Another Columbus Day, and another debate over colonization, historical grievances, and whether we should rename the holiday ‘Indigenous People’s Day’.
This argument has arisen each year since at least the 1990s. It is what the Japanese call a 水掛け論 (pronounced mizukakeron) or “endless debate”.
You’ve heard much of this before, so I’ll be brief.
The Native American experience with white settlers was not a monolithic one.
Some Native American tribes were fierce. In 1813, a large force of Creek Indians slaughtered over five hundred white civilians and militiamen near present-day Mobile, Alabama. This became known as the Fort Mims massacre.
The Comanche were cruel to both other Native American tribes and white settlers alike. The Plains Indians were also formidable fighters.
Other native tribes were rapidly subjugated.
While the Native American tribes won some battles, they lost a long civilizational war against European settlers.
Civilizational wars have been common throughout history: the Greeks vs the Persians, Islam vs the Christian west, Rome vs the Germanic tribes, etc.
When the Ottoman Empire completed its conquest of Byzantine [Christian] Constantinople in 1453, the city was renamed Istanbul. The Hagia Sophia Church was converted into a Muslim mosque. It is still a mosque today.
An unpleasant fact of history is that the victors really do write the history books.
Suppose that the Continental Army had lost the American Revolution. Had that been the outcome, George Washington would have been hanged as a traitor. The American Rebellion of 1776 would be a footnote in the history of the British Empire. There would be no Washington D.C., no Washington State, and certainly no images of the defeated and disgraced revolutionary leader on our currency.
The fate of the Native Americans is also relevant in the current immigration debate—both in the US and Europe.
The Native Americans failed to protect their borders. As a result, they were eventually overwhelmed, and their cultures disappeared.
If the Native Americans had successfully expelled every last European settler, the North American continent would still be theirs today.
-ET