What If The Indians Had Won The Fight For America?

Just read an interesting article about what if the native American Indians had managed to stem the influx of Europeans and banded together for a "free" America..

Being military minded, we probably would have tried to stop the threat of Communism in Cuba and other places in our region. But, since it was more a war of ideology, we may not have joined in the fight to stop Communism in Vietnam. We probably wouldn't have gone to Afghanistan to stop the Russians. And, therefore, we wouldn't have armed the guys who later became the Taliban and Al Queda. We also wouldn't have been in such direct alliance with Israel, or gotten so involved when the Ayatollah overtook the Shah of Iran in the 1970's. But, in trying to stop Iran (also a war of ideology -- they were no real threat to us), we ended up arming Iraq. This allowed Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990, which made us (being the do-gooders and greedy oil-lovers that we are) put troops in Saudi Arabia, the true Holy Land of Islam. Putting troops in Saudi Arabia is what made Osama Bin Laden form Al Queda, who were by then well-armed with weapons provided to them by the U.S. government 20 years before, when we were trying to stop Russia from taking Afghanistan. Oh, the irony....

http://www.rogerwallace.com/indians.html

What do you think? Would things have been like this, better, or worse? I guess then we'd have no Washington Redskins, tho we might still have the Cleveland Indians..

 

If God had not give us all free will, there would have been no wars period...

I hate hypotheticals like this. To me, this article looks like another sad attempt at assuming and or re-directing guilt to establish a justification for a cause and effect scenario that relies on hind sight to make its point.

Though my Indian heritage is very small, I'm fairly certain that there is no way to conclusively establish whether things would have been better or worse. Indian tribes used to war against each other. Who's to say they would not have had their own similar problems even if left untouched by outside hands? In the end, everything changes. Not always for the better; perhaps not for the worse. That said, trying to blame US policy for the intentional and unconditional hatred that pre-dates the US is something I find very difficult to do, Indian, American or otherwise.

 

indians are kewl

 

I'm sure for alot of Indians the war is not over yet.

 

I've never really thought about it before, I think things would be way different. In what ways I'm not sure.

 

If the Europeans had given up and left, America would now be sparsely populated with warring tribes of primitive Indians.

The Indian culture wasn't making any real technological progress. Even now, the Indians who choose to live on the reservations aren't doing anything more productive than running casinos.

Of course, half of the data in the paragraph you posted was wrong. The author is obviously more interested in bullshit than fact.

 

One of the biggest fantasies ever created was that Indian tribes lived in peace and harmony with nature and there were no wars or genocide until the white man arrived.

The fact is that many tribes were nomadic because they moved to an area, killed all of the game, and then moved on to another area.

Indian nations had no concept of land ownership. Land was land. It just existed, but could not be owned. Territories existed, for which most Indian tribes perpetually fought over. Territories were constantly changing in areas where large Indian nations existed. There were major Indian territorial wars in areas that today are Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Indians considered themselves to be part of nature and their way of life was not very different from that of wild animals.

Will is right that that wasn't any technological progress taking place. There hadn't been any since Indians learned to ride horses that they stole from some of the early European explorers. That was the first technological advance in perhaps a few thousand years.

Anyone who does any real research into ancient Indian culture will find that there is a great disparity between the facts and the fantasy that has been created.

There is an excellent historical book about Souix culture that I read many years ago. I cannot remember the name, but it went into great detail about constant territorial struggles and the methods of torture that competing tribe members were subjected to when captured. The greatest act of bravery was to not show any pain as your captors cut off your lips and eyelids and subjected you to "a thousand cuts". When a very brave captive finally died, the captor was allowed to cut out his heart and eat it to absorb his powers of bravery.

It also covered matters of honor and valor and how certain people rose in the ranks to become chiefs. Basically, if you were the alpha male, survived the many wars with acts of bravery, and showed a certain craftiness and wisdom, the chances were good that you would eventually become the chief.

Life expectancy for most Indians was only about 25 to 30 years due to constant war and disease.

Without any European intervention, this is what you would still have today. You also wouldn't have casinos.

 

Um...we wouldn't have to outsource all our customer service?

Oh, you probably meant Native Americans, not Indians ('cause they would be people from India).

In that case...headdresses would be more popular?

 

Great points! It is interesting to note that the White man was not the first to be scalped.... Indians were doing that to each other long before those pesky Europeans showed up.

 

You are right, but when I grew up Native Americans were still called Indians in the USA.

Today that does get confusing.

 

America would be another Mexico.

 

The people in America would still be throwing spears.

 

The Aztecs were actually developing pretty well, so where various other tribes of natives. To assume they would not have developed at all all these years later is pretty presumptive. There is also the concept of trade. Instead of conquest, if trade and cultural exchange was attempted, it is not difficult to imagine that many tribes would have become very technologically advanced by now. Of course there was no chance in hell of any of that happening considering the philosophies of the western invaders at that point in history, but to assume that the natives were incapable of advance or sophistication rings of the type of racist propaganda that lead to the Trail of Tears.

 

We would be having pow-wows and I would raise my right hand and say "How" a lot.

 

The Indians failed at securing the border and look what happened. They were flooded with immigrants which overran the country and forced their way of life on everyone.

 

Things change, that's a fact of life. America is a nation of immigrants, why stop now?

 

In the past, America attracted the best and the brightest as immigrants. Life in America was hard and the only people interested in coming to America were people who were willing to work to achieve their dreams.

Now... America is a mommy state. We attract people who want to come here for our health care and our educational system. Along with a few of the best and the brightest, we attract a lot of people who are just looking for a free ride.

This isn't the fault of the new immigrants. We built this upside-down system. It's our fault.

 

We have built a system that rewards the lazy with welfare. A person can choose not to work, and can live close to a middle class lifestyle. The system that we have built seems to work against he elderly at retirment age.

 

Wait a minute, did Will just blame America? When did you join the blame America first crowd?

 

I blame us whenever we screw up.

The "Blame America First" crowd blames America inaccurately.

That's not my style. That's not the way I roll.