Last night, I watched a sick western movie w/ Natives scalping settlers

[Jeffersons Ghost]

I didn't watch the whole movie, full of lies. Before reading this preview of a post I am researching, realize that Caucasian bounty hunters, scalped Native American men, women and children - from ANY tribe - to collect a rather paltry bounty. Very few Natives engaged in similar atrocities.

Hopefully, I can research and write PLIGHT OF NATIVE AMERICANS #2 The Eastern Atrocities by tomorrow.

PLIGHT OF NATIVE AMERICANS: #1 The Wild West

The Spanish Missions
The Spanish Missions in New Mexico were a series of religious outposts, established by Franciscan friars, under a charter from Spain, to facilitate the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity.

Fray Marcos de Niza, sent by Coronado, first entered New Mexico in 1539 and attempted to Christianize the indigenous people. Rich cultures and tribes they destroyed included at least 21 distinct groups, including the Pueblo, the Tiwa, the Navajo and the Apache. The missions also aimed to pacify resistance to the European invasion of tribal, Pre-Columbian homelands and loss of sacred traditions. Predictably, Native American nations, with diverse religious beliefs, resisted the effort to destroy their cultural heritages.

The Buffalo Wars
The history of the buffalo is entwined with the plight of the Native Americans, which settled grasslands and migrated with the massive herds. Native people came to rely on the bison, for food, clothing, shelter and religious worship. They used almost every part of the animal, including meat, skins, horns and even tail hairs.

By the 1800s, Native Americans began using horses to chase buffalo, which expanded their range. By then, trappers and traders had introduced guns to the region, killing millions of buffalo for hides, while leaving their sacred carcasses to rot. By the middle of the 19th century, even train passengers were shooting bison - for sport. "Buffalo" Bill Cody, who was hired to kill bison, personally slaughtered more than 4,000 of them in two years.

To make matters worse for wild buffalo, U.S. government officials actively destroyed them to defeat Native Americans, who resisted the takeover of their lands by invading settlers. American military commanders ordered troops to kill buffalo to deny natives an important food source.

The 1864 Scorched-Earth Campaign against the Navajo Nation
The epicenter of Navajo culture is Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “shay”), a historical and spiritual place in northeastern Arizona. Sheer canyon walls also made it a tribal stronghold in the 1860s, when nothing - other than the trees - was peachy for the Navajos. They were being attacked. Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson was following orders of Department of New Mexico, to kill or capture Navajos and send them to a reservation near Fort Sumner. To convince holdouts to surrender, Carson and his men stole their livestock and destroyed Navajo homes and crops. Among crops the soldiers destroyed was one not normally associated the desert — peaches. For centuries, the Navajo had tended peach orchards, in Canyon de Chelly.

The protective canyon walls and fertile basin had drawn various Native American tribes to Canyon de Chelly, for over 1,000 years. When the Navajos arrived, a small group of resident Hopis told them about peach trees, which thrived in their homeland, farther west. Navajos visited the Hopi villages, returned with peach seeds and planted them around White House Ruin, in Canyon de Chelly. The Spaniards had brought peach trees to North America in the 1600s. Navajos also found the canyon ideal for growing other crops, like wheat, corn, alfalfa, beans, melons and pumpkins. Kit Carson and his troops burned every crop and dwelling in the canyon. Then, federal troops captured Navajo men, women and children, who were forced into a death-march from northern Arizona to mid-eastern New Mexico.

[bitterross]

1. When was it made?

Please tell me that was a very old movie.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. Relatively old - but by then, educated producers knew the truth about scalping.

[MicaelS]

4. What was the title? n/t

[Jeffersons Ghost]

6. I didn't see the title, I was channel-surfing...

When I first tuned in, the Calvary was chasing some outlaws, attacking the settlers. Then the movie degraded, so I surfed on through to an old Star Trek spin-off, with Captain Janeway.

[NCLefty]

14. You can't tell us what it was called?

I don't know how to comment. /shrug

[USALiberal]

21. Check tv schedule then. Nt

[Brother Buzz]

3. A paltry bounty?

Some serious money was made in Northern California

Rewards ranged from $5 for every severed head in Shasta City in 1855 to 25 cents for a scalp in Honey Lake in 1863. One resident of Shasta City wrote about how he remembers seeing men bringing mules to town, each laden with eight to twelve Indian heads. Other regions passed laws that called for collective punishment for the whole village for crimes committed by Indians, up to the destruction of the entire village and all of its inhabitants. These policies led to the destruction of as many as 150 Native communities.

The state of California also got involved. The government paid about $1.1 Million in 1852 to militias to hunt down and kill Indians. In 1857 the California legislature allocated another $410,000 for the same purposes.
In 1856 the state of California paid 25 cents for each Indian scalp. In 1860 the bounty was increased to $5.

[RandySF]

5. My grandmother (in the SE United States) had a neighbor who had been scalped alive as a child

She knew her in the 1920's/30's. I don't think we can definitely say it never happened.

[packman]

7. I'm having trouble with your post

Are you saying, or implying, native Americans didn't scalp? They did among themselves and to others. If your post is about the savagery and brutality native Americans suffered at the hands of whites, I agree with you.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

8. Have all the trouble you want; but stick to the facts:

I said Natives rarely scalped other people. While some raiding tribes, like renegade Comanches, scalped other Natives to sell them to Indian traders and other tribes scalped racist invaders and Blue Coats, in retaliation, overall, "Very few Natives engaged in similar atrocities," as stated in the Opening Post.

Be sure and read reply #3 by Brother Buzz and post your replies to him, if you dare.

This OP is a preview of a future OP, again, as stated in the opening. Did you bother to read past the first paragraph?

[Triloon]

11. "Rarely" and "very few" are not facts. Please do continue your research.

If you dare. The pre colonial American natives were no strangers to cruelty and atrocity. No moreso than than any other people's on this planet. But there's no question that the European exiles in America could be experts at it.

[real Cannabis calm]

23. As a whole humans are a war-like species

And these conflicts date back into prehistory.

Is this an example?

We used to think the Iberian Peninsula was the Neanderthals’ final stronghold. It appeared that our species somehow failed to find a way into the region until about 35,000 years ago, leaving the last remaining Neanderthal population untouched. But stone tools from a cave in southern Spain may now sink that idea once and for all.

The tools suggest our species actually reached southern Spain 43,000 years ago, meaning Neanderthals may have vanished from Iberia soon after – at the same time that they disappeared from the rest of Europe.

Neanderthals lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years. Then just before 43,000 years ago, our species – Homo sapiens – arrived in the continent and quickly occupied the entire landmass, probably contributing to the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2191368-the-last-neanderthals-may-have-died-out-much-earlier-than-we-thought/#ixzz60HmUsB2g

[packman]

17. THIS is a fact - Europeans appropriated the practice from the Native Americans

Author and historian Mark van de Logt wrote, "Although military historians tend to reserve the concept of 'total war'", in which civilians are targeted, "for conflicts between modern industrial nations," the term "closely approaches the state of affairs between the Pawnees, the Sioux, and the Cheyennes. Noncombatants were legitimate targets. Indeed, the taking of a scalp of a woman or child was considered honorable because it signified that the scalp taker had dared to enter the very heart of the enemy's territory."[13]


Scalping Knife and Sheath, probably Sioux, early 19th century, Brooklyn Museum
Many tribes of Native Americans practiced scalping, in some instances up until the end of the 19th century. Of the approximately 500 bodies at the Crow Creek massacre site, 90 percent of the skulls show evidence of scalping. The event took place circa 1325 AD.[14]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping

I do not want a back-and-forth on this. I totally agree with you about the atrocities that were branded on the Natives and that are still being done. HOWEVER, you were in error to attribute scalping to the invading Europeans . They picked up the horrifying practice from the people that they were subjugating.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

9. How about slaughtering unarmed Natives - on reservations - for dancing?

The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee Massacre

Overview
By the end of the nineteenth century, due to a series of forced removals and brutal massacres at the hands of white settlers and the US Army, the native population of North America had dwindled to a mere fraction of what it had once been.

Because forced assimilation had nearly destroyed Native American culture, some tribal leaders attempted to reassert their sovereignty and invent new spiritual traditions. The most significant of these was the Ghost Dance, pioneered by Wovoka, a shaman of the Northern Paiute tribe.

The massacre at Wounded Knee, during which soldiers of the US Army 7th Cavalry Regiment indiscriminately slaughtered hundreds of Sioux men, women, and children, marked the definitive end of Indian resistance to the encroachments of white settlers.

During a solar eclipse on January 1, 1889, Wovoka, a shaman of the Northern Paiute tribe, had a vision. Claiming that a Native American Great Spirit had revealed to him a bountiful land of love and peace, Wovoka founded a spiritual movement called the Ghost Dance. He prophesied the reuniting of the remaining Indian tribes of the West and Southwest and the banishment of all evil from the world.

[pangaia]

33. Do you really think you are 'teaching' people here something we do not know about?

In either case, I wonder where you are doing your 'research.'

[malaise]

38. This is a Legit question

[lunatica]

10. Many, especially the Navajo were relocated to the Bay Area last Century

My mother, not a Native American, taught Child Development in pre school and Kindergarten in a facility called Hintil in the Oakland Unified School District. It’s for Native American children. She had a few Navajo friends. Our families got along very well. We went to many pow wows and ceremonies and funerals. She died but I have some original art stone sculptures from a Navajo artist friend of hers. He was a child when his parents took him along to reclaim Alcatraz Island. All the Indians had family stories and plenty of history to share. I’m very glad to have lived that chapter of my life.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

12. There are lots of Pueblo and Navajo people in New Mexico...

Most of them are as friendly and peaceful as their ancestors were.

[lunatica]

19. That's one of the main reasons I came to live in Santa Fe

Actually after living in Oakland in the Bay Area and working in administration in UC Berkeley I simply couldn’t imagine living in a place without immense racial and cultural diversity. It would be like living without a hand or a foot. I have a friend who has a house in New Mexico who asked me to house sit for her. She said I could try it for a while, sure that I would fall in love with the Land of Enchantment, and she was so right. The Native American culture woven through everything here is what convinced me. I grew up in Mexico so to me New Mexico is just about perfect. And the added fact that just about everyone here speaks Spanish is perfection.

No other state even recognizes the pre-Columbian history of this country, but New Mexico not only recognizes it but it permeates itself with the area’s complete history, going as far back as its cave Pueblos. It’s a privilege to live here.

[pangaia]

27. Really? you don;t say..

There are lots of very white people in new mexico.
Most of them are as friendly and peaceful as their ancestors were.

May I ask, how old are you?

[malaise]

15. No one has rewritten history more than the white man

and not just US history

[packman]

18. As Winston said-

History is written by the victors

And as Napoleon said-

History is an agreed on lie

[pangaia]

28. There is something very bizzar(damn I can;t spell thatt) very bizzaar-- bizaarr-- about this OP..

wouldn't you say?

[malaise]

29. I would have liked the name of the movie

but the truth is that most movies about the indigenous people were and are propaganda promoting the agenda of the white man

[pangaia]

30. A lot of those old movies were also just plain ignorant and stupid !!!! LOL

I grew up around the time of many of those flicks.. late 40's. 50's.

I sent you a PM.

[malaise]

32. Thoughtful

[pangaia]

37. So true..

[Hermit-The-Prog]

16. citation needed

[real Cannabis calm]

22. citations are important.

[lunatica]

20. Your American history education seems to be

dated backwards by about 50 years. That was when women and Blacks decided to fight for their rights. A lot of real American history has been discovered and disseminated in the time since.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

24. Your comments are confrontational and lack historic support

Also, these replies are totally insensitive to plight of Native Americans

Which sections of the body copy are you disputing?

PLIGHT OF NATIVE AMERICANS: #1 The Wild West

The Spanish Missions
The Spanish Missions in New Mexico were a series of religious outposts, established by Franciscan friars, under a charter from Spain, to facilitate the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity.

Fray Marcos de Niza, sent by Coronado, first entered New Mexico in 1539 and attempted to Christianize the indigenous people. Rich cultures and tribes they destroyed included at least 21 distinct groups, including the Pueblo, the Tiwa, the Navajo and the Apache. The missions also aimed to pacify resistance to the European invasion of tribal, Pre-Columbian homelands and loss of sacred traditions. Predictably, Native American nations, with diverse religious beliefs, resisted the effort to destroy their cultural heritages.

The Buffalo Wars
The history of the buffalo is entwined with the plight of the Native Americans, which settled grasslands and migrated with the massive herds. Native people came to rely on the bison, for food, clothing, shelter and religious worship. They used almost every part of the animal, including meat, skins, horns and even tail hairs.

By the 1800s, Native Americans began using horses to chase buffalo, which expanded their range. By then, trappers and traders had introduced guns to the region, killing millions of buffalo for hides, while leaving their sacred carcasses to rot. By the middle of the 19th century, even train passengers were shooting bison - for sport. "Buffalo" Bill Cody, who was hired to kill bison, personally slaughtered more than 4,000 of them in two years.

To make matters worse for wild buffalo, U.S. government officials actively destroyed them to defeat Native Americans, who resisted the takeover of their lands by invading settlers. American military commanders ordered troops to kill buffalo to deny natives an important food source.

The 1864 Scorched-Earth Campaign against the Navajo Nation
The epicenter of Navajo culture is Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “shay”), a historical and spiritual place in northeastern Arizona. Sheer canyon walls also made it a tribal stronghold in the 1860s, when nothing - other than the trees - was peachy for the Navajos. They were being attacked. Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson was following orders of Department of New Mexico, to kill or capture Navajos and send them to a reservation near Fort Sumner. To convince holdouts to surrender, Carson and his men stole their livestock and destroyed Navajo homes and crops. Among crops the soldiers destroyed was one not normally associated the desert — peaches. For centuries, the Navajo had tended peach orchards, in Canyon de Chelly.

The protective canyon walls and fertile basin had drawn various Native American tribes to Canyon de Chelly, for over 1,000 years. When the Navajos arrived, a small group of resident Hopis told them about peach trees, which thrived in their homeland, farther west. Navajos visited the Hopi villages, returned with peach seeds and planted them around White House Ruin, in Canyon de Chelly. The Spaniards had brought peach trees to North America in the 1600s. Navajos also found the canyon ideal for growing other crops, like wheat, corn, alfalfa, beans, melons and pumpkins. Kit Carson and his troops burned every crop and dwelling in the canyon. Then, federal troops captured Navajo men, women and children, who were forced into a death-march from northern Arizona to mid-eastern New Mexico.

[lunatica]

25. I was responding to a negative poster

Not to you. I’ve responded in a positive way to your OP and subsequent posts. Please see who I responded to.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

35. I apologize. I was quickly reading replies, while researching...

Here it comes PLIGHT OF NATIVE AMERICANS #2 The Eastern Atrocities- with citations from reliable sources. It should do well with this well-read and recommended preview.

[pangaia]

31. "The history of the buffalo is entwined with the plight of the Native Americans,"

No it is not. The animals found in North America are bison.

[underpants]

26. Fascinating discussion here. Do you happen to remember what channel it was on?

I know you were surging through but when I get something like this the research preoccupies me.

[GulfCoast66]

34. What Europeans did to Native Americans is indefensible.

And was only possible due to the disease they brought with them and to a much lesser degree the technology advantage they had. But the Native Americans pretty quickly overcame their technology disadvantage in the early years of settlement but by then over 90% of them were dead from disease without ever seeing a European.

The one thing Europeans were no better or worse about was the ability to be cruel and savage. That is something found in all men.

Europeans routinely Disemboweled their captives while alive. Then cut off their limbs one at a time. While still alive.

The Aztecs cut the hearts out of their living prisoners of war. Other Native Americans skinned their captives while alive.

Cruelty is a human given.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

36. Introduced disease is fully covered in this recent OP:

PLIGHT OF NATIVE AMERICANS #2 The Eastern Atrocities
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212487231

With all the discussion on the this preview thread, this Opening Post should do well.

[pangaia]

39. You seem especially concerned that your post " do well. "

[GulfCoast66]

40. Not really. By the time Europeans arrived in North America the damage had been done.

When DeSoto landed in 1539 in Florida and marched his men up to the Carolinas and maybe even into Tennessee he found highly populated centers of civilization with huge swaths of land cleared and being farmed.

A hundred or so years later when the next Europeans ventured there they found what we think of as Native America settlements. Scattered hunter gathers based on few permanent population centers.

In Central and South America the Spanish quickly followed up contact with conquest and everywhere they found densely and highly developed societies. But in a North America conquest lagged contact by over 100 years. It seems almost insulting to me to suggest the Native Americans in North America were not at least as developed as those in Central and South America.
By the time our forebears got here over 90% of the population was dead. And society wrecked. A society that looses over 90% of it population can’t pick up the pieces when the illness subsides. And realize that each time the Native population was exposed to a new disease, as benign to us as the common cold, it happened all over again.

By the time the Pilgrims in NE and John Smith in Virginia arrived they were met by a unstable remnent population. Had they faced the population from 100 years earlier they would have been quickly overwhelmed since unlike the Spanish they did not lead an army.

And the whole smallpox blanked story is really suspect, both in its accuracy and effect. By the mid 1800’s Native Americans in the east would have had about as about as much resistance to the disease as Americans of European descent. They had been living with it for 300 years. It was pretty much continuous in both populations.

It’s a complicated and extremely sad history that defies simple explanations. Well except the obvious: humans are really good at killing each other. Too good.