Jophiel wrote:
BrownDuck wrote:
Sure, but it wasn't a deliberate and systematic extermination. Conversion? Sure. Persecution? OK. Extermination? In some cases, but certainly not systematically.
It was both. Exterminate them physically and/or exterminate them as a people depending on the day. I have no idea why you'd argue it wasn't systematic given that there were decisions made, laws passed and government actions taken at every step towards the ultimate end goal of eliminating the Native American presence but whatever.
But not extermination though. He was saying that while there were instances of attempts at extermination, they were not systematic.
You are correct that the goal of eliminating the Native American presence as a separate entity from the US presence was there and was systematic, but that's true of any intermixing of cultures pretty much throughout history. The methods vary from assimilation to extermination, from peaceful to violent, but the instances of any single culture surviving intact and unchanged after encountering another (especially if the other is significantly more powerful) are incredibly rare in human history. I point this out only to show that what happened in the US is not rare or even unusual, but is the norm. The only reason we single it out is because it's among the most recent examples occurring on that scale.
And while it's not a great example of US history, in the scope of wider human history, it is far from the worst example (and a lot better than even some more recent examples, as pointed out earlier). Not a whole lot of cultural assimilation occurred historically with flowers and kindness.
Quote:
Quote:
I still wouldn't call it genocide.
You're wrong.
No, he's right. At no point was there an policy to actually kill every single Native American on US soil, or anything remotely close to that. That's what genocide is. There were relatively isolated attempts to wipe out individual tribes or sub tribes, but that's not even remotely the same thing. That's not to say that a bunch of really screwed up stuff was done to Native Americans, but it was not genocide.