ATDTDA 776-778

[Monte Davis]

 Ya Sam writes:

> "Your whole history in America has been one long religious war, secret
crusades, disguised 
> under false names"...

> The section ends with an interesting debate between Kit and Prance. I
would appreciate any 
> comments on their understanding of the driving forces behind the formation
and expansion 
> of the United States. Whose side are you on?

I'm on both, as usual. I have little patience with US (or the broader
European version of) self-serving "New World" mythology: that Europeans came
to and fructified a wilderness with a negligible sprinkling of savages. For
one thing, as I've noted before, something like three-quarters of those who
crossed the Atlantic from 1600 to 1820 were in fact African slaves. For
another, the "front" of colonization/settlement was preceded in most places
by a holocaust of disease (cf. McNeill's _Plagues and Peoples_ and Mann's
_1491_). So what most settlers encountered -- and took as a timeless,
default state of affairs -- was in fact a small, culturally shattered
remnant.

But I also have little patience for the Edenic guilt trip popular in recent
decades, toward which P leans more often than not (although with occasional
contrarian flashes: "the mysterious ruins thought to have been built by
refugees fleeing from their mythical homeland of Aztlán up north," 923).

The "native" Americans had had 15,000 to 30,000 years here. Their ancestors
had almost certainly hunted scores of species to extinction, and transformed
large chunks of the landscape with fire and swidden agriculture. The
fragmentary evidence from both their folklore and archaeology suggests that
just about any New World people you care to name had pushed aside some other
tribe to gain its territory, which had previously been gained by pushing
aside...etc.

The Inca, Mexica (Aztec), Five Nations and others were busily building nasty
tributary empires of their own when the nasty Old World imperialists
arrived. The noble, free -- and newly horse-borne -- Sioux, Comanche et al
were recapitulating the roles of Scythians, Huns and Mongols vis-a-vis their
neighbors: "you lowly farmers raise a surplus, and we'll ride howling in,
grab your women and/or enslave you, and steal it."

So yes, Europeans stole two continents with guns, (mostly) germs, and steel.
But the victims were as human as the victimizers, and had been playing the
same human games. What happened from Columbus to Aguirre Wrath of God,
General Rosas, and Wounded Knee was anything but unique and unprecedented.
It's just that it happened recently, and that the Europeans carried with
them a culture that (1) documented the process more thoroughly than ever
before, and (2) supported enough leisure -- once the theft was complete --
to indulge more reflective guilt than ever before.