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Native American Restaurants (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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Patrick Blumenthal: Why have I never seen a Native American restaurant? Jaybefaunt: Because our country KILLED most of them. A 500 year genocide, Patrick.
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[–] 72 points 2 years ago (27 children)

"Most of them" is the understatement of the day. Our country killed nearly all of them.

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  • [–] 78 points 2 years ago (23 children)

    It is truly staggering the extent of the destruction we caused on the natives to this land.

    Wiki says 96% of them were killed. That's something like 3.6 million humans were slaughtered.

    And most all of their land taken.

    It's an injustice in this country that we don't learn about it more and try to atone as best we can.

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  • [+] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)
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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    shooting bison and smallpox blankets say hello

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  • [+] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Active or not, the Europeans and then the Americans caused the collapse of their civilization.

    Imo all deaths are related.

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  • [+] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)
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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    I have a suspicion that if it weren't for all the disease the colonizers would have destroyed them anyway.

    Also nobody intentionally made them deathly ill? Smallpox blankets.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're not wrong.

    However, it is worth pointing out that the documented "smallpox blankets" stuff happened in the 1700s and 1800s, which was already a century or two after the continent had been greatly depopulated by diseases spread unintentionally.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    smallpox being one, there is evidence smallpox originated from horses, which were abundant in europe, horses had thier own pox virus.(and going back further it came from an unknown rodent host.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's worth remembering that most of them were killed by disease, and that the diseases travelled faster than the colonists. Europe had had centuries of people living in filthy cities where all kinds of diseases were constantly breeding. The survivors carried those diseases but were immune to them. As soon as they met the native populations, the natives were exposed to countless deadly diseases that were completely new to them.

    Now, sure, the colonists went and tried to slaughter as many natives as they could, but often they'd get to a new native settlement and find it was mostly empty because everybody had already either died or fled. Who knows, the natives might have been able to put up a fight against the colonists if they hadn't been so devastated by the diseases. I'd bet that the colonists just took all the natives dying as another sign that their conquest was blessed by their god.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The city of Cohokia was unrivaled in population on the continent until post-colonial Philadelphia about 800 years later, and by some estimates may have even rivaled contemporary London at its peak

    There's other native American cities being found hidden in the jungles of South America too.

    The amount of history, stories and people that have been lost to the sands of time are incredible

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Keep in mind that at the time London wasn't all that big a city.

    Cahokia is estimated at between 12k and 40k people. That's a decent sized city for sure, but around the same time, Baghdad had a population over 1 million. Uruk in modern-day Iraq had 40k people at 3000 BC, and Ur hit 100k by 2000 BC. Rome and Alexandria hit 1 million 2000 years ago.

    I think Tenochtitlan was more impressive, not only because of the population (estimated at between 200k and 400k on the day Cortez arrived) but also because of how the city looked, basically a city built into the middle of a lake. I still love to look at Thomas Kole's visualizations of the city

    By the way, if you haven't read Cahokia Jazz, you should. It's a fun crime story, set in a world where Cahokia didn't fall, and where the independent native people are waging political battles to keep their freedom as Europeans claim the rest of the continent.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    That's true, but it's also important to not overstate it. Anti indigenous groups love to claim that since we basically wiped them out it's a fool's errand to give the survivors their reasonable demands like traditional lands and respecting tribal sovereignty.

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