Site dedicated to the recognition of native peoples in North America
including the organized genocide against native inhabitants
Genocide in North america
Preserving the Past
The atrocities committed against native people of North America has been thoroughly documented and continues to this day. Whitewashing the acts of settlers and the Governments has attempted to lessen the true story of theft and genocide which took place in what is now the United States and Canada.
Our History
North America shares a history of inflicting genocide upon native people similar to atrocities committed by other countries.
Evidence
US Soldiers burying Native Americans in a mass grave.
Wounded Knee, 1890
Credit: Niday Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo
Execution of Dakota Sioux Indians in Mankato, Minnesota, 1862
Credit: Library of Congress/Photo12/UIG/Getty Images
The Gnadenhutten Massacre, 1782.
Credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images
Acts of Genocide
Definition
The 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide states: “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Declaration of War against a People
…the U.S. government authorize(d) over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on Indians, the most of any country in the world against its indigenous people. By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million living in North America… in 1492.
https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
The 1999 Encyclopedia of Genocide, by Ward Churchill, edited by scholar Israel Charny, argues that extermination was the"express objective" of the U.S. government. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302
California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, declared to legislators in 1851 “that a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.” The Legislature subsequently approved $1.29 million to subsidize militia campaigns against American Indians. https://apnews.com/982b507a846a4ad6bc184b3e7f99ec70
June 18, 2019 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom formally apologized Tuesday and pushed the state to reckon with California’s dark history of violence, mistreatment and neglect of Native Americans, saying it amounted to genocide.
Significant Acts of Genocide
Pequot War 1637
Raritan Massacres 1644
King Philip’s War 1675
Paxton Boys’ slaughter 1675
Pontiac's War 1763
Metacom's War 1670's
Phips Proclamation in Massachusetts 1775
The Gnadenhutten Massacre 1782
Moravian Delawares Massacre 1782
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) War 1779
Wabash River Indiana 1791
Gnadenhütten Ohio 1791
Modoc Indian War 1783
Battle of Tippecanoe 1811
The Creek and Red Stick War 1813
Battle of Horseshoe Bend 1814
Indian Removal Act (Trail of Tears) of 1830
Apache Bounties (bounties for scalps of men, women and children) 1831
Choctaw Removal 1831
Yaqui Wars 1832
Black Hawk War 1832
Second Seminole War 1835-1842
Creek Removal 1836
Potawatomi Trail of Death (Forced removal Potawatomi from Indiana) 1838
American takeover of California 1846-1873
Indian killing expeditions were carried out by state militias that were bankrolled by state and federal lawmakers.
CA Act for the Government and Protection of Indians 1850
(facilitated removal of native culture and land; legalized slavery of Natives, prohibited native testimony against settlers, sterilization of women, and the buying and selling of Native children). Governor Peter Burnett declared at his state of the state address: "A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct." Jan 6, 1851
Other CA massacres listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide
Clear Lake Village 1850
Yokayas on the Russian River 1850
Old Shasta Town Massacre 1851
Yontoket, Howonquet, Achulet, Ox Incident Massacres 1853
Shingletown Massacre 1856
Round Valley Massacre 1856-1859
Kern and Sutter Massacre 1857
Eel River Rangers 1859
Pit River War 1859
Mendocino War 1859-1860
Wiyot Massacre 1860
US Dakota War 1862
Mankato Executions (Little Crow War) 1862
Humboldt Bay Massacre 1862
Bear River 1863
Konkow Trail of Tears 1863
Oak Run Massacre 1864
The Sand Creek Massacre 1864
Chivington’s 100 Day Tour 1865
Three Knolls Massacre 1865
Owens Lake Massacre 1865
San Bernardino Militia 32 day Serrano extermination 1866
Washita River Massacre 1868
Northern Plains Lakota, Arapahos and Northern Cheyennes Massacre 1869
Marias River Massacre 1870
Comanche depopulation 1870
Kingsley Cave Massacre 1871
Little Big Horn 1876
Canandian Indian Act 1876 (Removal of Native Children)
El Añil 1886
Dawes Act 1887
Wounded Knee 1890
Cherokee Nation v. Hitchcock 1902
Rafael Izábal Manhunts 1904
Konkow Maidu Trail of Tears 1913
Removal of Native Children from their Families 1950+
Ederton Ryerson School Native Children Removed 1831-1996 (Mass graves discovered)
Result
10 million+
Estimated number of Native Americans living in land that is now the United States when European explorers first arrived in the 15th century.
Less than 300,000. Estimated number of Native Americans living in the United States around 1900
http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/native-americans/
By 1900 the indigenous population in the Americas declined by more than 80%, and by as much as 98% in some areas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples
Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, "The reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a"vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record." https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302
Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr.,"There can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a 'race' of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history."
"Since its founding in 1776, there had been more than sixteen hundred official military engagements with Native Americans." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colonial-america-is-a-myth/ar-AA12NgRB?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=6a1e449f4ac04d4ef9a551693effc74d
Hitler's reference to the US treatment of Native Americans
Reservations were established in the mid-19th century, and the conditions there were so brutal, Adolf Hitler is said to have used them in part as a blueprint for his Final Solution.
On the Round Valley Reservation, Native Americans were getting only between 160 and 390 calories a day from federal officials, as part of “institutionalized starvation conditions.” Eighty years later, the daily ration for prisoners at Auschwitz was 1,300 calories
https://www.newsweek.com/2016/08/26/california-native-americans-genocide-490824.html
Summary
Within the logic of settler-colonialism and Manifest Destiny, genocide was the inherent overall policy of the United States from the country's inception. In the Declaration of Independence (1776), Thomas Jefferson stated the land was only inhabited only by Savage Beasts and Savage Men. Documented policies of genocide by state and US administrations fall within at least six distinct periods:
1. Before the Civil War - Expansionism
2. During the Civil War
3. Post Civil War era - Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Great Plains
4. The Jacksonian era of forced removal
5. The Utah, Washington, Nevada and California gold rushes
6. Cultural, Legislative and Financial Repression (1900's+)
During the Termination Period and earlier, native children were taken from their families and forced to attend compulsory boarding schools as early as the 1870's continuing through the 1960's. The Carlisle boarding school, founded by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."
One-Sided Treaties
First Nations leaders were told by representatives of the White House, “Only if you lay down your arms, my friends, can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will be good for you." When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties. We never never kept our word in these treaties. -Marlon Brando
Acknowledgement
In 2009, President Obama signed a so-called “apology” to American Indians—in a statement buried in the Defense Appropriations Act. Maybe that was appropriate, given that the “defense” budget was tapped for many years to carry out the Native American genocide—to kill Native Peoples and confine them to “reservations” (which the Nazis cited as precedent for their “camps”). https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/native-american-genocide-or-holocaust-f9BbVANPQEOn_BzVGhOJ5g
In June 2019 California Governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, "That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books." - Cowan, Jill (June 19, 2019) .'It's Called Genocide': Newsom Apologizes to the State's Native Americans". The New York Times. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
Suggested Readings
An American Genocide: The United States and the Californian Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, Brian Madley, 2016, Yale University Press
The first full account of the goverment-sanctioned genocide of California Indians under the United States.
- Winner of the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Award for History
- New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
- Winner, Gold Medal, California Book Award for Californian
A Century of Dishonor, Helen Hunt Jackson, 1881
https://archive.org/details/centuryofdishono00jackrich/page/n7/mode/2up
An early and doleful first hand account of forced removals, killings, and callous disregard of native people.
The American Indian: The First Victim (1972), Jay David
Urged contemporary readers to recall how America’s civilization had originated in "theft and murder" and . . . "genocide."
The Conquest of Paradise (1990), Kirkpatrick Sale
Charges the English and their American successors with pursuing a policy of extermination that had continued unabated for four centuries.
An American Genocide: the US and the California Indian catastrophe (2016) Benjamin Madley
A deeply researched and comprehensive book narrating the rise of a state-sanctioned killing, broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Participants involved: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen, California governors...
Moscow Museum of the North American Holocaust
https://ahtribune.com/history/366-museum-of-north-american-holocaust.html
The US was built upon Native American Lands'
- 16 maps Amercans do not like to talk about
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/8618261/america-maps-truths
North American Genocides (2019), Laurelyn Whitt
Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law
A Historical Account of the First Thanksgiving
Eryn Dion USA Today
https://www.yahoo.com/news/summer-racial-reckoning-america-ready-111725897.html
Dana Hedgpeth Washington Post with contributions by members of the Wampanoag Nation
Native Lands Interactive Map