May 26, 1637, the Puritans and their allies surround the Pequot Indian stronghold called Mystic Fort near what is now Stonington, Connecticut. They set it ablaze, then shoot those who flee the flames. By dawn, over 400 are dead—mostly women and children.
And yet, we still call Puritans the “peaceful” settlers.
1/6
#blackmastodon #iran #photography #history #war #histodons
Image: The Puritans’ massacre of the Pequots. A 19th-century wood engraving. Source: The Granger Collection, NYC.
Thanks, Dr. Glassco, for telling us (specifically, me) about the Pequot massacre.
There are so many true stories of humans' atrocities throughout history. It can be depressing to think about this bad history, but I believe we must face it with courage and honesty. Otherwise, we burn books, close libraries, naively tell lies about our families, and enact our own atrocities with enthusiasm.
There's a vast store of the admirable in human history, too. We mustn't forget that.
@oldclumsy_nowmad @Deglassco
RE
true stories of humans' #atrocities throughout history. It can be depressing to think about this bad history, but I believe we must face it with courage and honesty
TRUE, we need to think about it, another example is the #MongolEmpire.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/the-mongols-built-an-empire-with-one-technological-breakthrough/
About 15,000 years before some Asians moved to #NorthAmerica and in the 1600s #genocide repeated
@felis_catus_domesticus (nice image)
The tools change, but it's the ⭕mentally that never changes
@6g @oldclumsy_nowmad @Deglassco The tools change, but it's the ⭕mentally that never changes
couldn't agree more...
@6g @oldclumsy_nowmad @Deglassco
Indigenous American tribes were hardly kind to each other when engaging in warfare amongst themselves. The Powhatan cozied up to the English and tolerated their presence partly as a hedge against other rival tribes in the region. Indians were not stupid, nor were they innocent naked childish babes in the woods. Nor were they purely and solely victims. They engaged in brutal warfare with the people around them, practiced subjugation and exploitation on those around them, thought politically and were cunning and calculating in their own way just like any European of that time. The slight technological edge possessed by Europeans ensured that they eventually gained the upper hand over the Indian nations, but at many points in history, this too was an open contest with no foregone conclusions of the type that historians and those who would be historians, and would wish to speak in the voice of an historian, would like to pretend are real when judged from the vantage point of the present. Smallpox killed more Indians than (European) settlers ever did.
@felis_catus_domesticus @oldclumsy_nowmad @Deglassco
RE
The #Powhatan cozied up to the English and tolerated their presence partly as a hedge against other rival tribes in the region.
They coexisted in Canada, NA, Mexico for maybe did this for 15+k years. Of course there are the border disastrous events, but they mostly traded and kept being themselves
RE
#Indians were not stupid
Of course, I knew some when living in Brooklyn, from New Mexico, I'm assuming the same in the past
@6g @oldclumsy_nowmad @Deglassco
History is too nuanced and complicated to be taught by people who possess only one black crayon and one white crayon and a single sheet of paper..
Even if they style their own names with the letters "PhD." after them.. ESPECIALLY if they style their names with the letters "PhD."..
I’ve tried to be respectful and give straightforward answers that reflect the general historical consensus on the matter. I’m not about to engage you any further if this is all you have to say. You are being disingenuous and basically trolling. So there you have it.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @Deglassco
Whataboutism doesn't change this simple principle:
Your ancestors did stinky things. My ancestors did stinky things. Everybody's ancestors did stinky things.
That doesn't mean doing stinky things is okay.
@oldclumsy_nowmad @6g @Deglassco
Finally something we can all agree on...
@oldclumsy_nowmad @6g @Deglassco
There were probably some people in Kunta Kintay's village in Africa who thought he wasn't nothing but a punk and would never amount to anything. Ditto for Thomas Aquinas..
@oldclumsy_nowmad @6g @Deglassco
Whataboutism doesn't change this simple principle:
I don't feel like I have been engaging in whataboutism. In fact I think I have actively been avoiding it.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @Deglassco
Perhaps I misinterpreted your comment. I'll take another look when I have a little more time, and will get back to you.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad
So, the gist of what you said is not a new sentiment Since the late twentieth century, there’s been a growing impetus —still with us today—to compare the warfare of Native tribes with the conquests of European settlers as if the two were alike. As if they rose from the same ground, were shaped by the same hands, and carried the same consequences. They didn’t.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad
Yes, native tribes fought one another. They forged alliances, brokered power, and sometimes broke those alliances. There was strategy, ambition, betrayal. There were winners and losers. All of these things. But the land was their own. The rules were theirs to set—and theirs to break.
The violence, when it came, didn’t come from another continent and it didn’t arrive in ships.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad
The European settlers didn’t come as neighbors, but came with a conviction that they held a divine inheritance. That was the story they told and that was the story printed in the textbooks. So, when they burned villages, killed children, erased whole nations from maps from the land, it wasn’t called conquest. It was called providence. Civilization. Expansion.
The tribes who resisted weren’t called patriots, but savages.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad
To say that Native peoples weren’t merely victims is true. But for you to use that truth to flatten the story—to pretend that all violence is equal, that all wars are wars of choice—is to miss what the history actually tells us. There was a power imbalance. The terms of the conflict were not mutual.
And as for the smallpox—yes, disease did ravage Indigenous populations. But it wasn’t some neutral act of nature.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad
The historical record includes cases of intentional biological warfare. The devastation of disease was not separate from the violence of conquest; it was part of it.
So, good history absolutely insists on complexity—yes, Native people weren’t passive, but that doesn’t absolve European settlers who slaughtered them and then mythologized it as providence—-manifest destiny.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad
Ultimately, history isn’t about romanticizing the past or flattening it into false equivalence. It’s about power. About who gets to write the story—and who gets erased.
Like I said, this is all part of the historical record in both primary and secondary documentation.
If you’re interested, or if anyone else wants to know, I can recommend some of those resources.
@felis_catus_domesticus @6g @oldclumsy_nowmad @Deglassco Indigenous people are PEOPLE like any others, not magical elves.
They had and HAVE the same right to resist colonization and exploitation any other people do and for the same reasons.
Nobody anywhere on the planet is obligated to submit to the theft of their land, to settler colonialism, to slavery, or to any other form of exploitation. Not in the past, and not today.
Remember also: wiithout biological weapons the settlers here would probably have been thrown back into the sea.
It's very hard to fight a war against an entire continent with only matchlock muskets facing warriors of the first quality including expert archers at the end of 3,000 miles of sailing in the tubby, slow sailing ships of that era.
Remember folks here had home field advantage. Also at the start of the war the invaders had composite crossbows and matchlock muskets that didn't work in the rain.
The simpler one piece bows of the defenders worked fine in the rain as long as you had some dry bowstrings available to change out at intervals.
*** detailed discussion of these weapons below***
A good bow is easily a match for a matchlock musket so long as the shooter is skilled in its use. The main advantage of guns of that era was a lot of people could be trained quickly to use them.
A longbow (90-170 pound draw European warbow) or a basic hunting bow (50 pound draw or so) took and takes years to learn to shoot. There were no bowsights in those days like those used in bowhunting today. One term used today for traditional archery is "barebow."
Crossbows were easier to use but harder to make and much more expensive, again an advantage only for those who did not use them their whole lives. Muskets may have been cheaper to make especially in quantity, and an army could be trained fast in their use.
The Spanish did wear armor here and that was a problem in some areas. In some of those areas the atlatl (lever spear thrower) was still used presumably alongside the bow, and it produced enough energy to pierce armor and even the "cortez shield" horse armor.
By the time the English were becoming a problem there were few people left making armor in Europe. It had fallen into disuse starting with the end of the era of mounted knights, and as first bows and then guns improved it became too expensive (not impossible) to make for large numbers of soldier.
As late as the so-called "Old West" some pistol-packing bandits wore a steel armor plate over their chest known as a "steel shirt." For some reason this was considered cowardly but these did work at least against the Colt .45 round. By that time steel was much cheaper than in the 1500's though.
Without armor, the greater power of crossbows or muskets was not a major advantage, especially in the case of the inaccurate, non-rifled musket which could not hit at a distance except by firing volleys. Archers could fire volleys too, by aiming clouds of arrows into the air.
Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco
Roy -- the dull one
6G
felis_catus_domesticus
LukefromDC