The Defeat of Native People and the Expansion of Black slavery
Clichés such as “the land of virgin forests” can still be read in modern textbooks which present a false picture that hides the genocidal policies of white settlers. Other invented racial images include strong frontiersmen, who wanted to tame a ”wild country.” The image of the “wild frontier” was mostly an attempt to characterize white settlers as brave men. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Many of these settlers used existing roads and irrigation systems that had been constructed across the Americas by Native Americans. Existing farms and crops of corn that native people had established for hundreds of years before these settlers arrived were taken or burned. But no mention of this situation was ever made and is still generally ignored. This is what Texas is trying to erase from history classes.
Racist terms are used to disparage Native People in the military without a passing thought. We have “Apache and Black Hawk helicopters,” just to name a few, which cannot be an honor because these warriors were murdered by settlers and later by the U.S. Army. Justifications for use of these names include saying, “they were great warriors,” and this is why weapons of war are named after them. Honored after they were murdered? Going back further in time, we have individual mercenaries who have been turned into cartoons, movies, and television series that made killers “honorable” men. John Smith, Myles Standish, and others fought in horrendous religious wars in Europe, over God and religion, and brought their hatreds with them to be used in the slaughter of “Indians.” Daniel Boone and David Crockett are said to be “great frontiersmen,” but were actually killers turned into good guys. Daniel Boone was a rapist having raped the mother of Joe the slave who was at the Alamo in 1836. The culture of violence is married to the naming of weapons reinforcing racial stereotypes. Religious intolerance was collapsed into a racial model in order to convert Europeans into the invented category of “white.” By the early1800s, Andrew Jackson established himself as an “Indian fighter.” He became the Adolf Hitler of that day. Jackson developed and implemented what we can call a “final solution” by expanding slavery through the elimination of Native People. He is often lionized as a hero that dealt a deathblow to Indigenous People. He is Trump’s favorite president—stands to reason!
Native Americans were butchered and their lands taken by force using tactics and methods of extermination. As Native People were killed or forced out of their villages, hungry destitute dirt poor settlers took up the call to help remove and occupy their land. In this way, Jackson’s democracy (1824-1852) enabled poor whites to have a chance at wealth at Native American expense. Native American removal and extermination were the central calling of Jackson’s political life and rise as an American icon. After Jackson was elected president, he pursued his goal of “opening up” the West which meant the expansion African of slavery. Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston took part in secret efforts to help Texas settlers wrestle land away from Mexico. Their goal was to expand slavery while removing Indigenous People in order to repopulate the land with whites and enslaved Blacks. The 1838 Trail of Tears was the American final solution as it set a course for forcing Native People onto reservations and creating the forward motion for the final of all final solutions—the defeat of native people across the country and the expansion of Black slavery.
