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Comment by sQL_inject | Hacker News Reader

The rote narrative that somehow all the Native Americans were some peace-loving Earth shamans is factually incorrect.

>"stolen from the hands of the Native Americans who had stewarded them for millennia before colonialism in different forms devastated their tribes."

The Comanches, the most powerful tribe in the country, were brutal, vindictive, plundering murderers who took slaves and delighted in killing as a rite. They "stewarded" only by murderous foray 250,000 square miles. Read "Empire of the Summer Moon"

They had no concept of private property because their territory ended right where their massacres couldn't reach, not because of some transcendent and noble ideals.

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That's a bit of a catch-22 argument, isn't it? If a history of violence and conquest invalidates land claims, then the white settlers who violently settled North America have no legitimate right to this land, right? But if that history doesn't invalidate their land claims, then you can't really turn around and say that somehow Comanche land claims are illegitimate.

Or maybe you're arguing that there is no such thing as morality in land claims, and it's simply a matter of who is better able to kill and steal, and white settlers just were better at this?

Does anyone have a right to land, except for that which is enforceable by the threat of violence? Why are they called Native Americans? Is all land simply owned by the first foot put there anywhere in the planet?

I'm not defending "white" settlers, or any settlers. My goal is to dispel the intellectually lazy myth this article leads with.

Not the above commenter, but:

> stolen from the hands of the Native Americans who had stewarded them for millennia before colonialism in different forms devastated their tribes. Through invasions, plagues, violence, coercion, bribery, war, and lopsided deals with the United States government, Indigenous groups and their ways of life were nearly obliterated

This clearly implies that invasions, violence, war, were brought by the US government to indigenous groups.

In reality, their "way of life" always consisted of these things.

It's a clear myth being perpetuated in the language of this article — even in words like 'stewarded' vs. 'stolen'.

It's much like Europe and everyplace else - regular warfare and invasions and vast territories changing hands. The only difference is the people in Europe wrote things down.

(In contrast, very little is known about England for centuries after the Romans left, as the inhabitants were illiterate. Nobody knows if King Arthur existed or not, for example.)

DNA evidence has been slowly illuminating the pre-Columbian history of the North American Indians.

"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a fantastic read. I could hardly put the book down. It would make a great miniseries, and it's all true.

Is it possible that private property and/or violence against humans is orthogonal to so-called stewardship of land? E.g. cultural norms could result in better natural preservation, even if by accident rather than by what a modern person see as a noble motivation.

It is certainly possible. It's also not just possible, but true where some private stewards cultivate beauty (vineyards) and some public lands cultivate destruction (downtown Seattle). Violence takes place on land, but stewardship I don't think is some inherent thing. All animals war over territory.

"The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world; and before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending."

It still doesn’t excuse genocide and taking over their land.

Aztecs also were no peaceful bunch but it doesn’t make Spain ruining them to the ground good guys.

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