Was the United States justified in any way for attacking Native Americans?

Question

I just wanted to clarify this--from everything I've seen and read it seems like the U.S. just attacked them for their land without much provocation. To me Thanksgiving just seems like having your cake and eating it [twice].

Bryan I'm not trying to start some debate over what we should do with U.S. land today, I just wanted to clarify for myself what happened in the past.

In many ways we can say "to the victor go the spoils" but I'm just trying to clarify what happened, I understand that their numbers are significantly lower now and simply giving N.A. tribes back their land isn't going to solve all of their problems anyhow.

Answer 1

No. We just decided that the land was ours, and no one could stop us. We started moving West, and never stopped until we got to the Pacific Ocean. We convinced ourselves that the Indians were "godless savages," did not have a title for the lands they lived on, and were therefore just collateral damage along the roadside. There were way too many of us. We killed whole tribes giving them diseases like smallpox, and those that resisted our pushing them aside on our march to the Pacific, we shot or rounded up and put on Reservations. A great deal of effort went in to convincing our citizens that there was nothing wrong with this, and it marks one of the worst chapters in our history. That is probably why when my generation studied American History, there was no mention of the subject of your question.

Answer 2

The europeans had no right to do what they did.
I've read some of the answers, most of the answerers were obviously misinformed in some point in time about the what happened when the europeans arrived...

Natives were a peaceful people. They had homes, NEVER did they claim to own the land that they lived on.

Law and order was intact. There were tribal leaders, great binding laws that were adhered to with consequencial punishments.

"Scalping" was introduced by Europeans. Because of the cultural importance of a Native's hair, it was a humiliation tactic used by many soldiers. Natives eventually fought back the same way, but only after learning this tactic from the whites.

Buffalo's were not needlessly killed. Just because some of you seen Into the West, does not mean that it is anywhere near the truth. Natives honored animals, animals had a huge significance in tribal culture. They were seen as guides, totems, definitions of ones purpose in life.

Native's only killed animals for food, and used every uneatable thing on the animal for clothing, containment, ornamental etc.
They never killed for the mere "fun of it".

Natives did not deserve to be raped, pillaged, defamed, tortured, starved, enslaved, driven out of their homes...the greedy settlers were willing to do anything for the bountiful land that the natives so serenely lived on.

Thank goodness that they failed with their attempt for total tribal genocide, or I would not be here today.

Answer 3

It's hard to say. When two completely different kinds of people are placed in close proximity using the same resources, they are almost certainly going to fight over it.

Instead of "to the victor goes the spoils" , our new liberal view of history tells us "to the victor goes the blame."

Native Americans attacked and killed settlers, Native Americans attacked and killed each other. There are many cases of peaceful tribes, but even more cases of brutal tribes. So you have to ask yourself, did the U.S. only fight for land or for security as well.

History has also twisted the way people look at certain events. A popular holier than thou attack from modern day historians on 18th century settlers is that they "gave native americans blankets with small pox on them." I have never seen anything to show a motive behind this incident. It could be the settlers were providing humanitarian aid and simply did not understand the biomedical implications.

Hind sight is 20/20. I wouldn't be too quick to judge early America on this issue. I'm sure it's far more complicated than we can imagine.

Answer 4

Conquest is part of the human experience and has been occurring since the beginning of time. Whether that conquest was right or wrong is largely determined by history and who writes it. The victors write the histories and thus will always justify themselves. Slaughter will never be considered right, but at times it will be deemed necessary. People would have us believe that the Indians were innocent victims. This is not true. Indians were indeed aggressive and brutal with settlers in their lands, but they were not powerful enough to stop the onslaught of western civilization. The simple fact is that I do not know what people hope to achieve with this debate. We are not going to return the lands to the Indians and most people are not going to accept blame for the actions of their ancestors. So what we are left with is the cries of people who have guilt for whatever reason and feel unrealistically that everyone should share it with them. There have been many questionable action in American history and while the wrongs of the past cannot be erased we should be defined more by how we treat these people today than by how they were treated in the distant past.

Answer 5

OK I thought american scools taught that...US didn't attak the Natives...from its first inception a duty of a state is to protect its citizens and ensure their safety;reacting to attacks on the citizens the army moved against the natives;such situations escalate...tribes are not nations( as we understand the definition) and if you agree on a treaty with one tribe,the others are not bound by it...and for these tribes boundaries have no real meaning and if you undestand the implications of that(like for example,the needs for hunting move nomads-and Natives were nomads-to lands three times the size of France for few thousand natives,wich land cannot be wrightfully claimed as theirs-so if you are to return land you cannot really determine where and what) you see that clashes were unavoidable.Speaking about natives,adhering to the definition of 'native' so spaniards were then also natives and had exterminated their fair share of native americans for precicely the same reasons...

Answer 6

Neither the Americans or the "Native Americans" had any justification to attack anybody. The problem is: they attacked anyway. There is plenty of blame on every side of that whole thing.
The Pilgrims actually were on good terms with the "Native Americans" in their area, both sides treated each other with respect and decency. That is why they invited their "Native American " friends to the party. It was likewise with William Penn and his colony. When Penn died, the mourning among the tribes in the area was just as profound as it was in England, and Pennsylvania.
It was a different story in other places and at other times. There was a tendency on both sides to assume that everybody of a particular race was the same, and when an aberrant individual did something horrible, everybody of that race was blamed.
My reason for using "Native American" in quotes is this: In spite of my mixed scandanavian/ european/ german/ etceteran ancestry, I was born and raised here, just like my parents and my grandparents. That makes me a very native american. The problem with addressing the indigenous peoples of the American continent is: there arent any. Everybody here came from somewhere else. The "Native Americans" came from asia originally, although they WERE here first. There was no word, and still is no word, for the indigenous peoples as a whole. They were known to themselves by their individual nation names. The problem with calling them "indians" is that this is based on a map reading screw-up, although while I was out west I had many "Native American" friends who referred to themselves as "Indian" or "American Indian".
I guess the main point is that people is people, whatever they may be called.

Answer 7

Both sides were at fault - the white settlers for thinking that they could just take land at will, no matter who was living on it, and the Indians for thinking they had divine right to the ENTIRE United States.

Nowadays, I see it as the Indians continuing to insist that whites are 'wronging' them and trying to have THEIR cake and eat it too. They claim they are not citizens of America, live on self-governing reservations, and do not pay taxes. However, they expect the right to vote in our elections. Come on! How is that right? While both parties were at fault back in the day, the Indians today are NOT acting like productive members of society and that's probably why they and their culture are dying in the throes of alcoholism and gambling.

Answer 8

What was done in the east was nothing compared to what happened to them in the west. If you haven't already, read "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee". I wish them well in all their endeavors. If they can make a living off a little scrap of land, more power to them.

Oh and by the way, it was white people who killed off the Buffaloes, not the Indians.

Answer 9

In order to dehumanize us, and make their take place fate doctrine look to be civilized, they had to persuade their persons that we had been sub human. They destroyed our cultures and decimated our tribes and stole our youngsters. They enslaved us, murdered us and took our nation. They announced us to their liquor after which referred to as us drunks. What occurred to my ancestors used to be no specific than what occurred later to the Armenians, after which the Jews and many others. The dominant tradition used their laws and mores to show us into animals, that would be exterminated with out mercy. I would pass on and on over this, however I'm going to reduce it quick, and advise a guide referred to as whilst the satisfactory spirit died. It will inform you approximately the noble acts of the Americans in our nation.

Answer 10

The United States wasn't justified in any way for attacking the Native Americans. Now, when you talk about Native Americans attacking colonists and then Americans they were justified on many occasions. What would you do to a group of people who continually took advantage of you, sold your people into slavery, stole your land, killed off all the game, purposely spread disease in your village knowing your people couldn't fight it, raped your women, stole your children, tried to rob you of your culture, and attacked your homes? You would fight back any way you could. The first scalps were not taken by Natives, but by whites. The first slaves in America were Natives, not Africans. America waged a war against the Native Americans for well over one hundred years, constantly pushing the Native Americans off their land and forcing them to adopt a culture that was not theirs.