(no subject)
I love my American Indian Experience class. I really do. It's my favorite class this quarter (which is saying a lot).
But having to read about the things they used to do to American Indians is sometimes too much for me to handle. I have a high tolerance for gore in movies. Because they're fake. But knowing that it's all very real, that Europeans really did these things to Natives, makes me feel physically ill.
The Spanish conquistadors would hang thirteen natives at a time, one for each of the twelve apostles and another for Jesus. They would set their hunting dogs on the elderly and the sick, on women and children. They smashed babies against rocks and watched the dogs tear them apart.
When Metacom, the Wampanoag sachem who led the resistance against European invasion, was finally caught, the Dutch settlers tied him to a stake to be burned alive. Before burning him, they cut his skin from his body and forced him to eat it as he tried to sing his death song.
At the battle of Sand Creek in Colorado, soldiers collected "scalps" from the women they slaughtered. And by scalps, I mean they took the skin from their pubic region and stretched the skins over their saddle horns to dry out. When they returned to the fort, they strung them up like so many flags; trophies of victory.
It's the sort of thing that makes you ashamed of your ancestry.
And don't even get me started on Ulysses Grant, Indian Policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or environmental issues on the reservations. I could go all night. I really don't understand how humans can do this shit to each other.
But having to read about the things they used to do to American Indians is sometimes too much for me to handle. I have a high tolerance for gore in movies. Because they're fake. But knowing that it's all very real, that Europeans really did these things to Natives, makes me feel physically ill.
The Spanish conquistadors would hang thirteen natives at a time, one for each of the twelve apostles and another for Jesus. They would set their hunting dogs on the elderly and the sick, on women and children. They smashed babies against rocks and watched the dogs tear them apart.
When Metacom, the Wampanoag sachem who led the resistance against European invasion, was finally caught, the Dutch settlers tied him to a stake to be burned alive. Before burning him, they cut his skin from his body and forced him to eat it as he tried to sing his death song.
At the battle of Sand Creek in Colorado, soldiers collected "scalps" from the women they slaughtered. And by scalps, I mean they took the skin from their pubic region and stretched the skins over their saddle horns to dry out. When they returned to the fort, they strung them up like so many flags; trophies of victory.
It's the sort of thing that makes you ashamed of your ancestry.
And don't even get me started on Ulysses Grant, Indian Policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or environmental issues on the reservations. I could go all night. I really don't understand how humans can do this shit to each other.