By Dray Breezy
October 23, 2020
Christopher Columbus, the most well known anti-indigenous bigot.
This history of racist policy towards Indigenous Americans is long and full of terror. The assault on the Indigenous American community has three prongs, introduce disease, attack the lives, attack the culture. The eradication of Native Americans began with our beloved Christopher Columbus’s during his second voyage (1493–1496).
The crew of his ship became ill, probably from influenza, and infected the Native populations of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica. The indigenous population had no immunity to these new diseases, so the impact was severe. Disease combined with the violence of the Spanish colonizers decimated the indigenous population. Columbus was directly responsible for the decimation of these groups, he encouraging the raping, pillaging and material exploitation, so much so, that he returned to Spain as a prisoner.
To Genocide or not to Genocide?
In the context of Western Imperialism and the Native Americans, the term genocide is often used. While the goals for Western Imperialism weren’t always to solely kill the native population, as with the Third Reich, the Native American populations were seen as collateral damage or a small obstacle in between what the imperialists wanted, which was wealth.
Wealth has always been the driving factor for oppression in this country. Racism and bigotry are a means to an end towards that goal. Racism in America provided the emotional argument which kept black people enslaved, wealth help create the legal argument. Enslaved people and their free labor were a huge source of capital for the Southern states and Northern states. Racism in America allowed early settlers to rationalize their killing of Native Americans, so they could get what they wanted, which was land. Land is equal to wealth. With Columbus, “his expedition’s goal was not to kill Indians, but as its leaders and men pursued their main objective—acquiring gold—they did exactly that.” Understanding how these institutions massively profited off the exploitation of these groups and their descendants might help ya’ll understand the call for reparations for those same descendants.
To obtain gold, Spaniards needed Indigenous people’s’ knowledge and labor, so they enslaved them, using violence to terrorize and intimidate Native peoples into submission. This has been a tactic of Imperialist Nations throughout history, Japan’s Imperialism in China, Great Britain’s Imperialism in India, and China’s current Imperialism in Africa. Some accounts, such as one by Bartolomé de Las Casas of Spain detail making bets “as to who would slit a man in two, or cut off his head at one blow” or tearing “babes from their mother’s breast by their feet, and dash[ing] their heads against the rocks,” These heinous actions are clearly f****** genocidal intent.
Patterns of Racism
History has shown that bigotry and fascism often follow certain patterns. I want you all to begin recognizing the patterns of racist policy in America. This idea will come up again and again over the duration of this podcast. The patterns and negative feedback loops of bigotry are visible if you know what you’re looking for, and admit that they actually exist.
Racism against brown people wasn’t solely extrajudicial killings and segregation. It’s comprehensive legislative policy which reinforces a strict hierarchy system which places indigenous people and black people at the bottom. When those people resist these oppressive laws, their respective governments punish them. See what Trump did in Portland a few months ago with the secret police kidnapping civilians, how he gassed protestors in front of the White house so he could have a photo op and “send a message”.
Columbus began this negative feedback cycle which continues to this day.
These oppressive tactics are rooted in the pursuit of wealth. Leaders all over the world that put profit over the people use similar tactics to create a permanent underclass, often modeling American racism. The foundation of Hitler’s policy towards the Jews were inspired by America’s treatment of Black people. Issa fact.
Western imperialists will regularly wage war and rape against native people in order to terrorize them into submission. Violence fueled by bigotry was one of many methods in achieving the West’s Imperialist goals of excessive wealth and complete power and dominion over the land. Violence, then, was central to Spanish colonization in the Caribbean, although far more Indians died from disease, malnutrition, and starvation.
So let’s keep in mind Colombus never stepped his crusty feet on American soil. However he did provoke exploration in the region. The violence and disease amongst indigenous people accelerated during the settlement of the Americas. Disease played a central role in the destabilization of thriving Native American communities. Previous to the arrival of the settlers, there were approximately 18 million indigenous people living in North America. Their numbers began to be drastically reduced.
Disease and War
In 1696, smallpox spread rapidly, destroying Native American communities from the Carolinas to the Mississippi River. There are little records on total death counts but the impact of disease was severe. This continued into the 1770’s, transmitted by Spanish expeditions. In the 1830’s malaria decimated almost 90 percent of the Chinooks, a native population in the northwest.
Alongside battling disease, from 1770’s- 1815, Native Americans had to deal with a hostile ass military force called the U.S Army. The United States expansionist policy left no room for Native American autonomy, freedom or safety. U.S forces burned hundreds of Indian towns in New York, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, western Virginia, Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Western Florida. In 1782, a Pennsylvania militia surprised a group of 100 Christian Indigenous people in Ohio. They took a vote which led to them killing all of the men, women, and children. A classic case of how often American Christians can and will compromise their values for wealth. I guess the commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” was just a suggestion.
In 1779, the U.S declared war on the Iroquois to punish them for defending themselves. 200 were killed, 1000 died in refugee camps.
In 1810, The Red Stick Creek tribe mobilized against American expansion, Andrew Jackson, in true American fashion, decided to have them all exterminated. The battle at Horseshoe bend killed 800 American Indians. 200-300 of them were murdered while trying to escape across the river.
American Entitlement
Let’s keep in mind that these are people that are trying to protect their homes and families and American Imperialism is killing them for doing so. They were here, living on this land, for thousands of years, and the American settlers had no care, or empathy for that. All the settlers had was entitlement. A special kind of entitlement that is bred into Americans. The same entitlement that we have when we travel to foreign lands and expect people to speak English. The same entitlement that encourages us to resist bi-lingual government signs. The same entitlement that got Ahmaud Arbery killed.
It wasn’t that the American government decided that it wanted to kill all Indigenous people , we just decided we valued expansion and wealth over the lives of Native Americans. This practice continues today, the Keystone Pipeline sound familiar?
On March 3, 1819, President Grant commissioned a peace policy with tribes. This policy recommended that quote “ the Indian should, as far as practical, be consolidated on a few reservations, and provided with “permanent individual homes”; that the tribal relation should be abolished; that lands should be allotted [to individuals] not in common; that the Indian should speedily become a citizen of the United States, enjoy the protection of the law, and made [accountable to it]; that, finally, it was the duty of the Government to afford the Indians all reasonable aid in their preparation for citizenship by education in Industry and in the arts of civilization.” End Quote. In reality this law removed the Native American agents that supervised reservations and appointed Christian Missionaries. It only further advanced the influence and control of the American Government and the church over Native American people
Bureau of Indian Affairs
In 1824, The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created by John C. Calhoun. The Bureau oversaw the removal era of Native American policy which was spurned because the Native People were on land that America wanted to colonize. Up until this era, the American policy towards Native Americans was extermination. When this type of extermination was no longer plausible or morally acceptable, the American government began working on new policies to subjugate the Native American people.
Indian Removal Act
In 1830, Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. All Native Americans living east of the Mississippi were relocated into Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. Since there was no more Western territory to push them towards, and extermination was no longer an option, cultural eradication became the next goal. Don’t get it twisted, American racism is intelligent and methodical. It also evolves with the times.
When the Native Americans resisted their genocide and these oppressive tactics, America waged war on them again. In 1832, during The Black Hawk War, the American army fired on 200 noncombatants, killing all of them. In the Second Seminole War (1836-1842) the American government decided to arrest chiefs during peace negotiations, essentially tricking and blackmailing Native American populations into surrender. American diplomats would often trick Native Americans into signing over their lands, having them sign documents that they could not even read.
1850’s Gold Rush
During the 1850’s the gold rush was horrible to Native Americans. Settlers enslaved Native American children, and formed militias to hunt them down. From 1848-1860 the Native American population in California and Oregon decreased by 120,000.
Massacres not Wars
Many of the wars we learn about in history, were not wars, they were massacres. In 1864- Cheyeness at Sand Creek- 500 NA were killed 2/3 women and children. In 1863-Shoshones at Bear River- 300 NA were murdered by American volunteers. Yes you heard that right, Americans volunteered to murder indigenous people.
In 1870- Blackfeet on the Marias River, 200 of the Piegan Blackfeet Indians mostly women and children were murdered by the American army.
In 1890- Lakotas at wounded knee- 300 NA were murdered by the U.S Army.
The American government wanted the Native Americans land. They crafted racist policy and inflicted unwarranted violence to achieve that goal, which was economic superiority. Racist policy in America is often rooted in economics and promotes the concept that the wealth of white men matters more than the lives of brown people.
When outright extermination became too expensive. American leaders came up with the idea of cultural genocide through assimilation. Carl Schurz [a former Commissioner of Indian Affairs] concluded that it would cost a million dollars to kill an Native American in warfare, whereas it cost only $1,200 to school an Native American child for eight years.
In 1824, The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created by John C. Calhoun. In 1830, the U.S. forced Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi to make room for U.S. expansion with the Indian Removal Act. The boarding school experience for Native American children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first Indian boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington.
Introduction of Boarding Schools
However this schooling only had one purpose, indoctrinating Native American children into subservience and grooming them to be the permanent underclass for white society. Essentially white people wanted Native Americans to be…black people.
The father of these institutions was Richard Pratt. Richard Pratt was a Civil War Veteran. He believed assimilation was the only way to solve the “Indian Problem”. Historically, he is most known for the phrase, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”.
He came to his conclusions from the time he spent enslaving black and Native American war criminals that had fought against the American army. Pratt became the jailer of 72 Cheyenne, Caddo, Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche prisoners at Fort Marion, Florida. Pratt eventually got these prisoners to learn English and become their own guards. This effect is also known as f****** Stockholm Syndrome.
His success at brutally turning the people he had imprisoned convinced Pratt and Native American reformers in Congress to authorize the Indian Bureau to turn the old Carlisle cavalry barracks into the first federally run off-reservation boarding school. Pratt believed the methods he used on prisoners of war would be just as effective…on children.
Slavery is the Ultimate Americanizer
Pratt himself had an interesting belief system. He believed slavery was quote “a more humane and real civilizer” end quote than the reservation system. Slavery, he thought, was the ultimate “Americanizer” — quote “forcing Negroes to live among us and becoming producers,” end quote, as opposed to the Indian reservation system. Pratt was one of the many white Americans that believed slavery was a gateway to integration and assimilation and sought to impose the structure used from slavery onto Native Americans in order to get them to submit. Once again in this context assimilation=submission. The most saddening feature of Pratt’s ideology was that it was viewed as progressive for his time. I guess when your only previous method was extermination, slavery does seem like a progressive idea.
So there were two reasons for these boarding schools, to obliterate Native American society and to use Native American children as leverage against Native American elders, chiefs, or resistance leaders. The first class at Carlisle would be drawn from those most responsible for General Custer’s crushing defeat, in the Battle of Little big horn, the Lakota tribe.
In 1879, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ezra Hayt ordered Pratt to recruit first from Pine Ridge and Rosebud tribes, “because quote the children would be hostages for the good behavior of their people.” The children were not taken willingly, many of them were violently coerced.
Parents who resisted sending their children to these schools were often severely punished. Government officials withheld food rations that families depended on. Fathers were sent to prison. In the most extreme cases, law enforcement ripped children from the arms of their mother’s.
Once again, the mission of these schools wasn’t to educate, they were to get Native American children and their families to submit. These kids traveled hundreds of miles, with strangers, to boarding schools that were often formerly military barracks. At their arrival, they had their hair cut off and styled in Western cuts, they had to choose an Anglo-Saxon name, and they were forbidden to speak their native language. For many tribes, the cutting of hair is very traumatic, it symbolizes the grieving of a relative. We’ve also discussed in our Janet Mock episode how oppressive cultures restrict bodily expression, the most obvious being the styling of one’s hair.
Curriculum
At the schools, the children were encouraged to follow strict gender roles. “Half of each school day was spent on industrial training. Girls learned to cook, clean, sew, care for poultry and do laundry for the entire institution. Boys learned industrial skills such as blacksmithing, shoemaking or performed manual labor such as farming.” This way of life deeply contrasted with the more egalitarian nature of Indigenous American communities and often gave these children skills that did not translate well into tribe culture.
The missionaries state that goals of these schools were to teach Native Americans about the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families, and the proper ways in which white men were responsible for all the good things in the world.
Since the schools were required to be as self-sufficient as possible, students did the majority of the day to day labor. By 1900, economic practicality became the goal and school curriculum slanted even further toward industrial training while academics languished. During the summer months, these schools would often send children to work as domestic labor , also known as slaves, for white families where they were physically and sexually abused. These boarding schools were also deadly. In the first two years, 16 Native children died at Carlisle, and eight died after being sent home. More children died than graduated.
Between 1879-1900, the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened 24 off-reservation boarding schools. By 1900, three-quarters of all Native children had been enrolled in boarding schools, with a third of this number in off-reservation boarding schools like Carlisle. Confinement, deprivation of privileges, threat of corporal punishment or restriction of diet were methods used often in order to break the will and spirit of these children.
By 1900, 307 boarding schools and day schools had opened across the country, educating more than 26,000 Native students.
Carlisle became the model for 26 Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools in 15 states and territories, plus hundreds of private boarding schools sponsored by religious denominations. From 1879 until 1918, over 10,000 Native American children from 140 tribes attended Carlisle, however, only 158 students graduated.
As these boarding schools are literally stealing Native American children the Native American community are also still being ravaged by disease, war and American imperialism.
The continuance of terrorism through the Dawes Act
In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act- The Act divided up Native American lands by allotting, not more that 160 acres to adult male tribal members, for private ownership, and then declaring the ‘left over’ land as ‘surplus’ and selling it to non-Indians. The land between natives was given priority to non-natives. This officially legalized the breakup of Native American communities and tribes
Under this Act, the Native American tribes lost some 90 million acres of land, an area the size of California. Property ownership and communal gathering is so important to feelings of self-worth within an individual. Racist policy in America knows this and therefore controlling how oppressed groups congregate and where they live has always been a defining feature of that policy.
With Black people there were black codes and redlining, with the Japanese there were internment camps, with the Native Americans there was the Dawes Act. Pay attention, I really all want you to start noticing the signs. Controlling where you live.
This is what racism looks like, it’s not just being mean or nasty to people of color. Racism is policy. The government decides where you live and directs the way you can build your communities, controls the language you can speak, takes your children, and directs the dominant white community to enforce the rules with violence.