Were the English Colonists Guilty of Genocide? Term Paper

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Genocide the term "genocide" is a harsh word. It is a word used to describe the decimation of an entire people and culture. Sadly, this word has also become common cultural and political parlance in the vocabulary of America and the world today, given the horrific events that transpired during World War II in Europe, and later, during the 20th century in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. But is the present American nation, long before these chronicled events of recent memory, stained with a similar historical blemish of cultural eradication? Were the words spoken by one English colonist, "the only good savage is a dead savage," (Relle & Madras, 2003) merely hyperbole or representative of the English nation's entire ideology regarding the native peoples of the Americas?

David Stannard says yes, what transpired between the colonists and the natives was genocide. Specifically, he states of the war between the colonists of Connecticut and Massachusetts and the Pequot Indian tribe, that death and cultural annihilation were the only goals of the representatives of the English nations. As early as the first colonies in 1500, there was debate amongst the settlers if it was best to kill all the natives, or to capture them and to put them to work as slaves. (Stannard, cited in Relle & Madras, 48) The Indians were always judged by Western European standards. Thus, their methods of fighting were often scoffed at. (50) They were inferior peoples, clearly, because of the "leaping and dancing" they engaged in, although Stannard suggests that rather than a winner take all strategy in Indian warfare, the braves were attempting to demonstrate their prowess at shooting arrows in a way that the English colonists did not understand.

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Regardless, this shows that although the Indians were mocked as a military threat, the settlers were still determined to move against them. For instance, when the British stormed the Pequot encampment, in contrast to the Indian shows of might, the English settlers simply slashed at anything that moved, with their superior technology and ruthless use of force. (52) Thus, the Pequot were hunted to a state of "near extermination" as a result of this military ethic. "Having virtually eradicated an entire people," moreover, the English wished to erase all cultural memories of the Pequot as well, all traces of "past existence." (53)

But historian David Katz says, in contrast to Stannard's characterization, that the war must not be viewed in strict terms of "red vs. white." (Katz, Cited in Relle & Madras, 57) Katz concedes that the mere presence of Europeans, for the Indians, constituted in their eyes an act of aggression. (58) But as a defense against the charge of genocide, he points out that none of the mainland Pequot were to be harmed -- if they capitulated to English demands to keep the territories settled by the English. (58-59) This, states Katz, demonstrates that the English simply wanted to establish a….....

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