|
slaveboyforyou -> RE: Support Custer and our brave troops! (6/14/2007 8:30:12 AM)
|
quote:
It was the French who taught the indians how to scalp, it was christian americans who gave them blankets laced with smallpox, I could go on but facts before swine and all.
Name in the last 300 years a race wiped out by natives and then list the ones wiped out by Europeans, genocide is a specialty of European christians.
Actually, there is a debate about whether Europeans taught scalping to Indians. It's not a fact; it is hotly disputed among historians. Scalping is an ancient practice that has been used by many cultures all over the world. Since the practice was observed being used among tribes that never had any contact with Europeans, I tend to believe that it wasn't taught by Europeans. There is evidence that blankets exposed to smallpox were given to some Indian tribes, and yes that is deplorable. However those types of tactics are not exclusive to Europeans. Ancient cultures all over the world would often use dead animals and feces as weapons to cause disease among their enemies, and that includes American Indians. I am not defending the tactic nor am I excusing it; I am only pointing out the fact that it is not exclusive to Europeans.
As for the genocide argument, most of the American Indians that died of disease were not infected deliberately. When Europeans first set foot in the Americas, the knowledge of what caused diseases was not known. Europeans did not deliberately infect the indigenous peoples of the Americas anymore than Asian traders deliberately caused the epidemic of Bubonic Plague in medieval Europe. Anytime different peoples come into contact with each other in they exchange disease with one another. Often times that results in mass death.
Since you asked me to provide examples of non-European Christians in the last 300 years attempting to wipe out an indigenous population, I will do so. From the late 1500's until the end of World War II, Christianity was outlawed in Japan and was punishable by death. In China during the 19th Century, there were several different instances where the imperial government tried to wipe out Muslims and aboriginal peoples. The Ottoman Turks (Muslims of Asiatic origin) tried to wipe out the Armenians (European Christians) during the First World War. The Ottomans came very close to succeeding and estimates of the deaths range between 500,000 and 2 million Armenian deaths. During the Indochina wars after World War II there were several instances of attempted genocide. The Vietnamese in both the communist and American backed governments tried to wipe out the indigenous Montagnard population. The Khmer Rouge committed a mass genocide against many different ethnic groups in Cambodia. They ended up killing an estimated 2 million people. Those I have listed are just off the top of my head; I am sure I could provide more if I wanted to research it.
|
|
|
|
