The Second Indians
- team Vantage
P.V(PreVerse) : History in books is written by winners, but its accuracy is retained in only in the hearts of lost.
For more than 500 years, the Indigenous American Indian people have been subjected to the whims of the white man. Who had sword in one hand and bible in the other, who swept across this land like a plague of locusts . What the people of United Stated did not know that their so called enlightened nation was setting an example that would be followed in the 20th century by some of the worst butchers known to man including Adolf Hitler.
In his biography of Hitler John Toland wrote , Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed to the studies of United States History. And he often praised in his circle the efficiency of America's extermination by starvation and uneven combat of red savages who could not be tamed by captivity .
Centuries ago and since then on American soil , whenever the people of two civilizations encountered each other, both did their best and in accordance with whatever their culture do on meeting new people. The native Indians tried to embrace and assimilate new people while simultaneously the so called descent white Europeans faced Red Indians with a single minded objective of obliterating them like a cactus in their paths. The response of the response of the hospitality naturally led to conflict and ultimately war. But wars of no normal kind, nothing of the type any of us have ever heard of, for the reason war had different meaning and purpose for both of them. This strange war was unbiased in principle yet so far completely one sided in cruelty and barbarism. Hereby in the test below we will try to illustrate in front of you , the nature of conflict between the descent white men and Indigenous Red Indians which was a direct consequence of the conflict in nature of these two entirely different mental species.
Let us start with the end where white man was successfully able to vanish an entire race of native Americans from their subcontinent. There were numerous reasons responsible for it. But primary - well, if not primary- but an important reason of why descent white men have consistently defeated Indians in war is because of the culture's different understanding of war's purpose and conduct. The purpose of war for white culture is to conquer, to subdue, to take, to win(and one would argue that this is the purpose not merely of war within white culture but of white culture as a whole). Whites will do anything to win. They will lie and cheat. They will murder the non combatants. They will destroy foodstocks , they will destroy the environment. They will pretend to be friendly; keeping in mind always the wisdom of John Hay, private secretary to Abraham Lincoln : "In reality the white man was not philanthropists , he would treat the black or yellow or brown man humanly if it was convenient, but if the dark skinned resisted, the white man would destroy him. Biology according to the scientific cant of the day required no less, that fittest might survive. "
This nature of deceitful warfare was foreign to the indigenous culture.
Many indigenous American cultures such as Zuni Pueblo, Semangs and Mbutus were unwarlike or as the Erich Fromm puts it , " the institution of war was absent ". Yet even for most of the warlike indigenous cultures , war is nothing like we experience or for the most part can even conceptualize. Their battles were nothing like any of the western mind can expect, given the deadly and total nature of western warfare. The red Indian battles were more like giant games of capture the flag or paintball with only potential life and death consequence and with deeper social significance. Instead of bloody and full of "slaughter", warfare among traditional indigenous people was as anthropologist Dr. Stanley Diamond noted : a kind of play in which "taking a life was an occasion". On the contrary western wars were complete annihilation of the enemy including their women and children. In many cases, it becomes worse for women if they are subjected to rape and physical abuse before being murdered.
Even at the expense of their existence , many Indians could not comprehend the western concept of total warfare. Long after whites had exterminated most of the mission Indians of California, the Anthropologist Ruth Benedict tried to talk war to the remnants but "It was impossible" . Their understanding of warfare was abysmal. They did not have the basis in their own culture upon which this idea could exist .
A major attribute of the behavior of Indian wars was to demonstrate their way of bravery and superiority. War only plays and importance of being the most aggressive expression to justify and prove that. 'What's the point of killing if bravery is not proven to the warrior attempted on'. Killing at a distance is and act of cowardice to them .
Coming in actual personal contact with the enemy by touching him with held in the hand or with a part of the person was the bravest act that cold be performed. Similar belief in exhibition of chivalry was also prominent in ancient Greek cultures of Sparta and Athens like shown in Hollywood movie '300'.
Moreover participation in any conflict was completely involuntary without any pretext if prejudice or cowardice associated.
No matter what the occasion for hostility , it is particularized, personalized and ritualized. Their civilization represses hostility in particular, fails to use or structure it, even denies it. Everything was unlike descent white man did.
Part of the Indian problem has always been the basic presumed notions of feeling and behavioral expressions. Even though their loss has been tangible, as well as terrible, even though they were pushed out of their homes and almost exterminated out of physical as well as cultural existence, they really find themselves unable to hate, well atleast not the way white men do. Its embedded in the Indian mentality that the enemy is as important part of the universe as they are. This is an entirely different notion of what constitutes an enemy, something that is opposite of as articulated and enacted by the westerners.
Dr. Stanley Diamond started off his book 'In search of a Primitive : A critique of Civilization' with an intriguing first line : " Civilizations originates in conquest abroad and repression at home" . Further he proceeds his exploration by articulating the self evident yet unspoken observations that the artifacts, impulses and institutions of a civilization - cities, libraries, armies, institutions of justice, bureaucracy ,military inventory, accumulation of wealth, Banks, technological improvements , city-states, nation-states, empires, socioeconomic concepts such as capitalism, communism, corporations etc. are not realized out of thin air , but that they require enormous resources to be funneled towards the creation of all these , and this funneling requires force, both against enemies at the frontier and against citizens exploited at home.
The statement can also be read at the personal psychological level, as the exploitation that marks this way of being, requires that individuals perceive others as objects to conquer, and must repress their own feelings of empathy toward anyone or anything.
Diamond also wrote about morality in a civilized world : " Our moral syntaxes has no predicate. Hence we speak of doing good, good for its own sake, or evil. We convert each to a pure substantive , That is what (anthropologist) Paul Radin meant when he observed that the subject (or object ) to which love, remorse , sorrow, maybe directed is regarded as secondary in our civilization. But among native Indians, the converse holds. Morality 'is' behavior, values are not detached, not substantives, the good, the true, the beautiful or rather, the ideas of these things do not exist. Therefore one does not fall 'in' love, one loves another ; and that is an intricately learned experience, as hate (in western psyche) also is.
They don’t analyze values as we do, they just practice it without giving any fraction of mind to it unlike us. As soon as we found ourselves capable of analyzing values, they became commodities, detached from ourselves, objects for social scientists. " . Does it not make you wonder what's wrong with these people. Why aren't they normal ?
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
----- excerpts mixed from "The Culture of Make Belief" by Derrick Jensen , Chapters - 'Redemption and Failure' and 'Flesh'