By Anna Reinhard
When you think about Native Americans you think peaceful village people but that is far from what really happened. What happened in the Holocaust was genocide but would you consider what happened to the Native Americans was genocide? There are lots of opinions and feelings about what happened like the “Trail of Tears” in the “Indian Removal Acts” and the concentration camps where they were all moved from their land so the whites could build and the Indians would die of exposure. I don’t think it was a full genocide but most of the characteristics fit, so I would label it an Internecine and an Indirect-Genocide. If you think what happened to the Native Americans was not genocide, what would you label it? First off Genocide it is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. There are warning signs and events that occur in genocide and they are; usually has a king or a powerful leader, and in the Native Americans story France and Britain had lots of power during the wars. Forcing kids and people to transfer to their beliefs or religion, and Indian kids were forced to go the camps to be taught the white man's ways. Also the person or people will deliberate both mentally and physically kill or attack a race. Indians were called stupid because of different ways to life and were killed because they were interrupted as savage. Then the is the word Internecine which is a conflict or struggle of both sides that usually results in savage behavior and slaughter of both groups that also fits into America's History. The Native Americans fought back in the French and Indian War that happened from 1756 – 1763 so that event in the Native American history was more of an Internecine then Genocide. The Europeans stereotyped the Indians “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”, Philip Sheridan 1869, because of their beliefs.
The History of the Native