You hear a lot about the different kinds of genocides that have happened in the past, like the Holocaust, Armenian and Rwandan. However not many people seem to recognize the TOT as a genocide, is that because it wasn’t or because most people either don’t know or don’t care about it. For those of you that don’t know what it was you could compare it to the Bataan death march, the main difference being that the TOT was a forced relocation effort by the government of America to move the Native Americans from the south to Oklahoma where about 60,00 out of about 130,00 died from disease, exposure and starvation and the BDM was the forcible transfer of POWs during WW2 by the Imperil Japanese Army, which resulted in deaths ranging from 2,500 to 10,000 people.
I’d go with “because it wasn’t a genocide”. It’s a well-known historical event, and a black mark on American history, but a forced relocation is different from the systematic mass murder of the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, or Rwandan Genocide.
Well couldn’t the same be said of the BDM as it’s purpose was to relocate POWs but thousands happened to die before it was completed.
Sure, the Bataan march wasn’t a genocide either.
I think the ToT and the BDM were not genocides, but they were mass murder, and on that scale they are in the same ballpark as various genocides, even if they are an order of magnitude or two smaller.
No matter what you call it, it was one of many sad chapters in US history and the dealing with Native Americans.
If you ever have the chance, visit the Trail of Tears State Park in Missouri. Bonus points if you visit in the dead of winter to get a small idea of what it would have been like to cross the Mississippi River in the cold.
A genocide is when you intend on destroying an ethnic group. The trail of tears may have been intended as a forced relocation but it seems quite obvious that the people in charge of the relocation were well aware that thousands of people would not survive to the destination of the march. In which case it could be considered an inadvertent genocide.
There was no intent to destroy the relocated Native Americans as a group. The deaths were the result of poor planning, indifference to suffering, and an especially harsh winter. The deaths were incidental to the goal of removing Native Americans from the Southeast (so as to open their lands up for white settlement); the deaths were not the goal, but rather a side effect. That alone precludes genocide.
I went to average public schools, and we discussed it in at least four different grades.
I had to take a college for kids course over the summer to learn about The Holocaust, and that was the same year Schindler’s List came out.
At the very least it’s an example of ethnic cleansing, and some historians have called it (attempted) genocide.
Absolutely.
It doesn’t fit the definition of genocide I see most frequently:
“The deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, caste, religious, or national group”.
But, as the term is defined differently by different historians, and given the urge to place the label on something that one wishes to condemn, as it is arguably the worst thing imaginable, I’m not surprised to see that some label the forced relocation a genocide. I just think they’re mistaken in affixing that label. Genocide is a strong term and shouldn’t be diluted.
Fair enough. Though considering the effect of forced migrations, through both loss of life and dissolution of identity through loss of connection to a place, I think it’s a reasonable argument to say that the Trail of Tears was, in fact, a “deliberate and systematic destruction” of an ethnic group. I think part of the motive of the US Government for the Trail of Tears was to make this group of Native Americans less powerful and less cohesive. So I think “genocide” can fit, even if it’s a bit different than the Holocaust.
Similar issues crop up, though - if merely relocating a group of people is genocide, what are we to call something like Australia’s Stolen Generation, a much more direct and deliberate attempt to destroy the culture and cohesiveness of a group?
Also, I’m sufficiently materialist to accept that the primary motive for the relocation was good old fashioned greed: removing Natives from valuable lands, which were then handed to white settlers or speculators via lottery.
Agreed, I’m not sure what the OP is aiming at bring up the Bataan death march. It doesn’t serve well as a comparison if the purpose is to further the thesis that the Trail of Tears was genocide. I’ve never heard the Bataan death march referred to as genocide, because it wasn’t genocide. That doesn’t make it any more or less horrible, and it was quite horrible, it just means it doesn’t fit the definition of the word genocide.
This is sad, and scary.
It invites the comparison of intent: was the intent of either to kill large numbers of people, or merely to move them along? In both cases, it’s almost impossible to say for certain. Excuses can be made that the environment was harsher than expected, that supplies weren’t properly distributed, that it was a case of mismanagement. On the other hand, charges could be made that the high death toll was exactly what was intended and desired.
Intent is damned hard to demonstrate, especially when it’s so significantly evil that anyone practicing it would take care not to produce evidence. (The Nazis were cagey about the Holocaust, leaving relatively few incriminating documents. They were evil…but not stupid.)
Historical research is hard as hell.
I don’t have an opinion on the OP, but I will note that the Armenian genocide included a death march into the Syrian desert, inflicted on women and children. And the term was coined in response to those atrocities.
Wikipedia cited Alfred Cave on the Trail Of Tears. I found a copy of his article Abuse of Power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 online: the word “Genocide” appears only once in the article, as part of the title of another cited article. I have excised the unsupported claim at Wikipedia.
I made a claim in another thread regarding ToT genocide, based on the erroneous wiki citation: I retract it here.
Does the application of the term “genocide” change the fundamental nature of what happened?
I don’t see point of worrying about whether or not the ToT counts as genocide. It does not make an event more or less significant, more or less wrong, or more or less justified simply by bringing it under an umbrella term.
Lobbying for a particular term feels like label envy to me. “Hey; that event got labeled genocide, and mine didn’t. Not fair!” And that, in turn, diminishes emphasis on the event itself.
I don’t know enough about the Trail of Tears to make a comment. But I’ve studied the Bataan Death March closely, and I do feel confident in saying that it was intended just to move them.
General Kawane’s plan anticipated 25,000 prisoners. This number is right in line with the Japanese force assessment numbers. The Japanese assumed that the Americans only had US troops and a handful of Filipino forces. The idea that there were 76,000 men on Bataan came as a total shock to them. Such a force should have been able to run the Japanese off of the peninsula. So the US couldn’t have that large of a force. Or at least that was the circular logic that they had been using for months. The idea that it was a large, but under nourished and badly supplied wasn’t guessed at.
And that basic logic turned the whole thing into a sick joke. Kawane expected the men to be in fairly good condition. He expected them to be able to use their own rations for the first day. He expected them to be able to march a full day’s march (19 miles). All of this was quite reasonable in light of other Allied surrenders. Every other surrender was of men who could have complied Kawane’s expectations. Of course all of this was a dream. The men were on the edge of starvation, they had no supplies. And they were moving at a fraction of the speed expected. And there was no food or water supplied for the men that took three days to do that first march to Balanga. And while supplies were better on the later legs, the very fact that the men had to march at all condemned a lot of them to death.
But all that said there was a minority of the senior commanders who did want to punish the Americans. There were commands given to kill prisoners. But only a minority of commanders received such orders and a lot of them refused. And everyone agreed that the orders did not come from the commanding General, Homma, but instead by lower officers.
So yes there was some intentional savagery inflicted on the marchers. But the majority of the deaths were due to simple mistaken assumptions.
Cool. Thank’ee. This is a subject I know quite little about, and am glad to have the perspective.