THEDOGSOFWAR
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Quotations:
"The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world." David E. Stannard. 4
"This violent corruption needn't define us.... We can say, yes, this happened, and we are ashamed. We repudiate the greed. We recognize and condemn the evil. And we see how the harm has been perpetuated. But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world." Barry Lopez. 3
"By then [1891] the native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated....Hundreds upon hundreds of native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of justice or law." Peter Montague 1 |
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Thats actually Massachusetts State police Originally Posted by jetsetter Not New Jersey State Police
http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?109301-Your-favorite-Police-car-amp-uniform/page2 |
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Birmingham, Alabama - 1963. Coverage of 'The Battle Of Birmingham' (1963) - Excerpt from article in The Militant: "MAY 8, 1963 - One of humanity's great battles is taking place in Birmingham, Alabama. Five weeks ago, for the first time in the history of the South's steel city, Negroes there began exercising the right of peaceful protest against segregation by means of picket lines, sit-ins and marches. For five weeks the city officials of Birmingham -utilizing mass arrests, fire hoses and dogs -have shown the world that the elementary civil liberties such as free speech and assembly do not exist for Negroes in Birmingham...."
Charles Moore commenting on his Birmingham photos (from Civil Rights Photographers -- With Charles Moore and Benedict J. Fernandez moderated by Callie Crossley): "... it shows the man as he really was: defiant, angry; I mean pugnacious and mean. But that's Bull Connor who directed his policemen to do all those things that they did. We know what this is all about. I found it appalling. Somebody said, or several people have said, "Weren’t you afraid these dogs would bite you?" So what? That's not my job. I’m not here to worry about that. I want to see how these policemen would walk these dogs into -- I don’t have his name now, but I looked up and I did research and found out who the man was and all of that. This dog had already bitten his leg very badly. And this one’s pretty close to me. The police walked the dogs right into where there were women and men, and some people even had a child with them...."
See also: Trail to Freedom - From Selma to Birmingham, explore the compelling landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement, and be inspired by the heroes who led the way....
Articles on 1969 York City Riots and events leading up to them:
Riots 'the language of the unheard' (Feb. 23, 2003 / York Dispatch) "...Police quickly swarmed over the block, several with police dogs. The K-9 officers commanded their dogs with shouts of "kill." Three blacks were bitten in the scuffle, which ended only when one man's sister threw herself between him and the dog attacking him. When a German shepherd dog attacks, it doesn't just intimidate. When it bites, the upper and lower incisors connect like scissors and the large canine teeth remove chunks of flesh. The wounds infect easily and the scars usually are permanent...."; See also: 1966: The first long, hot summer (Feb. 24, 2003 / York Dispatch); Militancy grows in city's slums (Feb. 25, 2003 / York Dispatch); Gunfire shatters summer day (Feb. 27, 2003 / York Dispatch); Police dogs stir 1969 hatred (Feb. 28, 2003 / York Dispatch)
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WARDOGS
Dogs of the Conquistadores
Breif History of the 'Perro de Presa Canario' The breed is origionally from the Canary Islands in the 1700's, notably Gran Canaria. Its exact ancestry is unknown, but enthusiasts believe that the Perro de Bardino Majorero, an established farm dog from the Canary Islands, was crossed with the Mastiff and other English dogs brought to the Islands by Visitors and Colonists, creating the foundation for the modern day Presa Canario. Presa type guard and catch dogs are mentioned in historical documents of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is believed that the Perro de Presa Canario was created during the 18th century for the purpose of property and flock guarding, the holding and Driving of Livestock, and exterminating wild or stray dogs. The breed was also used for dog fighting, a tradition the English settlers transplanted along with their Mastiff and Bulldog breeds. Canary Islanders considered these fights "honor fights" and not the sole purpose of the animal. Presa type dogs were refered to as the "perro de la tierra" or "dog of the land".The Breed became nearly extinct after dog fighting was outlawed in 1940s, even though clandestine fights were known to continue through the next decade. The Breed was revived in the 1970's with the help of several crosses by various breeders. This period is generally known as the reconstruction of the breed, with atypical specimens becoming less common.
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History of Police Dogs and Military Dogs
Dogs were first domesticated somewhere between 15,000 to 20,000 years ago and were initially used for hunting, hauling, and guarding camps and settlements. At some point, imperialistic and class-based societies began to exploit dogs' aggressive potential for both offensive purposes (military dogs) and for internal social control, particularly to control slaves and to guard accumulated property. By the 5th century B.C., various societies had adopted these strategies. According to Michael G. Lemish, "Persians, Greeks, Assyrians and Babylonians all recognized the tactical advantage of war dogs and deployed them as forward attacking elements" (War Dogs). In Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs (Woodstock & New York 2003), Adrienne Mayor writes:
According to Pliny, the King of the Garamantes of Africa had two hundred trained war dogs "that did battle with those who resisted him." The cities of Colophon and Castabala in Asia Minor also maintained troops of war dogs that fought ferociously in the front ranks[...] The Hyrcanians of the Caspian Sea and the Magnesians [...] were also feared for the large hounds with spiked collars that accompanied them on the battlefield." (this from Aelian). Polyaenus reports that Cimmerians were driven out of Asia Minor in the 6th C. B.C. by the vicious hounds of King Alyattes, who "set his strongest dogs upon the barbarians as if they were wild animals[...] killed many and forced the rest to flee shamefully." And there was an Athenian wardog during Marathon, who served as "fellow-soldier in the battle". (p.191-2)
 The Romans used dogs both for war and for internal control. Their 'Molossians', predecessors of today's Neopolitan Mastiff, were also sometimes featured in the arena, where they were pitted against various other beasts or against slaves. After Rome fell, the use of dogs for offense and repression appears to have tapered off somewhat, until it was revived with unprecedented brutality by the Spanish Conquistadors.
Atrocities of the Spanish Conquistadors in the West Indies
Account from Bartolome de Las Casas (missionary and conquistadore) circa 1513: "...The Spaniards with their horses, their spears and lances, began to commit murders and
other strange cruelties. They entered into towns and villages, sparing neither children nor old men and women. They ripped their bellies and cut them to pieces as if they had been slaughtering lambs in a field....Most tried to flee. They tried to hide in the mountains. They tried to flee from these men. Men who were empty of all pity, behaving like savage beasts.
They are nothing more than slaughterers and enemies of mankind. These evil men had even taught their hounds, fierce dogs, to tear natives to pieces at first sight...."
Spanish invader Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519) shown in Central America with troops, presiding over the execution of Indians; Engraving by Théodore De Bry (1528-1598); New York Public Library, Rare Book Room, De Bry Collection, New York
Pestilence and Genocide
From Pestilence and Genocide (excerpted from the book American Holocaust by David Stannard, Oxford University Press, 1992: "...[Vasco Núñez de Balboa] had his own favorite dog-Leoncico, or "little lion," a reddish-colored cross between a greyhound and a mastiff-that was rewarded at the end of a campaign for the amount of killing it had done. On one much celebrated occasion, Leoncico tore the head off an Indian leader in Panama while Balboa, his men, and other dogs completed the slaughter of everyone in a village that had the ill fortune to lie in their journey's path. Heads of human adults do not come off easily, so the authors of Dogs of the Conquest seem correct in calling this a "remarkable feat," although Balboa's men usually were able to do quite well by themselves. As one contemporary description of this same massacre notes: "The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts. ...Vasco ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs."
Mark Derr's A Dog's History of America (North Point Press: 2004; see Washington Post book review) offers a broad portrait
of the use of war dogs in the Americas. According to Derry, the Conquistadors' dogs were "specifically bred and trained to hunt down and disembowel Indians," and they followed the "practice of bringing along on any campaign chained Indian slaves as food for the dogs."
The following anecdote, quoted from The New World Holocaust, was illustrated in the sixteenth century De Bry engraving seen below: "...
As the Spaniards went with their war dogs hunting down Indian men and women, it happened that a sick Indian woman who could not
escape from the dogs, sought to avoid being torn apart by them, in this fashion: she took a cord and tied her year-old child to her leg,
and then she hanged herself from a beam. But the dogs came and tore the child apart; before the creature expired, however, a friar
baptized it...."
Barry Lopez, summarizing one of Las Casas' reports in his book "The Rediscovery of North America: The Thomas D. Clark lectures," (University Press of Kentucky, 1990), writes: "One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped
3000 people.... They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for
dog food...." (see: Genocide of Natives in North America)
The Conquistadors and the Indians"... We have numerous eyewitness reports, including some by Samuel de Champlain,
of the barbaric methods of the Conquistadors, some of whom, for entertainment, would hunt Indians with vicious dogs. If they returned from the hunt without any "prey", they would feed the dogs live prisoners...."
Contact and Conquest in Early America Excerpt: "The first recorded European contact with the people of the Cherokee Nation was with the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. When De Soto landed in Florida with his soldiers in 1539, he brought with him Spanish Mastiffs, chains, and iron collars for the acquisition and exportation of Indian slaves...."
"The British arrived in Jamestown in 1607. By 1610 the intentional extermination of the native population was well along. David E. Stannard writes: "Hundreds of Indians were killed in skirmish after skirmish. Other hundreds were killed in successful plots of mass poisoning. They were hunted down by dogs, 'blood-Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives [mastiffs] to seize them'...." (from David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; ISBN 0-19-507581-1)
By the time of the American revolution, the use of dogs for repression had been scaled down, although some, most notably Benjamin Franklin, advocated for a revival. In 1775, he wrote to a friend: "Dogs should be used against the Indians. They should be large, strong and fierce.... In case of meeting a party of the enemy, the dogs are all then to be turned loose and set on. They will be fresher and finer for having been previously confined and will confound the enemy a good deal and be very serviceable...." Ben Franklin's suggestion was not adopted until 1840, when Secretary of War Joel Poinsett authorized the purchase of the 33 bloodhounds from Cuba (at $151.72 a piece) for offensive use against the Seminole Indians and escaped slaves who had taken refuge among them in western Florida and Louisana
(see: 1840 political cartoon vilifying the Van Buren administration's decision to use bloodhounds to hunt down Indians).
from an 1848 political cartoon depicting Zachary Taylor hunting Indians with Cuban bloodhounds in Second Seminole War (click for link to image of full-size print)
Meanwhile, bloodhounds were regularly used to recapture escaped slaves. Excerpt from The Horrors of Slavery and England's Duty to Free the Bondsman: An Address Delivered in Taunton, England, on September 1, 1846 (Somerset County Gazette, September 5, 1846) by Frederick Douglass: "...Slaves frequently escape from bondage, and live in the woods. Sometimes they are absent eight or nine months without being discovered. They are hunted with dogs, kept for the purpose, and regularly trained. Enmity is Instilled into the blood-hounds by these means:—A master causes a slave to tie up the dog and beat it unmercifully. He then sends the slave away and bids him climb a tree; after which he unties the dog, puts him upon the track of the man and encourages him to pursue it until he discovers the slave. Sometimes, in hunting the negroes, if the owners are not present to call off the dogs, the slaves are torn in pieces...."
During the Civil War, Confederate regiments unleashed bloodhounds against negro regiments.
Wood engraved illustration from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 5, 1864
The Nazis employed dogs in various capacities, most notoriously in the concentration camps. "...During the Second World War every concentration camp had its SS dog unit. The dogs, trained to attack inmates, were deeply feared. Heinrich Himmler, the SS chief who was himself a German shepherd owner, said that the purpose of the dogs was 'to encircle prisoners like a flock of sheep and so prevent escape'...." (from Axis and Allied War Dogs). The aid of dogs was also sometimes employed when prisoners were corralled into gas chambers.
 
See also: "The only surviving dog used by Germans to kill prisoners for fun"
What Did You Do in the War Fido? "...dogs were utilized in Vietnam by American troops to clear Vietcong tunnels and caves and to sniff out land mines and booby-traps. At any given time there were 4,000 dogs employed in Vietnam for military purposes. All but 200 were left to the Vietcong, many of whom were tortured...."
Birmingham, Alabama - 1963. Coverage of 'The Battle Of Birmingham' (1963) - Excerpt from article in The Militant: "MAY 8, 1963 - One of humanity's great battles is taking place in Birmingham, Alabama. Five weeks ago, for the first time in the history of the South's steel city, Negroes there began exercising the right of peaceful protest against segregation by means of picket lines, sit-ins and marches. For five weeks the city officials of Birmingham -utilizing mass arrests, fire hoses and dogs -have shown the world that the elementary civil liberties such as free speech and assembly do not exist for Negroes in Birmingham...."
Charles Moore commenting on his Birmingham photos (from Civil Rights Photographers -- With Charles Moore and Benedict J. Fernandez moderated by Callie Crossley): "... it shows the man as he really was: defiant, angry; I mean pugnacious and mean. But that's Bull Connor who directed his policemen to do all those things that they did. We know what this is all about. I found it appalling. Somebody said, or several people have said, "Weren’t you afraid these dogs would bite you?" So what? That's not my job. I’m not here to worry about that. I want to see how these policemen would walk these dogs into -- I don’t have his name now, but I looked up and I did research and found out who the man was and all of that. This dog had already bitten his leg very badly. And this one’s pretty close to me. The police walked the dogs right into where there were women and men, and some people even had a child with them...."
See also: Trail to Freedom - From Selma to Birmingham, explore the compelling landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement, and be inspired by the heroes who led the way....
Articles on 1969 York City Riots and events leading up to them:
Riots 'the language of the unheard' (Feb. 23, 2003 / York Dispatch) "...Police quickly swarmed over the block, several with police dogs. The K-9 officers commanded their dogs with shouts of "kill." Three blacks were bitten in the scuffle, which ended only when one man's sister threw herself between him and the dog attacking him. When a German shepherd dog attacks, it doesn't just intimidate. When it bites, the upper and lower incisors connect like scissors and the large canine teeth remove chunks of flesh. The wounds infect easily and the scars usually are permanent...."; See also: 1966: The first long, hot summer (Feb. 24, 2003 / York Dispatch); Militancy grows in city's slums (Feb. 25, 2003 / York Dispatch); Gunfire shatters summer day (Feb. 27, 2003 / York Dispatch); Police dogs stir 1969 hatred (Feb. 28, 2003 / York Dispatch)
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http://www.petmemorialcards.com/mem2008-C.html
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 Ken Rogers of Washougal, Washington was enjoying a visit with family in Kennewick and looking forward to some fishing when his slumber was rudely disturbed on the night of July 13, 2003.
Rogers, a 54-year-old regional sales manager for Georgia-Pacific, was sleeping under the stars when a large dog suddenly vaulted over a wooden fence and sank its teeth into his left arm. Shocked and disoriented in the darkness, and not wearing his eyeglasses, Rogers struggled desperately to free himself from the dog, to no avail.
A voice from the other side of the fence informed Rogers that the dog was the property of the Kennewick Police Department's K-9 Unit. “Stop fighting the dog and I will release him,” yelled Officer Bradley Kohn. Rogers, understandably, wasn't content to wait, and started punching the police dog -- later identified as “Deke” -- in the head.
Officer Kohn, along with Officer Ryan Bonnalie, tore down part of the fence. The two of them, along with Deputy Jeff Quackenbush, “entered the backyard and subdued Rogers,” as the excessively decorous language of a legal appeal filed by the officers describes the incident.
The TriCity Herald offers a more descriptive account: “Deke latched onto [Rogers] and in the struggle bit him several times on the hand, back, neck and face while three officers beat him.” Syndicated legal affairs columnist Jack Kilpatrick, citing an official report, offers another layer of relevant detail: “Officers Kohn and Bonnalie and Deputy Quackenbush struck Mr. Rogers with fists, knees and a flashlight, while Deke continued to bite and hold Mr. Rogers until Mr. Rogers was subdued and handcuffed.”
An even more candid description of the episode would be this: Ken was sleeping peacefully when he suffered a potentially lethal dog attack, and then was severely beaten by three armed men after they had vandalized his host's property.
Supposedly, all of this was justified because the police were hot on the trail of a criminal suspect. One would presume that they were seeking a burglar, a rapist, or some other practitioner of criminal violence. One would be mistaken: The police officers who beat Ken Rogers had been summoned as backup by Sgt. Richard Dopke after he had spotted someone riding a mini-moped without a helmet or turning on the lights.
After Dopke turned on his siren and running lights and gave chase, the “suspect” (whose behavior was foolish, but difficult to characterize as criminal) pulled into a nearby garage and shut the door. A man and two women at the residence, which was about a block away from the yard where Rogers was sleeping, claimed that the mysterious mini-moped rider named “Troy” had run half-naked through their backyard. Dopke later claimed that he didn't find the story convincing, but he called for backup and a K-9 Unit just the same.
The story gets even uglier from here.
Overkill is always the first option: Sure, they're heavily armed and already outnumber the protester, by why shouldn't the riot police let their attack dog
have a little fun, too?
As it happens, Gary Hilliard, a Corrections Officer (jail guard) for Benton County, was the man who sent Officer Dopke off in
pursuit of the mysterious moped man. And, it should not surprise us to learn, it was Hilliard who had actually been operating
the vehicle illegally. Making matters all the nastier is the fact that roughly two years after this episode,
Hilliard was fired from his job and served a three-month jail term “for having sexually explicit pictures of children on a personal computer,” reported the TriCity Herald.
I'm on record expressing misgivings about the way evidence is collected from computer hard drives in child pornography cases.
I will point out that Hilliard's subsequent record does cast his actions on the night of July 13 in an interesting light.
Just as it was overkill for the police to beat someone suspected of a minor traffic infraction, Hilliard's actions in lying to the police and sending them after
a fictitious fugitive could be seen as the product of a bad conscience.
This makes me wonder if Hilliard was returning from an illicit assignation of some kind when he provoked the interest of Officer Dopke. In any case, Hilliard misdirected
the police, and an innocent man was mauled by a police dog and severely beaten by several officers as a result. Despite having to empty his bank account to pay for three months of physical therapy following the beating, Ken Rogers would most likely have let the matter go had the Kennewick Police Department displayed minimal decency and professionalism by contacting him, asking after his health, and expressing its regrets. So Rogers sued the Kennewick Police Department for more than $2.35 million, complaining that he had been subject to illegal arrest, unreasonable search and seizure, and other violations of his individual rights.
On May 1, a US District Court jury upheld Rogers' claims, awarding him and
his wife Mary Lou more than $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
En route to that verdict, the Kennewick city government made a ridiculously low settlement offer, called into question the extent of Rogers' injuries (subtly accusing him of fraud because he wasn't visibly disabled and continued to enjoy outdoor activities), and filed a petition to the US Supreme Court (.pdf) breathtaking in its assertions of official police impunity.
The petition was filed following a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last August that found Rogers had been subject to unlawful search and seizure. Seeking to overturn that ruling, attorneys for the Kennewick police claimed that Deke the police dog -- not Officer Kohn, the dog's handler -- was responsible for the injury to Rogers.
Don't blame me -- it's the dog's fault: Heroic Military
Police use dogs to threaten helpless Abu Ghraib detainees.
 Kohn claims to have released Deke after the dog's leash had become entangled “on the hitch of a boat trailer” in a driveway near the yard where Rogers was sleeping. Deke then vaulted the fence sua sponte and latched on to Rogers's left arm. Because Kohn did not specifically order this assault, the police petition claimed, he did not intentionally “seize anyone in the fenced backyard,” and thus there was no violation of
rights protected by the Fourth Amendment.
According to the petition, “there can be no constitutional violation for a wrongful seizure where there is no intent to seize.” Even if there were true regarding the attack by a trained police dog who was trained to
act like (in the words of Diehl Lettig, Rogers' attorney) a “heat-seeking missile,” the fact remains that Rogers was swarmed, beaten, and handcuffed by three police officers.
This is an intentional “seizure” by any rational definition. In fact, one of the federal District Court rulings cited in the police petition, Cardona v Connolly, actually vindicates Rogers' complaint. That ruling held, in relevant part, that a “Fourth Amendment seizure” can be said to take place “only when there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.” Surely the liberal use of “fists, knees and a flashlight” by police against a prone individual being mauled by a police dog until the victim is “subdued” and handcuffed would qualify as “governmental termination of freedom” through “intentional” means. Nonetheless, the petition for US Supreme Court review filed on behalf of the officers insisted that their actions were covered by the principle of “qualified immunity,” which is described as “an important constitutional protection for our public servants.”
"Qualified immunity," reduced to its essence.
“Government officials performing discretionary functions are entitled to qualified immunity, shielding them from civil damages liability as long as their actions could reasonably have been thought consistent with the rights they are alleged to have violated,” insists the Kennewick police brief.
What this means, from that perspective, is that the police had an open-ended and unqualified right to beat and detain Rogers unless
he can (quoting again from the brief) “demonstrate that the police officers, by their conduct, violated a clearly established constitutional right....” Furthermore, it wouldn't do, insisted the police petition, for Rogers to demonstrate the violation of “a generalized right, such as the right to be free from illegal searches or seizures or the right generally to be free from the excessive use
of force.”
In this specific case, the police argued that unless Rogers, could prove that Officer Kohn intended for Deke to attack him specifically,
he had no legal recourse. On this construction, the mauling, beating, handcuffing, and general mistreatment Rogers endured was
all legal and appropriate, since those who inflicted it on him were clothed in “qualified immunity.”
Fortunately, this matter ended up being put before a jury of sensible people who detected in that argument the distinctive aroma
of something very much like the sort of residue Deke deposits at the end of his canine digestive cycle.
A significant and relevant post-script to this matter:
Three of those implicated in this incident – Officers Dopke and Bonnalie, and Deke – were retired form the force between 2003 and 2006. Officer Bonnalie, who helped vandalize the fence and had a hands-on role in beating Rogers, was fired in 2005 after an off-duty road rage incident in which he
threatened a 63-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer by shoving a handgun into his chest.
A parting thought...
Several people whose opinions I highly esteem and whose friendship I cherish have advised me to "balance" my reporting on the police. They have a sound point; I don't want to become monomaniacal on the subject of police corruption. I am searching for suitably inspiring stories about good police officers and and willing to run them when given the chance. And I am always receptive to news tips about stories of that kind (or any other, for that matter).
Please be sure to visit The Right Source.
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http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm
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Genocide
Past genocides committed against Native Americans
Quotations:
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"The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world." David E. Stannard. 4 |
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"This violent corruption needn't define us.... We can say, yes, this happened, and we are ashamed. We repudiate the greed. We recognize and condemn the evil. And we see how the harm has been perpetuated. But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world." Barry Lopez. 3 |
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"By then [1891] the native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated....Hundreds upon hundreds of native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of justice or law." Peter Montague 1 |
Overview:
The population of North America prior to the first sustained European contact in 1492 CE is a matter of active debate. Various estimates of the pre-contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. 4 Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to about 237,000 as Natives were almost wiped out. Author Carmen Bernand estimates that the Native population of what is now Mexico was reduced from 30 million to only 3 million over four decades. 13 Peter Montague estimates that Europeans once ruled over 100 million Natives throughout the Americas.
European extermination of Natives started with Christopher Columbus' arrival in San Salvador in 1492. Native population dropped dramatically over the next few decades. Some were directly murdered by Europeans. Others died indirectly as a result of contact with introduced diseases for which they had no resistance -- mainly smallpox, influenza, and measles.
Later European Christian invaders systematically murdered additional Aboriginal people, from the Canadian Arctic to South America. They used warfare, death marches, forced relocation to barren lands, destruction of their main food supply -- the Buffalo -- and poisoning. Some Europeans actually shot at Indians for target practice. 14
Oppression continued into the 20th century, through actions by governments and religious organizations which systematically destroyed Native culture and religious heritage. One present-day byproduct of this oppression is suicide. Today, Canadian Natives have the highest suicide rate of any identifiable population group in the world. Native North Americans are not far behind.
The genocide against American Natives was one of the most massive, and longest lasting genocidal campaigns in human history. It started, like all genocides, with the oppressor treating the victims as sub-humans. It continued until almost all Natives were wiped of the face of the earth, along with much of their language, culture and religion.
We believe that:
The following essay contains only a small sampling of the horrendous atrocities inflicted on Natives by Europeans.
Christopher Columbus:
"Christopher Columbus has been a genuine American hero since at least 1792 when the Society of St. Tammany in New York City first held a dinner to honor the man and his deeds." Columbus Day has been celebrated as a national holiday since 1934 in honor of this dedicated and courageous explorer. Unfortunately, his character had a dark side.
Columbus described the Arawaks -- the Native people in the West Indies -- as timid, artless, free, and generous. He rewarded them with death and slavery. For his second voyage to the Americas:
"Columbus took the title 'Admiral of the Ocean Sea' and proceeded to unleash a reign of terror unlike anything seen before or since. When he was finished, eight million Arawaks -- virtually the entire native population of Hispaniola -- had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation, disease and despair." 1
A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape. 2 Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:
"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food." 3
The Spaniards eventually went on to conquer Mexico and the southern U.S.
The British:
The British occupied areas from Virginia northward. Hans Koning wrote:
"From the beginning, the Spaniards saw the native Americans as natural slaves, beasts of burden, part of the loot. When working them to death was more economical than treating them somewhat humanely, they worked them to death. The English, on the other hand, had no use for the native peoples. They saw them as devil worshippers, savages who were beyond salvation by the church, and exterminating them increasingly became accepted policy." 5
David E. Stannard wrote:
"Hundreds of Indians were killed in skirmish after skirmish. Other hundreds were killed in successful plots of mass poisoning. They were hunted down by dogs, 'blood-Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives [mastiffs] to seize them.' Their canoes and fishing weirs were smashed, their villages and agricultural fields burned to the ground. Indian peace offers were accepted by the English only until their prisoners were returned; then, having lulled the natives into false security, the colonists returned to the attack. It was the colonists' expressed desire that the Indians be exterminated, rooted 'out from being longer a people upon the face of the earth.' In a single raid the settlers destroyed corn sufficient to feed four thousand people for a year. Starvation and the massacre of non-combatants was becoming the preferred British approach to dealing with the natives." 4
The Americans:
In the early 18th century, the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey promoted a genocide of their local Natives by imposing a "scalp bounty" on dead Indians. "In 1703, Massachusetts paid 12 pounds for an Indian scalp. By 1723 the price had soared to 100 pounds." 10 Ward Churchill wrote: "Indeed, in many areas it [murdering Indians] became an outright business." 6 This practice of paying a bounty for Indian scalps continued into the 19th century before the public put an end to the practice. 10
In the 18th century, George Washington compared them to wolves, "beasts of prey" and called for their total destruction. 4 In 1814, Andrew Jackson "supervised the mutilation of 800 or more Creek Indian corpses" that his troops had killed. 6
Extermination of all of the surviving natives was urged by the Governor of California officially in 1851. 4 An editorial from the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, CO in 1863; and from the Santa Fe New Mexican in 1863 expressed the same sentiment. 6 In 1867, General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux [Lakotas] even to their extermination: men, women and children." 6
In 1848, before the gold rush in California, that state's native population is estimated to have been 150,000. In 1870, after the gold rush, only about 31,000 were still alive. "Over 60 percent of these indigenous people died from disease introduced by hundreds of thousands of so-called 49ers. However, local tribes were also systematically chased off their lands, marched to missions and reservations, enslaved and brutally massacred." 12 The price paid for a native scalp had dropped as low as $0.25. Native historian, Jack Forbes, wrote:
"The bulk of California's Indians were conquered, and died, in innumerable little episodes rather than in large campaigns. it serves to indict not a group of cruel leaders, or a few squads of rough soldiers, but in effect, an entire people; for ...the conquest of the Native Californian was above all else a popular, mass, enterprise." 11
References:
- Peter Montague, "#671 - Columbus Day, 1999," Rachel's Environment & Health News, Environmental Research Foundation, at: http://www.rachel.org/
- Bartolome de las Casas, "The devastation of the Indies: A brief account," Johns Hopkins University Press, (1992). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store. (Cited in Ref. 1)
- Barry Lopez, "The Rediscovery of North America: The Thomas D. Clark lectures," University Press of Kentucky, (1990). Read reviews or order this book. (Cited in Ref. 1)
- David E. Stannard, "American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World," Oxford University Press, (1992). Read reviews or order this book. (Cited in Ref. 1)
- Hans Koning, "The conquest of America: How the Indian nations lost their continent," Monthly Review Press, (1993). Read reviews or order this book. (Cited in Ref. 1)
- Ward Churchill, "A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present," City Lights Books, (1998). Read reviews or order this book. (Cited in Ref. 1)
- Leah Trabich, "Native American Genocide still haunts United States," An End to Intolerance, Vol. 5, 1997-JUN, at: http://www.iearn.org/
- "Natives, North American," InfoPlease.com, at: http://www.infoplease.com/
- James Craven, "Docs. on Native American Genocide," at: http://www.chgs.umn.edu/
- Anon, "The history of Indian and European scalping," 2002, PageWise, Inc., at: http://ct.essortment.com/historyscalpin_rdrp.htm
- "Gold, Greed & Genocide: The untold impacts of the Gold Rush on native communities and the environment," Project Underground, at: http://www.moles.org/
- "Gold, Greed & Genocide," Project Underground, at: http://www.1849.org/
- Carmen Bernand, "The Incas: People of the Sun (Discoveries)," Harry N Abrams, (1994). Read reviews or order this book.
- "Disrupting the Natives," at: http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/
Additional books on this topic:
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Ward Churchill, et al, "Perversions of Justice: Indigenous Peoples and Anglo-American Law," City Lights Books, (2003) Read reviews or order this book
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Ward Churchill:
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"Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians" City Lights Books, (1998; 2nd edition)
Read reviews or order this book
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"A little matter of Genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas: 1492 to the present," City Lights Publishers, (1998). Read reviews or order this book |
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Jake Page. "In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians," Free Press, (2003). Read reviews or order this book
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Russell Thornton, "American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 (Civilization of the American Indian, Vol 186)," University of Oklahoma Press, (1990).
Read reviews or order this book |
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Clifford E. Trafzer & Joel R. Hyer, (Eds.), "Exterminate Them": Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans During the California Gold Rush, 1848-1868" Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store.
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James Wilson, "The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America," Grove Press, (2003). Read reviews or order this book |
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Last Update 2011-01-30 | Copyright© Charles Mingus 2012 |  |  |
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