Read the Essay below. Be able to answer and expound on the following questions.
(1) Why had white people made war a science?
(2) When Native Americans did fight back against white people,
how did their way of life handicap them?
(3) Did the Native Americans in the new world make up one nation
or thousands of nations? How did this impact their ability to
defend themselves against white people?
(4) What "unfortunate trends" of Native Americans doomed
them in their confrontation with white power?
Class #3 Essay [Audio Version]
White people had made a profession of dominating other people
and taking other peoples' possessions. In order to effectively
dominate and take what belonged to others, white people had to
reduce war to a science, and they had to invent and develop weapons
that would make them more militarily powerful than their victims.
In the beginning of their history, white groups matched their
war attitudes and weapons against each other. Later, as they ventured
outside of Europe, they did the same against those non-white peoples.
Because most non-white people had different concepts of the military
and the use of weapons, they were not able to effectively defend
themselves against white people.
Native Americans had no reason to suspect that human beings would
attempt to take other people's land, viciously murder other people,
deny other people the right to survive, etc. Once they came into
contact with Europeans, their demise was just a matter of time.
When Native Americans did fight back, they did not develop a war
plan that was geared toward a long, drawn out conflict. They couldn't
develop such a plan for several reasons. First, the various Native
American groups represented hundreds of Native American nations,
some of which were historically hostile to each other and all
of which were accustomed to self-government and inter-group or
inter-tribal leadership. It is unrealistic to suppose that they
should have been able to quickly unite amongst themselves against
the whites who were invading the land they had shared for so long.
Secondly, the Native Americans did not take the approach to war
that white people took. This means that Native Americans failed to adequately
determine who their enemy was. Instead of realizing that all white
people were their enemies, the Native Americans concluded that
only the white people who were in direct conflict with their particualr
tribe were their enemies. This resulted in two unfortunate trends
that worked against Native Americans.
Unfortunate trend number one was the tendency of Native Americans
to befriend or help white people, enabling them to survive and
many times helping to protect them against other hostile Native
American groups. Unfortunate trend number two was the tendency
of Native Americans to form military alliances with one group
of whites (the British, for example) against a different group
of whites (the French, for example). Such military alliances meant
that Native Americans in one section of the colonies were "allies"
with the very same white people who were massacring Native Americans
and taking land from Native Americans in another section of the
colonies. Such military alliances also gave the whites the opportunity
to betray their Native American allies at critical times, particualrly
on the battlefiled. Such betrayals usually resulted in the deaths
of many brave and tactical Native American warriors. This generated
confusion that left Native Americans only on guard against certain
whites, while the whites were on guard against every Native American.
Whites took the position that, regardless of how a few Native
Americans acted in certain situations, all Native Americans were
their enemies. If the Native Americans had taken the same attitude
toward white people, American history might have unfolded differently.
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