Failed immigration policies of Native Americans led to creation of United States
By Hugh Holub, November 24, 2010
under politics
It has been said history is written by the winners.
US history is a steady march from the first settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth across the continent to California.
Two groups of people were in the way of America’s “Manifest Destiny”….Native Americans and Spanish/Mexican colonists.
The Native Americans got whacked twice by two European colonial movements. …one from England and one from Spain.
Native American SB 1070
One has to wonder what sorts of conversations were going on in the 1600’s when Indian leaders were pondering whether to let the pale faces settle on their lands. Obviously it finally dawned on the Indians that the settlers kept coming in increasing numbers and war broke out across North America to try and stop the American/European immigrant invasion. The Apaches managed to hold out the longest with their version of SB 1070.
We know who ultimately won that war.
There is no Apaches Indian reservation is southeastern Arizona because the Americans practiced “attrition through enforcement” and deported the surviving Apaches first to Florida and then to Oklahoma.
Sure, there is a lot to give thanks for in 2010. We have created one of richestcivilizations in human history in North America. We are so successful millions still want to come to America, even if we’re losing jobs.
We’re still a lot better opportunity than what many face at home.
But I wonder if in Indian homes there is the same sense of “thanksgiving”…thanks for what? Being displaced and marginalized because a bunch of very aggressive immigrants fled their homelands for a better life and the Indians unfortunately got in the way.
I also wonder what the history would have been in Plymouth if the Indians had not helped the settlers and shared food with them. Instead what if the Indians had greeted the pilgrims with a hail of arrows instead of roasted turkeys?
Southern Arizona is haunted by the two conquests…of both the Indians who lived here and the conquest of the Mexicans who lived here before the Americans arrived.
Talk to the Hispanic families whose roots go back to before the Gadsden Purchase and you will hear stories about how they were displaced by the invading Americans with their fraudulent land claims. That displacement has continued into modern times with the Hispanic heart of Tucson being flattened by the Anglos in the name of “urban renewal”.
Talk to the Indian families who lived in what is now Arizona since time immemorial and you will hear stories about how both the Mexicans and the Americans stole their land and water and killed them with small pox and guns….
If you think this is dead history…think again because the folks who were run over by our expansion still
remember what happened to them.
If you think this is something that happened way back in the past…consider the “urban renewal” of downtown Tucson that flattened the barrio and displaced hundreds of Hispanic residents so the Anglos could build monuments to Anglo superiority like the Convention Center and the County government building complex and La Placita.
Roast the turkeys…but do not dig very deep beneath your feet because the bones and burnt homes and broken pottery and plates of those who lived here before we came are buried there. In many parts of Tucson and the Santa Cruz Valley this is an actual fact…especially under dowtown TRucson and even here in Tubac.
If you think all this was way in the past and you have no responsibility for what happened…think about what is going on right now in Arizona….the fuss over SB 1070….and its goal of “enforcement by attrition”.
Maybe in addition to giving thanks, we might take a moment remember all the death and destruction Europeans and Americans brought with us to claim these lands we call America.