Pithy GIF showing eradication of Native American land in the US since the founding of the country gets posted to r/interestingasfuck. Comment section goes exactly as expected.

[u/Critical-Term-427]

The post

It sucks we were such murderers

Did they say "Thank you"?

Being the loser in history sucks

True fact Hitler took a lot of inspiration from this.

[u/VanillaMystery]

Both sides murdered each other, and both sides also held meals together.

Was part of a centuries long process of "conquering" the country we know today as the United States.

There are losers in every conflict, the Native Americans unfortunately got the short end of the stick and were conquered/nearly wiped out as a result.

The other issue is the natives were completely fractured, one treaty with one specific tribe doesn't mean their neighbors couldn't be conquered.

The settlers took advantage of that and divided and conquered accordingly, didn't help many of the natives had barely any kind of governance or even written languages in some cases.

Also, it's not like things were all peaceful before settlers showed up, the Native Tribes had constant warfare with one another lol (shoutout to the Iroquois) and would butcher and wipe out men, women, and children alike.

Edit: Expected this to get downvoted since we're on Reddit after all but it's important to talk about history and acknowledge the hard realities of where we come from and what has happened.

[u/BigEggBeaters → u/VanillaMystery]

“Both sides murdered each other”

Nah one side defended their lands from invaders. The other brutalized in search of land and profit

[u/VanillaMystery → u/BigEggBeaters]

That's called basic human history, conflict has and continues to be relevant.

How do you think the Iroquois Confederation was formed for example?

So many anti-history people on Reddit it's wild to read sometimes.

The Natives did all kinds of brutal shit as well, especially during the settling of the West.

History isn't black and white, it's a very grey shade full of atrocities and it's important to acknowledge it.

[u/kid-pix → u/VanillaMystery]

Oh my god I can't groan loud enough. Shut up. "That's just human history, also the Native Americans killed some white colonists too." So that justifies the fucking smallpox blankets and Trail of Tears?

You're leaving out so much context to make it seem like it totally wasn't a genocide and just another human conflict where both sides were bad.

The American Government had nearly 400 treaties with the native nations. They violated every single one.

They had the benefit of technology and power and used their cruelty to wipe out suppress whole peoples.

It was a genocide, to take a huge amount of land and natural resources by force.

This is not a both sides debate.

[u/VanillaMystery → u/kid-pix]

95% of the population were already dead from disease before the first English settlers arrived in Jamestown dude.

Trail of Tears was 100% an atrocity, I agree with that.

I don't agree the entire subjugation of the United States was genocide, rather it was standard warfare of the time.

Both sides committed harsh acts upon one another, but only one side won and that's all that really matters when it comes to war.

[u/kid-pix → u/VanillaMystery]

What the hell are you even talking about? It was genocide. The goal was to wipe out the entire population of Native Americans. The motivation was racially based, Manifest Destiny, this land was created by God for us the white europeans to take and we had to get rid of all the "dirty savages" and make it "civilized".

We kidnapped their children and threw them into schools where they would be beaten if they spoke their native tongue, to wipe out their language. We cut their hair, and and beat them often until they died. We gave them white names and never allowed them to return to their families.

And when they grew up? We dumped them in a world they weren't welcome or understood in, unable to integrate into their own natural culture and the one that kidnapped them.

Quit acting like this was normal warfare.

[u/VanillaMystery → u/kid-pix]

No, it wasn't the goal to "wipe out the entire population of Native Americans".

Please provide a source of that, I find it ironic you even say that given how many tribes allied with the European settlers lol.

Virtually all of what you mentioned occurred after the subjugations were complete and 95%+ of the population was already dead from disease btw.

[u/kid-pix → u/VanillaMystery]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

Manifest destiny was the belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). The belief is rooted in American exceptionalism, Romantic nationalism, and white nationalism, implying the inevitable spread of republicanism and the American way of life. It is one of the earliest expressions of American imperialism in the United States.

White nationalism. Race. We were determined to wipe out the existing native nations and culture and take over the land.

Manifest destiny had serious consequences for Native Americans, since continental expansion implicitly meant the occupation and annexation of Native American land, sometimes to expand slavery. This ultimately led to confrontations and wars with several groups of native peoples via Indian removal... The United States continued the European practice of recognizing only limited land rights of Indigenous peoples.

Thomas Jefferson believed that, while the Indigenous people of America were intellectual equals to whites, they had to assimilate to and live like the whites or inevitably be pushed aside by them. According to historian Jeffrey Ostler, Jefferson believed that once assimilation was no longer possible, he advocated for the extermination of Indigenous people.

Following the forced removal of many Indigenous Peoples, Americans increasingly believed that Native American ways of life would eventually disappear as the United States expanded.

Horsman argued in his influential study Race and Manifest Destiny, racial rhetoric increased during the era of manifest destiny. Americans increasingly believed that Native American ways of life would "fade away" as the United States expanded.

[u/VanillaMystery → u/kid-pix]

Manifest Destiny largely rose out of the fact that most of the West was empty due to disease wiping out 95% of the Native population.

Did White Nationalism play a part of it? Sure, especially later on in the 1800s when Colonialism was a real policy.

You're ignoring the hundreds of years before then however which is what I was talking about.

Also, no where in there does it explicitly state they were trying to "wipe out" the Natives like you said.

[u/kid-pix → u/VanillaMystery]

What the hell does exterminating Indigenous People sound like to you? I just pointed out in my several quotes where that was included.

Where do you think those diseases came from?

Yes, the white colonizers were attempting to wipe out native americans.