this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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No tribes totally wiping another out before then? History is not that kind. I doubt it was a utopic land before someone else arrived.
"those dirty savages were killing each other before they were invaded and killed by noble ~~white people~~ Europeans who brought civilization and peace? I'm just asking questions here I'm definitely not making excuses or trying to diminish what happened"
Humans are pretty horrifically violent across time. For example before the Spanish arrived there were the Aztecs who were wiping out entire tribes, enslaving them, and torturing them quite gruesomely. I'm not saying the Spanish are good guys or that the Aztecs are bad guys. I'm specifically saying humans are violent and metal as fuck essentially regardless of circumstance.
People been enslaving, genociding, torturing, raping one another long before anyone even lived in Europe.
Historically speaking, it heavily depended on where you were. Supposedly many East-Cast tribes, especially the Cherokee were already conglomerates of several other tribes.
Horses were also a new element in the world of Native Americans, and surely had a good bit to do with leveling the playing field between warring tribes.
source: old man wisdom, dyor
All i'm saying is there's no violence that westerners have done that wasn't already done at some other time before they arrived. The difference is the distance, the scale and of course the cultural and ethnic differences. I've found that the more different the dominating group is from the victim group the more well atrocities are remembered. It's still ethnically visible for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Like for instance the Aztecs were extremely brutal in wiping out other tribes and enslavement as well as torture but no one really complains about that today. It's all a wash. Their people and the people they tormented are hard to tell apart now in contrast to people of Spanish dissent and of course to this day there's a white preference in the region. It's just easier to see and draw lines when people look more visibly different.
I see. There is no difference except for the differences.
In contrast to the Aztecs the colonial powers are still in power and are still enacting violence and genocide.
If you want to argue a point I did not make then that changes the discussion. My point was, and still is that these acts are not unique to westerners. There have been lands controlled by others much longer than 500 years. There's been rape, genocide, enslavement, and torture long before a human set foot in Europe. These behaviors aren't unique to white or European people or honestly even homo sapiens.
I was directly replying to a statement you made. Did I misunderstand that statement?
The main point is that genocide, rape, torture, war, murder, slavery and so on isn't unique to western people or even homo sapiens. These are things humans and likely our ancestors have been doing before we ever left Africa.
Okay but that's not what I replying to.
It's kinda been my one and only point this entire time that I keep just repeating, maybe with more verbosity which has spawned a lot of discussion not about the point I'm making.
So what, your point that these types of problems existed in some form before colonization and that they exist in other places means that there is no way colonization made things worse? Both things can't be true?
And I guess you weren't actually asking why people don't harp on the Aztecs because you don't actually care to learn?
Never said that. All atrocities are bad and for sure western powers have committed the most harm by number to themselves and others, by percentage I'm actually not sure. It's partly a function of recent growth of the global human population. These things were happening since forever but there were many fewer people. I'm not saying that's the only factor. Technology to sail and use guns as well as mainly zoonotic diseases played a massive role as well. Once again, all atrocities are bad and shouldn't have happened. People should work together for their mutual benefit.
It wasn't really a small group of conquistadors that took down the Aztecs. It was the conquistadors along with a bunch of tribes that were willing to ally themselves with some strange men that spoke a different language and had a completely different culture. The conquistadors were able to find allies because of how horrible the Aztecs were.
European history is full of examples of tribes invading from somewhere else. Those invaders were doing so because they had to leave where they lived was invaded by someone else. It's similar in pre-Columbian America.
It's only when cities started having strong walls and organized militaries that the ethnic cleansing and genocide became less commonplace, enough so these atrocities became noteworthy and better documented. Humans are tribalistic and violent, there's no special ethnicities that were above being that way.
there were wars yes. "totally wiping another out" tho? that was a european import.
even if it was the case that First Nations were genociding each other (which again, itβs not), that still doesnβt justify european colonialism in any way.
Are you sure about that? Killing off an entire tribe, enslaving the women, not a new concept in the slightest.
I didn't say it was a utopia. When people refer to a genocide of Native Americans, people usually know which one.
I mean yeah the difference was that westerners came from further away, had a very different culture, ethnicity, language and so on, and most notably subjugated people on a much larger scale.