Who And What Was George Custer?

[Hilljackoutlaw]

This one won't be open forever so let's try and make a discussion of it.

I agree that the 100 million number is pushing it. But being conservative, it's still likely in the neighborhood of 50 million, no?

I also don't think "genocide" is quite the right term. But then, what is instead?

The highest estimate of pre contact population is 10million.

 

[rwc101]

The highest estimate of pre contact population is 10million.

Verifiably false. Where are you getting your info?

 

[RobertD]

The highest estimate of pre contact population is 10million.

For North America or the United States?

That seems low for North America, maybe right for the United States

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

Verifiably false. Where are you getting your info?

Correct...im seriously just curious if anybody that started the derailing of this thread have any clue what their talking about or are just being apologists for the kind of people that helped create their freedom to be an apologist for them. Your here free in America to vilify men of the past because of those men. Thats a fact right, wrong, or indifferent how it happened.

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

I'm also always curious to know how people of today are so sure of themselves on where they would of stood on an issue of a 150 years ago.
I can confidently say idk how I would of felt about these issues if I lived in that time.

 

[rwc101]

Correct...im seriously just curious if anybody that started the derailing of this thread have any clue what their talking about or are just being apologists for the kind of people that helped create their freedom to be an apologist for them. Your here free in America to vilify men of the past because of those men. Thats a fact right, wrong, or indifferent how it happened.

What utter tripe. My freedom of speech is not derived from the genocide of Native Americans.

 

[RobertD]

I'm also always curious to know how people of today are so sure of themselves on where they would of stood on an issue of a 150 years ago.
I can confidently say idk how I would of felt about these issues if I lived in that time.

Shoot, in all likelihood a majority of us would've been very anti-Indian at the time, considering the feelings of most folks back then. I think if we lived in their time we'd be more likely to feel as they did.

 

[rwc101]

The same people that bleat "America isn't racist" can't bring themselves to call murdering indigenous people for land what it was.

 

[geetar]

I view these topics with mixed feelings. Im thankful to be a white man who lives in America but I wish we could have gotten along better with the Natives. I think we could all have learned a lot from them as hunters if they were still around in larger numbers. Thanks for posting the photo Shrapnel

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

What utter tripe. My freedom of speech is not derived from the genocide of Native Americans.

Sort of correct...if you don't mind me asking what events in history did our freedoms come from?

 

[WildWill]

Visited for the first time this fall very powerful place to visit. Custer was neither a monster nor a hero but a man molded by the times. If you get a chance I reccomend visiting the Washita battlefield if ever in western Oklahoma. Here are two of my favorite books about the man both great reads.

 

[rwc101]

Sort of correct...if you don't mind me asking what events in history did our freedoms come from?

Where all rights come from. A bunch of dudes sitting around who decide who gets rights and who doesn't.

 

[Doublecluck]

Utter nonsense, 90% died from disease not war or intentional genocide. Not to mention the continent is covered, particularly the west, in the skeletons of the dead with weapon marks from wars long before the settlers arrived.

 

[rwc101]

Utter nonsense, 90% died from disease not war or intentional genocide.

So just a lil genocide?

 

[shrapnel]

This one won't be open forever so let's try and make a discussion of it.

I agree that the 100 million number is pushing it. But being conservative, it's still likely in the neighborhood of 50 million, no?

I also don't think "genocide" is quite the right term. But then, what is instead?

You have to consider what was happening on this continent since the Revolutionary War. The need for expansion and methods to do it were due to the circumstances of those times, not 21st century reparation concepts.

I won’t defend Sherman’s philosophy on the matter, but at the time, the Indian was a serious obstacle to expansion. The American Indian had peaked in the Stone Age and to think that the progression of the European invasion and subsequent battles wouldn’t happen is silly.

Of course, many consider that happened was wrong and the American Indian was the victim of Manifest Destiny or genocide, yet conflict was unavoidable. How could you leave some of the vast areas of this country to the Indian to continue to live the life they knew and develop everywhere else? That wouldn’t work either.

When you research history and find a group conquering another culture, you never see where the conquerors tried to assimilate the conquered people into their society as America did. It may not have been perfect or politically correct, but that was the attempt.

Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, Crazy Horse, Gall, Sitting Bull and many other leaders of those cultures fought for what they believed was right. There was no wrong side in that battle, it was inevitable.

 

[rwc101]

How could you leave some of the vast areas of this country to the Indian to continue to live the life they knew and develop everywhere else?

By leaving some of the vast areas of this country to the Indian to continue to live the life they knew.

 

[rwc101]

When you research history and find a group conquering another culture, you never see where the conquerors tried to assimilate the conquered people into their society as America did.

False. Read some Roman history for starters.

 

[RobertD]

You have to consider what was happening on this continent since the Revolutionary War. The need for expansion and methods to do it were due to the circumstances of those times, not 21st century reparation concepts.

I won’t defend Sherman’s philosophy on the matter, but at the time, the Indian was a serious obstacle to expansion. The American Indian had peaked in the Stone Age and to think that the progression of the European invasion and subsequent battles wouldn’t happen is silly.

Of course, many consider that happened was wrong and the American Indian was the victim of Manifest Destiny or genocide, yet conflict was unavoidable. How could you leave some of the vast areas of this country to the Indian to continue to live the life they knew and develop everywhere else? That wouldn’t work either.

When you research history and find a group conquering another culture, you never see where the conquerors tried to assimilate the conquered people into their society as America did. It may not have been perfect or politically correct, but that was the attempt.

Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, Crazy Horse, Gall, Sitting Bull and many other leaders of those cultures fought for what they believed was right. There was no wrong side in that battle, it was inevitable.

All those names and you left out my man Red Cloud?!? Haha!

I understand completely, though. (I was lucky enough to take a few semesters of Native American History with a really sharp Native American historian during undergrad.) I just struggle to reconcile the "it was inevitable" narrative with the reality of what happened to millions of people.

It can be useful/convenient to see it as a process of colonization that wasn't that different, in many respects, from what tribes had done to each other for millenia. But I'm afraid that approach allows us to absolve ourselves of the need to admit just how awful the whole process was.

Just like the enslavement of Africans in my part of the US, it isn't unique to America and it isn't something that makes this country irredeemable. But it is a nasty stain on its history that we have to be clear-eyed about.

I think we're often afraid of being held accountable for the "sins of the father," when we as individuals aren't guilty of those same sins. The problem though, is that we wind up looking away from the sins altogether.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

When you research history and find a group conquering another culture, you never see where the conquerors tried to assimilate the conquered people into their society as America did. It may not have been perfect or politically correct, but that was the attempt.

I think the important caveat here is that there are people alive today that had there lives torn apart by this "forced assimilation".

Whole thing hits different when it's family members you know not long dead people in a book.

 

[MLC]

View attachment 186636

100 million? I think you are rewriting history!