Colonist-Indian relations

It's thought Raleigh's colony at Roanoke failed because the English deserted the fort and joined the local Indians. Early colonists spoke of Indians with blue eyes who spoke a language that sounded like Welsh

will you please delete this topic that i posted? Northman?

because my life is depending on it!

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thank u!

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1/16 seems enormous to me, but after all why not...

I don't know exactly how many "whites" are in the US, but lets assume for the sake of simplicity, 160 millions (maybe less but lets say that the Blacks that have white ancestry account for the rest). Now lets say there were about 10 millions natives in 1500 north of the Rio Grande (maybe less, but once more I'm guessing).

If we follow Dawkins' vision stating that (1) selection takes place at the gene level and (2) that what drives the individual is the survival of its gene pool, we get this: the effects of the natives' genocide have been repared!

10 millions natives in 1500 = 1/16th of 160 millions in 2000. It is a bit like in economics where you have secular trends a country's economy fluctuats around but ultimately follows for centuries. It also allows us to give a stricter definition of a genocide; it is not properly killing a given group of people, but to prevent this group of people to reproduce and pass on its gene pool.

Well, my sources are genetic studies, particularly one made by Shiver.

I am talking of White people. Blond blue eyed Americans of "germanic" aspect that doesn't have any single Native American feature but that the genetic test show they have Native Ancestors. With modern genetics, it is becoming increasingly clear that that many people with Native ancestors simply forgot about them.

That's what I am talking about.

I am not talking about Hispanics, Brazilians and even Quebecois that admit openly they have Native Ancestry, but of the White Americans and theirs "Cherokee princess". Well, it is false Cherokees had royalty, but ancestry do exist.

The idea that the immigration of Spaniards to the Americas was only of males is not quite true. It is true only for the 10 years period of the conquist. It is also true there was a sex imbalance for a long time. But European women always came as immigrants as well, in large numbers. Large masses of immigrants of both sexs came to Latin America both before and after independence, up to 1960. Afterwards immigration drop almost to zero.

Edited by pinguin - 07-Mar-2007 at 17:07

You got a nice point their penguin..., I think the White Amercians were just selfish at the time and wanted to take over period..., but i guess that was normal in that period of time...

I'm no specialist about the early modern America so my point are only personal opinions I couldn't back by any evidence. That being said, I doubt the very existence of an American identity and I am pretty convinced that if there was  any the India side contribution to it was close to zero.

As the case of the creoles (first and second generation of conquistadores) proves, being in the colonies tended to give the colons an identity of their own. But this is more due to the distance than to any interaction with other cultures. The issue is even more complex in New England as the colons migrated with their own very strong group culture (the quakers being the most famous exemple but there was plenty). More over, the colonies' territory was divided and more or less each colony had a different statut.

My view of an identity is anti-structural, i.e. even though identities can last millenia (the Jews in Europe for instance), they tend to appear and disappear suddenly. They tend to be centred around one interest common to all (fight against taxation for the case of the English colonies) or believed to be so (after all Manchester didn't have any representent in Parliament, they didn't ask for their independence).

So, in my opinion, colons saw themselves as differrent from the English from England, but I'm not sure they though of each other as Americans. It is not by chance that in the first version of the constitution each state was independent!

Concerning the natives' influence on the American identity (once more I'm guessing) I think it was pretty limited to a small part of the population mainly males who shared experiences with Indians (wars, traping, trade). For most of the settlers and the fist urbanites, natives were simply a nuisance and if there was any reference to them I'd guess it was merely rhetorical.

The whole native-friendly culture rised slowly from ca 1870 to 1970 before becoming prevalent nowadays and you have hardly a son of Irish immigrants in NYC who doesn't say: "yes I have some native blood somewhere".

One of the most important composent of identity is the language. If the indians had been instrumental in the creation of the identity (and not some ex-post reference) American English would be full of Indian words. Is it? The story is quite close to what happen to the Celts in England. English is 50% Germanic 50% Latin and has only three celt words in it. It pretty much support the view that the Celtic part of the English culture is a recreation, nothing else.

One of the most important reason for that is the character transitory of their culture, no massive stone buildings easily visible... Another reason is that there was hardly any unity in the native culture. The US and Canada (much more so than Mexico) is a European invention, colons didn't invade one country and made it their, they shaped the territory as if it was some raw material. Even the states have little or nothing to do with the tribes they took the name of.

Ultimately, a people cannot live in guilt. Well the German more or less can but they are the exception that confirms the rule. Americans discover the horror upon which their nation was based. As it was impossible to simply forget about it (as the Japanese did), to pretend you didn't know (as the European do for colonisation) or to simply pretend nothing happened (see the Turks and the Armenian genocide (it is just an example I don't wish to dwell about)), the American "decided" to swallow their victim and to integrate them into their identity.

When I'm saying decided I'm not refering to any consipiracy and I'm not saying that the average American woke up one morning saying: "gosh why don't I integrated the native into my identity?". I'm just saying it did happen because it was the less painful path for the American society to face its past. It is actually a very common feature of the national visions of history, it avoids nations to feel divided between the good ones and the bad ones.