Or, as they say on the Left, "Indigenous Peoples Day"...
Happy indigenous peoples day. pic.twitter.com/xj5sx4Ylkp
— brink (@brinkofill) October 10, 2022
For a comprehensive corrective to all the anti-Columbus, noble savage b.s., see Robert Royal's 1492 and All That: Political Manipulations of History (1992).
Leftocrats still refuse to accept that before white people arrived, the Americas were rife with warring tribes whose goals were food, women, and territory, and the tribes roamed everywhere in search of those things.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I would like to point out that most of what constitutes our understanding of Native American culture owes almost all of it to Europeans: the lovely dyes they used on feathers and in their costumes, the colorful glass beads and bells, horses, sheep, silversmithing, metal knives, and later, guns and casinos. They were a Stone Age people who are still struggling with modern life, and they are NOT (and never were) the Noble Savage or the Spiritual Ecologist so beloved of white liberals.
Just a few points. Natives did not, nor do wear costumes. Costumes are for pretend.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't have some of the advancements of Europeans like gunpowder and guns, but they were not Stone Age. Natives had government, traded with other tribes, and in some cases built large elaborate structures. The people who built Snaketown outside of present day Phoenix were capable of stone carving before the Egyptians constructed the pyramids.
Yes, there was warfare between some tribes. Not everything is rosy in any culture.
Some schools teach that there are no Natives. My sister encountered this as teacher with young kids. There were kids that told her. She corrected them. They didn't realize who she is.
The Myth of the Noble Savage is what drives (in part) the anti-Columbus sentiment:
ReplyDeleteThe modern myth of the noble savage is most commonly attributed to the 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. He believed the original “man” was free from sin, appetite or the concept of right and wrong, and that those deemed “savages” were not brutal but noble.
(https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-myth-of-the-noble-savage-55316)
The reality is that the original inhabitants of the western hemisphere (whenever and however they got here -- there are some VERY wild ideas out there) were ... ... human. And thus subject to the same weaknesses, vices, and issues that all other humans have, be they Northern European, Asian, Pacific, African, or whatever. Slavery and warfare were common amongst the tribes.
The problem was that they were outclassed, numerically and technologically, by the settlers from the Old World and their descendants ... many of whom were greedy bigots, or fools believing in the Noble Savage. When it came down to the wire, things got really really ugly between the two cultures, and that's echoed through the generations.
Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), they had the same potential for greatness as well. Multiple Native Americans have contributed greatly to western civilization over the years.
That the original Americans didn't invent gunpowder doesn't mean they were primitive. They just perfected the use of other tools, and survived quite nicely.
My basic issue with Columbus Day cancellation is that it's based on that stupid Myth. Columbus certainly didn't bring peace and joy to the New World; the man wanted to be rich and famous, after all!
But neither did he introduce European vices to the natives. European diseases maybe. But vices were here in the plenty.
(As a counterpoint, read up on the history of syphilis sometime; either it appeared spontaneously in Europe following the discovery of the Americas, or horny soldiers and sailors brought back after their tour in the New World.)