The Native American Genocide
In this paper, I changed my thesis. My original thesis was about how the American government has done nothing to help the poverty of the Native Americans. Now I have written about how Native Americans have gone through the longest genocide with the most deaths. One thing that I improved on was my organization. I did so by connecting the end of each paragraph back to my thesis. This was something that I struggled with in my original essay. I also improvement on making the 2fer more of an argument instead of a history lesson. I didn't just state a ton of facts, but I explained each fact that was include in my paper.
2fer Revision:
The indigenous people of America, commonly known as the Native Americans, first came to America at least 30,000 years ago, thousands of years before the European settlers. They made America their home, with a population of 10 million and hundreds of tribes. The Native Americans thrived off of the land, using it for survival. But when the Europeans settled in America, they were enslaved, dispossessed, and annihilated. The Native Americans experienced a genocide that took tons of lives. History has seen some very gruesome genocide or methods of mass destruction, but none of them can be compared to the ongoing holocaust that the Native Americans have endured.
The word genocide is derives from Greek and Latin. The prefix “geno-” is Greek for a group of people, a race, or tribe. The suffix “-cide” is latin for killing or killer. Thus genocide means the killing of a group of people, a race, or tribe. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines genocide as the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group. Native Americans have under went a genocide because they were eliminated first by Christopher Columbus and other Europeans and then by the American government. When Christopher Columbus thought he was the first person to discover America, he used violence and slavery to retrieve gold from the Native Americans. He also forced them to convert to Christianity and introduced many diseases that the Native Americans were not immune to. The American government had its part in this genocide because it passed many laws that allowed it and the American people to remove or kill Natives if they stood in the way of American colonization. All of these things contributed to the Native American genocide because it wiped out a mass population of tribes. The Native American genocide was so great compared to other genocides because so many have died. For instance in the Jewish Holocaust, 11 million people died in the span of 12 years. However, in only three years of Columbus being in America, five million Taino people were dead. Fifty years later, it was recorded that only 200 Tainos were living. It only took 3 years for Columbus to kill 40% of what the Jewish Holocaust did in 11 years.
The Indian Removal Act was another form of genocide. It was a law passed on May 28, 1830 that authorized President Andrew Jackson to give the Native American tribes in the southern states, the unsettled lands of west Mississippi in exchange for their land. Only a few tribes went in peace, but a myriad number violently resisted. During the winter and fall of 1838 to 1839, the Cherokees were forcibly relocated west. Approximately 4,000 died on the march, which was more than a fifth of the Cherokee population. This became known as the “Trail of Tears.” The American government moved the Native Americans out of their land, placing them on reservations with promises of peace, cash payments, and supplies. However they never received any of it. This was a form of genocide because many of the Native Americans died because of the cold weather, starvation, lack of water, and diseases like measles and smallpox. The government’s purpose of the Indian Removal Act was not only to move the Native Americans west so that the settlers could have their land, but to kill them on their way there. They succeed in that, considering the they wiped out ⅕ of a tribe.
There was also a cultural genocide that took place among the Native Americans. A culture involves language, music, art, religion, agriculture, food, and the social life. To destroy a culture is to destroy people’s dreams and spirit. In perspective, destroying a culture is more complex than killing people alone. The American government tried to destroy the Native American culture by capturing and brainwashing the children. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Bureau of Indian Affairs founded American Indian boarding schools. The schools would literally kidnap the children from their families. They were physically, sexually, and mentally abused in order to “kill the Indian and save the man.” The children could not to talk in their native languages, they could not wear their tribal clothing but they had to wear uniforms, and they were harshly disciplined. When these children returned home from boarding schools they were confused and they lost their cultural identity. That lead to suicide, drinking and violence. Robbing Native American children of their culture was a form of genocide because once they were done with school, they either no longer wanted to be a Native because they were taught that Natives are savages or they wanted to be a Native American again, but couldn’t because they didn’t fit in. This form of cultural genocide engendered many deaths and poverty.
Today Native Americans struggle with alcoholism, health problems, and poverty because of the genocide that they experienced. From the day the first European that sailed upon the rich coasts of America, to the present time as many Native Americans struggle with alcoholism, violence, diseases, and impoverishment they have been massacred. Thus the genocides throughout history are not as immense compared to the holocaust that has been enacted upon Native America. The Native American holocaust has lasted for more than 500 years and at least 95,000,000 have been exterminated, more than any genocide combined.
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