Racism against Native AmericansMembers of the
Muscogee
(Creek)
Nation in Oklahoma around 1877.
Notice the European and African ancestry members.
The Creek were originally from the Alabama region.
Native Americans, who have lived on the North America continent for at least 20,000 years, had an enormously complex impact on American history and racial relations.
During the colonial and independent periods, a long series of conflicts were waged, with the primary objective of obtaining resources of Native Americans.
Through wars, massacres, forced displacement
(such as in the Trail of Tears),
and the imposition of treaties, land was taken and numerous hardships imposed. In 1540 AD, the first racial strife was with Spaniard Hernando de Soto's expedition who enslaved and murdered in many
New World communities.
In the early 1700s, the English had enslaved nearly 800 Choctaws.
After the creation of the United States, the idea of Indian removal gained momentum.
However, some Native Americans chose or were allowed to remain and avoided removal whereafter they were subjected to racist institutions in their ancestral homeland.
The Choctaws in Mississippi described their situation in 1849,
"we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died."
Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described Choctaws as having
"no nobility or virtue at all,"
and in some respect he found blacks, especially
native Africans,
more interesting and admirable, the red man's superior in every way.
The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt, that is, even worse than
black slaves.
Ideological expansionist justification
(Manifest Destiny)
included stereotyped perceptions of all Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages"
(as described in the United States Declaration of Independence)
despite successful American efforts at civilization as proven with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw.
An egregious attempt occurred with the California gold rush, the first two years of which saw the deaths of thousands of Native Americans.
Under Mexican rule in California, Indians were subjected to de facto enslavement under a system of peonage.
While in 1850, California formally entered the Union as a free state, with respect to the issue of slavery, the practice of Indian indentured servitude was not outlawed by the California Legislature until 1863.
Military and civil resistance by Native Americans has been a constant feature of American history.
So too have a variety of debates around issues of sovereignty, the upholding of treaty provisions, and the
civil rights
of
Native Americans under U.S. law.
We are not animals, we are founders of
HUMANITY
Muscogee
(Creek)
Nation in Oklahoma around 1877.
Notice the European and African ancestry members.
The Creek were originally from the Alabama region.
Native Americans, who have lived on the North America continent for at least 20,000 years, had an enormously complex impact on American history and racial relations.
During the colonial and independent periods, a long series of conflicts were waged, with the primary objective of obtaining resources of Native Americans.
Through wars, massacres, forced displacement
(such as in the Trail of Tears),
and the imposition of treaties, land was taken and numerous hardships imposed. In 1540 AD, the first racial strife was with Spaniard Hernando de Soto's expedition who enslaved and murdered in many
New World communities.
In the early 1700s, the English had enslaved nearly 800 Choctaws.
After the creation of the United States, the idea of Indian removal gained momentum.
However, some Native Americans chose or were allowed to remain and avoided removal whereafter they were subjected to racist institutions in their ancestral homeland.
The Choctaws in Mississippi described their situation in 1849,
"we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died."
Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described Choctaws as having
"no nobility or virtue at all,"
and in some respect he found blacks, especially
native Africans,
more interesting and admirable, the red man's superior in every way.
The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt, that is, even worse than
black slaves.
Ideological expansionist justification
(Manifest Destiny)
included stereotyped perceptions of all Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages"
(as described in the United States Declaration of Independence)
despite successful American efforts at civilization as proven with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw.
An egregious attempt occurred with the California gold rush, the first two years of which saw the deaths of thousands of Native Americans.
Under Mexican rule in California, Indians were subjected to de facto enslavement under a system of peonage.
While in 1850, California formally entered the Union as a free state, with respect to the issue of slavery, the practice of Indian indentured servitude was not outlawed by the California Legislature until 1863.
Military and civil resistance by Native Americans has been a constant feature of American history.
So too have a variety of debates around issues of sovereignty, the upholding of treaty provisions, and the
civil rights
of
Native Americans under U.S. law.
We are not animals, we are founders ofHUMANITY
No comments:
Post a Comment