Was the 1623 Poisoning of 200 Native Americans the Continent’s First War Crime? | Hacker News Reader

Was the 1623 Poisoning of 200 Native Americans the Continent’s First War Crime?

smithsonianmag.com

4 pointsrntn15 comments

>On March 22, 1622, Opechancanough and his allies attacked outlying English farms and small communities. On a single day, the Native warriors killed 347 colonists of all ages. Colonists soon launched a series of reprisals, but they couldn’t get past the shock of the event they quickly labeled a “massacre.”

Doesn't this line state a warcrime? This occurred before the poisoning.

Only if their society considered it morally wrong.

No, our society can consider it wrong as well. We don't have to give anybody a pass on abhorrent behaviour because 'they didn't know better'

People from hundreds of years ago may find many things we do abhorrent too. Does that mean we are wrong and they are right?

It will mean that. Morality is relative to time, culture and context. Ours will cease to matter to the future just as the morality of slaveowners has ceased to matter to us.

> the shock of the event they quickly labeled a “massacre.”

implies they did consider it morally wrong. Or do you mean only the society perpetrating the war crime should be the one to judge?

If the British actually considered it a war crime then why did they do the same thing to other people in many places around the world? They are only morally outraged because they are on the receiving end.

Before European colonization, the indigenous peoples of the Americas had developed customs for dealing with captives. Depending on the region, captives could either be killed, tortured, kept alive and assimilated into the tribe, or enslaved. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captives_in_American_Indian_Wa...

Many of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war. Their targets often included members of the Coast Salish [indigenous] groups. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_the_Indigenous_p...

A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime

So no, it was not. I thought we had laid to rest the myth of the Noble Savage, that knew neither greed nor cruelty until the evil European forced them upon him. But I suppose it would be too much to expect the Smithsonian to do what a nobody with an internet connection, 5 minutes of free time, and no training in history can do.

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against. We want curious conversation here, and people hammering each other with pre-existing talking points and pre-hardened positions—which is what ideological battle is—goes completely against that spirit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is the article itself also disallowed, or only my factual rebuttal?

I didn't ban you because of your point about whatever your point was. I banned you because you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle and that's not allowed here.

The reason I replied to your GP comment is that (a) I had to reply somewhere, and (b) it was the most recent place to do so.

Sorry, I phrased my question poorly. What I meant was, does the linked article also count as discouraged ideological battle (even if, on its own, it doesn't merit a ban)?

I guess that's a borderline call. The topic is ideologically fraught; on the other hand, it looks like there's interesting history there, which it would be possible (though perhaps not easy) to discuss while holding a state of curiosity.

If this thread had gotten a lot of attention, standard mod practice would probably have been to (1) let the article stand, but (2) change the title to something a bit more neutral.

I agree with you, but also reject that premise that there was such thing as a "war crime" then. There was no Geneva Convention (or TIL Hague convention) at that time, and society was completely different. This is just another part of the idiotic pattern of judging past actions by today's morals (which is most ironic because the kind of people pushing this would have been at the front of the line on enforcing whatever the orthodoxy of their day was).

As the article points out, the use of poison in warfare was against the morals (and accepted rules of combat) of the time and the specific poisoning described in the article was denounced at the time as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com