Spain,France,England's treatment with native Americans?
Spanish - Treated Natives horribly, one infamous example was the outright genocide of the Natives in Cuba, Dominica, and Mexico. Slavery, murder, including the abusive churches that had a tendency to torture and execute Natives who refused to convert to Christianity. Juan de Onate, first governor of New Mexico was known for hacking off the legs of Pueblos who refused to pay his hefty tax or refused to embrace the Bible. That said, it was the Roman Catholic Church that brought light to the brutality being committed by Spanish governors and soldiers in the New World. The Vatican and Spanish Crown would go as far as forbidding slavery and murder, however the settlers continued their atrocities anyways. French - Somewhat better, mostly due to the fact that they unlike the English and Spanish didn't plan on permanent settlement. Their economy was mostly based off the trapping trade. Exotic furs proved to be very vauble so obviously they needed to be on the good side of the Natives in order to exploit this market. So intermarriage between French settlers and Natives was pretty common. That said, they still had sour relations with some tribes. One example being the Mohawk, the French were very vocal about their hatred towards them. Even launching military expeditions, they also got on the bad side of Apache in the Southwest because they ended up arming the enemies of the Apache; like the Pawnee, Shoshone, and Comanche. Were the French capable of imperialistic brutality? very much so just look at Haiti and Algeria as examples. English - When the English came, they were on the good side of the Natives. When their settlements began to grow, and when their people began breeding like rabbits? Well then things went sour. They would eventually launch a brutal war against the Natives of the East Coast. Going as far as enslaving them and putting their severed heads on spikes while kicking them around like kick balls. The English became infamous to the Northeastern Natives because of how they spread disease. That said the English would forge a strong alliance with the Six Nations Confederacy who would help them in the French Indian War and Revolutionary War, only to abandon their Natives allies as soon as these wars were over.
Did native American tribes fight against each other or have wars?
Amerindian tribes considered warfare as natural as breathing.Each tribe pushed other tribes off the land it wanted and in turn was frequently forced out by other later more powerful tribes. Individual status in each tribal band was based on bravery in battle, coups and scalps taken, slaves and horses stolen, enemies tortured, “foreign” women raped and (last) the ability to persuade others. “Chiefs” were the noncombatant elders who administered camps; but they had no voice in war matters. War leaders (what Europeans thought were Chiefs) were simply prominent warriors who could inspire enough followers for a raiding party.Far more Amerindians died at the hands of rival tribes than from US Army troops, who generally could never find them or catch them. Mind you, they fought differently, frequently fleeing as soon as one of their band was injured, because then they believed their leader lost his magic. Most tribal wars were short demonstrations with lots of coup-taking and show-boating, with few seriously injured because strong warriors were in short supply and life expectancies were short.The Comanche, for example, were pushed South by other tribes before they stole horses from Spanish/Mexicans and became the dominant Plains horse warriors. While they controlled “Comancheria”, they blocked the Westward Expansion for about fifty years. Comanches drove the Apache out of the Southwest and virtually exterminated all but a few bands that hid in the mountains around the Mexican border. The Quakers charged with pacifying them on their reservation became disgusted and horrified by the way they would ride off a few hundred miles to raid and kill, returning with fresh scalps and booty to the safety of the military-protected rez. The US Army was prohibited from entering the Amerindian reservation, but the natives could continue to “play at war.”
What native American were the most violent?
Comanche. Read T. R. Fehrenbach’s book of that name. The Comanche tribe eventually virtually destroyed the Apaches, terrorized the unarmed Mexicans and usually defeated all the Europeans North of Mexico. They alone barred the development of the West for over forty years.All Amerindian tribes were warlike. None were pacifist. Some were more violent than others, such as the Kiowa and Apache, but none were as powerfully violent as the Comanche. Those famous horse warriors terrorized the Great Plains down into Mexico for decades.Status in each tribal band partially came from hunting prowess, but that became easy for them after the Comanches stole enough Spanish horses so that each brave had a small personal herd for buffalo hunting. Most important all the time was courage in battle and prowess in stealing, ambushing and insulting (via coup, scalping, mutilation or torture) members of other tribes or outsiders like Mexicans or European settlers. Their culture demanded that young braves earn status by regular raids to kill and steal. There was no other path to prestige, wealth, family and band respect. That was how they proved their strength and ability to provide in their harsh subsidence level lifestyle dominated by obedience to custom and tradition. Comanche women were the consummate torturers who perpetrated the most cruel tortures on their captives.I have been stunned by the well documented facts about the Cheyenne, Apache (frequently blamed for Comanche depredations) and Comanche tribes in particular. Seems that the Indian Bureau of the Dept. of the Interior engaged in years of horribly dishonest misdealing, treaty-breaking, record falsifications and obfuscations about the realities of the Amerindian situation. The farther Americans lived from the Plains Amerindians, the more they idealized them as simple peaceful noble savages provoked by the nasty settlers and abused by gun-happy soldiers.Most Indians either killed each other in their continual habitual intertribal wars or died of European diseases against which they had no immunities. Relatively few were ever killed by the US Army, and those casualties mostly came after the post-war Army was freed from its many decades of “no shooting” constraints and allowed (unofficially) to retaliate by fighting indian-style. Ugly stories, but unfortunately very well documented.
What are some great books on Native American history?
The definitive work I would recommend that shows the spirit of Native Americans, as well as the defeat they suffered, is the classic, "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee". From Amazon, (I will leave the URL to connect t it,) it tells the story of the plight of Native Americans, and their struggles more eloquently than any text on the issue I have read. It is all fact, not fiction, and of course, opinions will be beckoned by any reader. It is not apologist, it is a story, and if there was one book to read to summarize the destruction of Native American Tribes and their territories, this is the seminal creed. IMO. AMAZON: "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, is Dee Brown's classic, eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian culture during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold over four million copies in multiple editions and has been translated into seventeen languages.Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the series of battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them and their people demoralized and decimated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was won, and lost. It tells a story that should not be forgotten, and so must be retold from time to time." To purchase, follow this link, to those that dare to read it, it is heartbreaking: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West: Dee Brown, Hampton Sides: http://www.amazon.com/Bury-My-He...