Quotes About History

The ancient Irish social system was systematically attacked, traditional songs and music forbidden, whole clans exterminated, and the remainder brutalized. A "wild Irish" reservation was even attempted. The

The English government paid bounties for the Irish heads. Later only the scalp or ears were required. A century later in North America, Indian heads and scalps were brought in for bounty in the same manner. Although the Irish were as "white" as the English, transforming them into alien others to be exterminated previewed what came to be perceived as racialist when applied to Indigenous peoples of North America and to Africans.

The publication arc of the Leatherstocking Tales parallels the Jackson presidency. For those who consumed the books in that period and throughout the nineteenth century—generations of young white men—the novels became perceived fact, not fiction, and the basis for the coalescence of US American nationalism.

Nearly all the population areas of the Americas were reduced by 90 percent following the onset of colonizing projects, decreasing the targeted Indigenous populations of the Americas from one hundred million to ten million. Commonly referred to as the most extreme demographic disaster—framed as natural—in human history, it was rarely called genocide until the rise of Indigenous movements in the mid-twentieth century forged questions.

Yet the Leatherstocking's positive twist on genocidal colonialism was based on the reality of invasion, squatting, attacking, and colonizing of the Indigenous nations. Neither Filson nor Cooper created that reality. Rather, they created the narratives that captured the experience and imagination of the Anglo-American settler, stories that were surely instrumental in nullifying guilt related to genocide and set the pattern of narrative for future US writers, poets, and historians.

All over the continent, local histories, monuments, and signage narrate the story of first settlement: the founder(s), the first school, first dwelling, first everything, as if there had never been occupants who thrived in those places before Euro-Americans.

Of a thousand Red Stick and allied insurgents, eight hundred were killed. [Andrew] Jackson lost forty-nine men.

Jamestown military leader John Smith threatened to kill all the women and children if the Powhatan leaders would not feed and clothe the settlers as well as provide them with land and labor.

Ranging, looting, and scalp hunting continued.

there was no hesitation on the part of Anglo settlers to consider unarmed civilians of all ages as appropriate targets of violence.

Another weapon of war was alcohol, accelerating in the eighteenth century.

The establishment of the missions and presidios from San Diego and Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to Carmel, San Francisco, and Sonoma, traces the colonization of California's Indigenous nations. The five-hundred-mile road that connected the missions was called El Camino Real, the Royal Highway.

Wars continued for another century, unrelentingly and without pause, and the march across the continent used the same strategy and tactics of scorched earth and annihilation with increasingly deadly firepower. Somehow, even "genocide" seems an inadequate description for what happened, yet rather than viewing it with horror, most Americans have conceived of it as their country's manifest destiny.

this idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the fact that the very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources.

Andrew Jackson was the implementer of the final solution for the Indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi. Andrew

Whitman explicitly grounded this prescription in racism: "The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated; it is the law of the races, history.… A superior grade of rats come and then all the minor rats are cleared out." The whole world would benefit from US expansion: "We pant to see our country and its rule far-reaching. What has miserable, inefficient Mexico … to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?

Surviving genocide, by whatever means, is resistance: non-Indians must know this in order to more accurately understand the history of the United States.

When Sauk leader Black Hawk led his people back from a winter stay in Iowa to their homeland in Illinois in 1832 to plant corn, the squatter settlers there claimed they were being invaded, bringing in both Illinois militia and federal troops. The Black Hawk War that is narrated in history texts was no more than a slaughter of Sauk farmers. The Sauks tried to defend themselves but were starving when Black Hawk surrendered under a white flag.

As Cherokees fled, abandoning their towns and fields, the soldiers seized, killed, and scalped women and children, taking no prisoners.51

The Indians shall see that there is malice enough in our hearts to destroy everything

The affirmation of democracy requires the denial of colonialism, but denying it does not make it go away.

I feel about Manhattan the way I feel about a book, a TV series, a movie, a play, an artist, a song, a food, a whatever that I love. I want to tell you about it so that maybe you will love it, too. I'm not worried about it being 'ruined' by too many people 'discovering' it. Manhattan's been ruined since 1626 , when Peter Minuit bought it from Native Americans for $24.00.

In ancient times, anterior to our history, the temples of the spirit were also outwardly visible; today, because our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world visible to external sight; yet they are present spiritually everywhere, and all who seek may find them.

I wonder what the years have gathered in the bags. I bet it's like looking through old trunks, old letters and photographs, an old shoe or two.