The bones don’t lie.
” Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped “
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Third epigraph in “Blood Meridian, ” from The Yuma Sun
I went to college at UC Santa Cruz, a bastion of lefty cultural Marxists who blamed all of the ills of the world on “Elite White Males.” My Native American History classes often degenerated into exercises in victimology, based upon the belief that native societies were generally peaceful and lived in ecological harmony with Mother Earth. Warfare was more totemic and ritualistic than murderous. It was the coming of the white man that disrupted that Edenic life and introduced large-scale violence into the equation.
That’s a pernicious myth and I called bullshit loudly and frequently — and was as popular as a fart in church.
I disdain history that is run out either as triumphalist national narrative OR victimology. I operate on the fundamental principle that humankind is mad, bad and dangerous to know no matter the where or when.
Evidence of this can be found in the Crow Creek Massacre. It occurred c. 1325 in what is now South Dakota. At that time, the native peoples of that area were sedentary agriculturalists. They may have been under stress from recurrent drought. One group conducted a mass raid on another people’s fortified village, broke in and perpetrated a massacre. The survivors crept back and buried their people in a mass grave that, centuries later, turned up some 500 bodies of men, women and children.
There was ample evidence of wounds, “butchering marks” and scalping. One man had apparently been scalped previously and survived, his skull showing signs of healing.
There’s an in-depth Smithsonian article here. Props to the Robert E. Howard forums for kicking this article up.
George Catlin found a culture of Indian-on-Indian violence in full flow in the early 19th Century. Mankind is a killer angel.
Paul McNamee says
Yes, plenty of bad blood going WAY back. One major tool the Europeans used to manage colonial footholds were by playing native tribes against each other. North America, New Zealand, Africa – same old song & dance.
Eccentric Cowboy says
And that is one of the reasons I don’t plan on going to a college. It will be an unending battle of trying to refute crap from those who are spoon fed foolishness.
If it helps however, this is one of the most wonderful articles I have ever beheld on how to deal with such tomfoolery. >:) http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2006/10/colidge-stoodenz.html
JimC says
That’s great. Reminds me of a line from a Steve Earle song:
I headed south on 35 hell-bent-for-vinyl….
Baldheadiktomi says
Ima call bullshit on you saying survivors crept back and buried them. You have zero idea about what happened. U jus found the bones but we have the stories. There was a war with the hairy faces. Who might that be? Yall don’t even know about the Lakota Dakota nakota n thay whole Sioux stock coming from Central America. How they have stories about migrating north from down where they used to live in giant tipis. Yall say us gros ventre and Arapaho come from Canada n the Algonquin trail but our 6thousand year old bundle and our 2 thousand year old bundles say otherwise. Pur 5 thousand year old bundles origin story is written at Caral Supe pyramid in Peru. We sre the only tribe in north America that says we go to the big sands after we die. There’s only one culture that took their dead to the big sands (desert) and that wad the chinchorro culture from Chile. they left their region around same time we got our feathered pipe which has ties to the mayan God kulkulkan and also had a 2k year old mayan face carving inside the bundle along with feathers from South and Central America including a extinct bird from Easter Island. Yall said the cree are Algonquin also n they share words with nahualt in Mexico. Lol yall always tryna tell our history n said we didn’t have written language after your Jesuit destroyed almost all our codexes but alot survived. Yall don’t even know about the incan style wall in Montana that us indigenous built. Lol yes our people fought each other. But the way yall make it sound we was no where like yall was in Europe. In 2016 north and south American population wad 1.02 billion and over 600 million is indigenous. The condor and eagle will unite. Your walls will fall. N the earth WILL heal. Have a great day and enjoy the few years yall Have left before the sun takes away all of your technology
Baldheadiktomi says
We were more advanced in life then yall. Yall were jus more advanced with weapons thanks to the Chinese. Yall even said we didn’t have horses but yet the Spanish wrote about us having horses when they arrived which makes sense cuz they are native to North America and they migrated into Asia from America. You told us the maya and Inca went extinct but there’s millions and millions of them. Stop trying to tell our story and worry about your story.
Baldheadiktomi says
President Lincoln signed an order making it 25 for native kids and baby scalps 50 for out women and 100 for men. Do you know how much money that was back then. Do you know how many millions of my peoples scalps were taken for money. Do you know how many millionaires and billionaires in thus country built their generational wealth on our scalps? Call bullshit all u want. But when we unite we will show u the mercy u never showed our women and children. Because we don’t lack empathy like you pale faces
Edoardo says
“….The condor and eagle will unite….”
Well, human sacrifices?…. Children offered to the Devil under the guise of a feathered Serpent?….Will the Condor and Eagle bring them back also? Or the demise of the “native American cultures” was already prophesied 4,300 years ago?
——->
Genesis 9:27
“God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”
King James Version (KJV) AV 1611
Heathen says
Oh and then here comes that stupid revised book of fables y’all LOVE to throw around and use whenever it suits you, even though every other minute of every day y’all don’t follow a damn bit of its teachings. If you did the indigenous customs would have been respected, residential school wouldn’t have happened and y’all would have followed the commandments of thou shall not steal and thou shall not kill