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.
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#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
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 @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.
Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco
Roy -- the dull one
6G
felis_catus_domesticus