by Francis Jock

Created on: September 11, 2008   Last Updated: March 29, 2010

Racism is an ugly social disease, not unique to America, but still as powerful and evil as ever in the lives of many Native Americans. Racism is a self-inflicted debilitating affliction seeking to deprive one group of people of their humanity over the self-assumed superior humanity of another. America has suffered from this disease long before its founding and continues today, despite the best attempts of government and institution to overcome it. For Native Americans, racism continues to ravage the humanity aboriginal people. It remains ugly, unabated and an relatively uncensored in a society where stereotype and myth have become cast in concrete imagery and denial.

The roots of racism against Native Americans are, perhaps not as well known as one may think. While America's love for tradition dictates a ritual of thanksgiving feast every year, replete with Puritan folklore and Indian caricature, for Native Americans, the feast is sullied by the Puritan massacre of the Pequod Indians, in the so-called Pequod war. Mostly forgotten in accounts of our nation's early history, the Puritans of the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies combined their forces, surrounded the sleeping Indian village and ruthlessly proceeded to slaughter the men, women and children. Those they didn't murder in the name of God, they enslaved.

European enslavement of aboriginal people wasn't as unusual an occurrence as one might think. As early as 1502, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola at that time, Don Nicholas de Orvando, had prepared a fleet of thirty ships bearing stolen gold and aboriginal slaves for sail back to Spain. After the fleet set sail, 25 sank in the winds of a Hurricane somewhere between the straits of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Over the coming centuries, the Spanish conquerors ravaged the islands and their inhabitants, doing the same to the Inca and other indigenous nations throughout Central and South America. Little remains of these once great nations, and much of the truth remains buried forever in social prisons of denial.

English and French racism towards the Native American Tribes continued throughout the colonial period. As the Monarchies of France and England grappled with each other over who would rule the world, Native Americans, especially the powerful Iroquois, Huron and many other nations were forced into a deadly struggle for survival. French and English governors and their proxies alike manipulated the Iroquois Confederacy into a deadly game of choosing sides.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>