StarDoor said:
All you've done is counter my general arguments with highly specific exceptions. 1.) True, native populations were forced aside by whites. But how was this different than the tribes fighting among themselves? It's not like they were all innocent victims. Even the Iroquois Confederacy subjugated other tribes through warfare and forced adoption. 2.) My point about diplomacy is about sovereignty. Did any of the indigenous tribes have a state, in any meaningful sense? What power did they exert over their territory? You say the Iroquois were advanced, but they didn't even have a writing system for their language. How can diplomacy ever be fair if only one side can record the treaties? 3.) 90% of the natives were killed by accidental disease spread, but we should ignore that because less than 1% were killed by purposeful disease spread? 4.) Broken treaties are even more irrelevant, unless you think that white Americans are the only people to have ever broken treaties in human history. How much land do you think was taken because of broken treaties? How much land do you think the indigenous peoples "owned" in the first place? The entire continent? If you only count land that they lived on and used for agriculture, hunting, and gathering, it would just be around 3% of that. Whites have never committed a unique crime. If they had the opportunity, every Old World population would have done the same thing to the indigenous Americans, if not worse. Unless you drop your anti-white bias, I won't argue this with you any further. |
I know this is late, but since this thread got bumped regarding this post, I'd like to point out at The Cherokee Nation had an alphabet, newspaper, and system of government.
Sequoyah moved west to Arkansas and continued his work. Finally, after twelve years of labor, ridicule and abuse he finally reduced the complex language into 86 symbols, each representing a unique sound of Cherokee speech. In 1821, after a demonstration of the system to amazed tribal elders, the Cherokee Nation adopted his alphabet, now called a 'syllabary'. Thousands of Cherokees learned to read and write within a few years.
In 1824 the Cherokee National Council at New Echota, Georgia, honored him with a silver medal, which he proudly wore for the rest of his life, and later with an annuity of $300, which his widow continued to receive after his death.
By 1825, the Bible and numerous religious hymns and pamphlets, educational materials and legal documents and books of every description were translated into the Cherokee language.
In 1827, the Cherokee National Council appropriated funds to print the first Indian newspaper published in the United States.
https://www.manataka.org/page81.html
During 1898–1906, beginning with the Curtis Act of 1898, the US federal government all but dissolved the former Cherokee Nation's governmental and civic institutions, to make way for the incorporation of Indian Territory into the new state of Oklahoma. From 1906 to 1938, the structure and function of the tribal government was not clearly defined. After the dissolution of the tribal government of the Cherokee Nation in the 1900s and the death of William Charles Rogers in 1917, the Federal government began to appoint chiefs to the Cherokee Nation in 1919. The service time for each appointed chief was so brief that it became known as "Chief for a Day." Six men fell under this category, the first being A. B. Cunningham who served from November 8 to November 25.[3] The short service times were often just long enough to have one sign a treaty, usually to cede more land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation
