is acceptable. you’ve tried to justify it though i suppose by imagining your statements as a balancing force but they do nothing but throw the discussion off kilter and into some quagmire of bigoted sentiment. i know you don’t like to think of yourself as capable of that, as you shouldn’t, but look at what you’ve said.
-The site you linked earlier is a good example of this phenomenon. Here’s a quote from that source:
quote:
Relations between the Powhatans and the English grew less friendly as the settlers moved to expand the colony. Settlers began to attack Indian villages, in some cases burning homes and fields.
True enough, I suppose, but it leaves out the pertinent fact that Indians attacked first, and that each side attacked the other at various times. No mention at all is made of the 1622 massacre, as the author focuses exclusively on white atrocities against the natives.
i think they go into the later portion of history on the second page… either way, even if the indians did attack first, which i’ll grant you given the skirmishes which occurred, again, the colonists were invading others’ territory and sorry enough, the powhatans were not obliged to allow them passage nor settlement, both of which they later gave however. that’s the kind of thing that happens though sometimes when you venture into unknown territory. so, while it may not have been the most diplomatic of approaches at first, what happened to the colonists again was on them. no one invited them to the land of tsenacommacah.
-Has it occurred to you that it is not only native people reading this thread.
what’s that have to do with anything? i don’t understand what you’re getting at.
-I hope that anyone who reads the thread (even “outsiders”) might come across some information they didn’t have before.
i was trying to make the point that it’s pretty forward, to say the best of it, to try and humanize native people to native peoples. indians know better than anyone else just how human they and their people are. they live it and see it everyday. they do not need to be taught about their own humanity, let alone their own history, but ‘outsiders.’ understand me?
-Please note that dictionary.com is not itself a dictionary, but rather links the user to other dictionaries. The definition I provided is from the American Heritage English Dictionary (2000).
i realize… but i also realize, as you must at some point, that sometimes even a dictionary is not the best source for fully understanding a word. they often weren’t meant to be. most are meant merely as quick reference sources.
-Dictionary definitions are helpful because they provide the *commonly understood meaning of the term.
but are we never to go any deeper than what a dictionary offers? i’d expect that maybe in a 5th grade debate, but here, i think we can and should raise the level of discussion a bit higher.
-If you say “White Americans are guilty of genocide,” then people are going to have these definitions in mind, and are going to call you on your statement. If you want to use a broader definition, fine, but don’t be surprised at the puzzled reaction you get.
i’m never puzzled or surprised. i encounter that reaction almost everytime i bring these things up. that doesn’t mean i have to lower my standards to the level of comprehension around me. you do that with those incapable of fully grasping such concepts, not those who can but willingly toss them aside.
-Which gets back to my point that the word can be defined so broadly or so narrowly as to be nearly useless. To label actions “genocidal” does not add in any way to the debate over those actions. It adds heat, but no light.
it adds a certain context which places everything where it should be… the definitions i used are broad regarding what’s considered genocidal, but don’t confuse the issue because of that. while there may be several things which fall within the guidelines, there are only specific occasions where those qualify as genocide. two people killed: one for a debt owed. one because they happened to belong to a targeted group. same crime, but the difference in intent here is evident. that’s kind of like genocide. intent is key in assessing what’s genocidal, not necessarily the crime itself. so it doesn’t matter if they list every possibility of a criminal act as being potentially genocidal because not every instance of those things happenings will be so nevertheless.
so, weak argument there against those definitions i gave. if they were useless, they’d never be employed. as it is, they are, and there isn’t that much difficulty. it’s pretty cut and dry once you get down to the aim of the criminal acts.
-There are many ways, other than intentional extermination, that a tribe may vanish. It may succumb to disease. It may have its numbers reduced and be absorbed into another tribe. It may be absorbed into the larger white culture and vanish through intermarriage. It may wind up a victim of its own violence if it attacks another group and is wiped out.
i understand all the ways a people can disappear. i want you to tell me though what happened to those people if genocide was never committed in what is now the united states.
-Have tribes vanished? Yes. Does that fact, in and of itself, prove that white America has committed genocide? No.
yes, but when you look at the circumstances surrounding most of the extinctions, the proof is shown.
-If you have an example of a tribe that white people intentionally exterminated (a whole tribe, now, not just a story of an attack on a particular village), then bring it forward and let’s discuss it. I don’t rule out the possibility. I just want to see more evidence and less hysterical hand-waving.
what about the arawak (taino) of hispaniola and the rest of the greater antilles? millions of folks there.
in the u.s., one of such groups of peoples was the karankawas, who largely fell victim to the practice of scalping for bounty. men, women, children… it absolutely didn’t matter. the practice was lucrative, and so the karankawas faded into the past because of it.
hell, dozens of tribes in places like california alone disappeared because of the gold rush, military campaigns, scalping for bounty, and just good ol’ fashioned killin’ injuns for leisure. look into it. i have to go watch a football game now.
A lot of my ancestors were starved to death, and into submission, in the Ukraine by the Russians not all that long ago. But I can’t see continually whining about it.
Many of the Indians up here in Canada also have whining down pretty good:
http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/story.asp?id=EB44622B-2CC7-45D6-A672-6495FC34E5FE
Sounds like this once regional and national Indian leader doesn’t have a problem with genocide.
According to this reasoning, should the ‘whities’ be firing up some ovens, before the Indians become “the bosses”?
Isn’t Indian DNA a lot like some groups over in Europe? Could that make us all “immigrants”?
If we all did come from other places, I wonder which Indian group got here 1st. Would that make them the ‘1st Nations’ and the rest of the Indian groups “immigrants”?
Nice thread. Interesting and entertaining.
I’d just like to add one thing: I’m an Ojibway “Indian” from the Sault Ste. Marie area. I’m just happy to note that, although we were pushed around quite a bit (and swindled more than a few times), the “Great White Chief” could not get us out of the way. We’re still in our original location, and going strong. Peace.
** jac hysterically ranted “i also want to know what happened to all those nations i mentioned, and the hundreds of others i don’t have the patience to go through, if exterminationist genocide did not occur at least on some level in what we now call the united states… what happened to them?” **
Are you really that ignorant or have you just never heard the term “UFO abductions”?
Here in the southeast, the vast majority of post-contact Indian deaths occurred between the first Spanish contact (16th century) and British settlement. This is when whole villages if not whole tribes died out in an incident that pulls the Black Death to shame, and those who survived had some peculiar genetic adaptations. (I worked an archaeological dig in Alabama for an early 17th century Creek village in which numerous orthidontal abnormalities and even extra digits were incredibly common, but I digress.)
While de Soto was by anybody’s definition an evil bastard (unless compared to his father-in-law), the real catastrophe he brought, the one which led to millions of deaths, was, of course, European disease. Since in 1540 white Europeans weren’t even familiar with the concept of germs ( van Leeuwenhoek’s work was more than a century away and of course as late as the 1690s English settlers were hanging “witches” for causing diseases with their “sprites”), it’s really infeasible to look upon this as deliberate germ germ warfare.
An interesting aside about Jamestown: for years it was believed that English settlers starved largely because they were too arrogant to listen to Indians on the subject of agriculture, or because they were mostly from the mercantile and artisan classes and didn’t know squat from squash about farming. However, a very recent study of tree trunks and soil samples reported in last month’s National Geographic found something interesting: though they of course had no way of knowing it, the English happened to arrive in what is now Virginia during the worst drought and most challenged growing seasons not of that century but of the past MILLENIUM. It was a horrible decade long period for everybody in the mid-Atlantic, which also explains why the Indians, whose stores were also short, weren’t willing to share or even sell surplus and why whites stole from them- it was a matter of pure lizard-brained survival.
There is increasing evidence of pre- “Bering pedestrian” (I can’t remember who I’m quoting or I’d give credit) peoples in the American, or at very least of many non Siberian type peoples. Remains have been found of people whose DNA and features are far more consistent with the Ainu, other Asians, and even white Europeans than with the central Asians from whom the Indians are descended, and while the remains found with them are of a high degree of culture they all died out. Could it be that there was a bit of reverse genocide in our prehistoric past?
(Speaking of these remains, damn NAGPRA; while I understand respecting grave sites, archaeology is one of the only few sources of “real” history and I have near seizures whenever I read of another important pre-Clovis era find or non-Asiatic remains that can’t be studied due to a complaint filed by Larry Joe Whines-on-Film; this isn’t a racist view- as a proud Twinkie-American I have Indian ancestry of my own, plus I fully support the excavation of Jamestown burials and the burials of ancestors in the Spitalfields and other cemetaries in England that are much more recent than many American digs.)
-jac hysterically ranted “i also want to know what happened to all those nations i mentioned, and the hundreds of others i don’t have the patience to go through, if exterminationist genocide did not occur at least on some level in what we now call the united states… what happened to them?”
to consider that hysterical you either have no understanding of the processes undertaken to extirpate those nations and/or you’re a callous prick. either or.
-Since in 1540 white Europeans weren’t even familiar with the concept of germs ( van Leeuwenhoek’s work was more than a century away and of course as late as the 1690s English settlers were hanging “witches” for causing diseases with their “sprites”), it’s really infeasible to look upon this as deliberate germ germ warfare.
were they familiar with the concept of cause and effect though, or are you implying europeans were so dense they couldn’t get even that? i don’t buy that and i don’t believe you do either. of course they had no real understanding of things that couldn’t even be seen by the naked eye yet, but they understood on some level how disease spread, what it was, what it did, and oftentimes the means by which it could be done (i.e. spread).
much of it was inadvertent spread of disease, but some of it was nonetheless intentional. many were inflicted with diseases by one means or another and then finished off in their time of weakness. many more were subjected to conditions in which disease was able to flourish and further conditions such as starvation which exacerbated the problem, even perhaps faciliating it to some degree.
most of those who died in the european holocaust were not outright murdered but like american indians subjected to conditions which would bring about their demise. yet one is considered genocide, the other, the notion is scoffed at. heh
-An interesting aside about Jamestown: for years it was believed that English settlers starved largely because they were too arrogant to listen to Indians on the subject of agriculture, or because they were mostly from the mercantile and artisan classes and didn’t know squat from squash about farming.
actually, much of it was still on them, drought or no. the natives had no real problems because they understood the dynamics of agriculture and ecology and could adjust, especially in the environment they were in (it was not so easy for people like the anasazi however). many of the lands they tried to settle that had been left alone for a time were done so for a purpose; the soil was no longer very arable. it had been overused. the powhatans would rotate crop areas every so often and leave fields to fall into disuse for a period of time before they could become usable again. the colonists instead chose many of these areas, since they had already been cleared, to plant and live, and they suffered for it.
they also, and this cannot be downplayed, spent a lot of time doing things such as looking for gold. keep in mind, the purpose of the virginia colony was first and foremost an economic venture. and as such, it isn’t surprising they held profits in very high regard, sometimes even above taking appropriate measures to care for themselves. this, too, they suffered greatly for.
-It was a horrible decade long period for everybody in the mid-Atlantic, which also explains why the Indians, whose stores were also short, weren’t willing to share or even sell surplus and why whites stole from them- it was a matter of pure lizard-brained survival.
actually the indians did share for a period of time. pocahontas (matoake) was one of those often sent to give food stuffs to colonists, which was a pretty significant gesture by wahunsunacock.
-Remains have been found of people whose DNA and features are far more consistent with the Ainu, other Asians, and even white Europeans than with the central Asians from whom the Indians are descended, and while the remains found with them are of a high degree of culture they all died out.
give me one example of any human remains that’ve been dna tested and because of that linked to any of the groups you mentioned, particularly whites. thanks.
-Could it be that there was a bit of reverse genocide in our prehistoric past?
what is reverse genocide supposed to mean? i’m sorry, but that makes no sense in context there, and phrases like “reverse racism” and so forth are the most mind-numbingly stupid things people have come up with recently. think about the implications of saying those words together… there’s no such thing as “reverse racism,” or “reverse genocide.” racism is racism, genocide is genocide. is racism or genocide only supposed to go in one direction or something, and everything that deviates from that is “reversed?”… god that’s stupid.
-(Speaking of these remains, damn NAGPRA; while I understand respecting grave sites, archaeology is one of the only few sources of “real” history and I have near seizures whenever I read of another important pre-Clovis era find or non-Asiatic remains that can’t be studied due to a complaint filed by Larry Joe Whines-on-Film; this isn’t a racist view- as a proud Twinkie-American I have Indian ancestry of my own, plus I fully support the excavation of Jamestown burials and the burials of ancestors in the Spitalfields and other cemetaries in England that are much more recent than many American digs.)
some peoples’ cultural beliefs find such practices disgusting; even when applied to whites. you won’t find indians who find the digging of their relatives’ burial grounds advocating diggin up whites in other words. haven’t you learned that some people think differently already? sorry, but your and others curiosity is not good enough excuse to do as you wish the remains of some peoples’ ancestors. that’s arrogant.
Now we’re getting somewhere (though some cites would be helpful). Here is the story of the Karankawa.
I’ll leave it to the readers of the thread to decide whether the events described in that account qualify as “genocide,” or whether applying that label adds anything. Certainly, though, you’ve got at least an arguable case to make.
I don’t see any reference to scalp bounties, though. Do you have a cite for that claim? I tried a google search for “Karankawa” and “scalp” but all I could find was a description of the Karankawa practice of the Mitote, or “scalp dance,” described as follows:
Couldn’t find anything about the Karankawas being scalped themselves. Do you have other info?
i wasn’t going to go into the supposed cannibalistic tendencies of the karankawas, but now that it’s been brought up, here are some links to check out.
http://www.texasindians.com/karank.htm
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/KK/bmk5.html
many tribes in texas seem to have had a ceremonial practice of eating bits of enemy flesh to absorb their courage. however, the supposed nature of this ‘cannibalism’ has been greatly exaggerated, particularly by spanish historians who wished to draw attention away from an incident mention in the first link i believe, when some of panfilo de narvaez’s soldiers washed ashore on texas and the karankawas had discovered they’d eaten the flesh of the others to stay alive. it makes a good point though; why would a supposedly cannibalistic society find that as horrifying as they did?
again, i want to address the practice of discrediting native americans through acceptable ‘scholarly’ research. you think it all ended 30 years and everything’s wonderful now for native people in books and opinion circles, but it goes on today. it’s just been softened sometimes a great bit. sometimes not.
here’s another interesting link: “ten lies about indigenous science”
http://www.kporterfield.com/aicttw/articles/lies.html
regarding the scalping of karankawa, it was common practice throughout texas and other parts of the united states at the time, and they may not have even been particularly aiming for the karankawa. but hey, an indian scalp was an indian scalp, and that meant change jingling in your pocket.
i couldn’t find anything online about the karankawa being scalped. thornton’s ‘american indian holocaust and survival’ delves into their and the neighboring tonkawas disappearance, partly, as mentioned ’ through a system of ‘free enterprise’ (nudge nudge, wink wink), where sometimes entire villages were liquidated.
here’s an common example of the practice of scalping indians for bounty and its public and governmental advocation and remuneration (some private entities/citizens also payed others for scalps, not just the gov.).
http://www.californiahistory.net/text_only/6_3_1.htm
Episodes in Extermination
The Native American population of California declined from an estimated 150,000 in 1846 to 30,000 by 1870. Most of the decline was caused by disease and malnutrition, but thousands of Indians died in genocidal campaigns carried out by white Californians. Miners and ranchers banded together for the express purpose of killing Indians. These men roamed through the hills and valleys of northern California, hitting especially hard the Native people who lived in the heart of the mother lode, the Nisenan Maidu and the Miwok.
Local sentiment was strongly in favor of Indian extermination. The Yreka Herald in 1853 made its position unequivocally clear: “Extermination is no longer a question of time–the time has arrived, the work has commenced, and let the first man that says treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor.” In 1866 the Chico Courant concurred: “It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them, and a saving of many white lives. Treaties are played out–there is only one kind of treaty that is effective–cold lead.”
Frontier communities raised subscriptions to pay bounties for Indian scalps and Indian heads. In addition to such local remuneration, the state legislature authorized payments of expense claims totaling over $1 million. The federal government subsequently reimbursed the state. Thus the process of extermination went forward with the financial support of local, state, and federal governments. It was legalized and subsidized murder on a mass scale.