Illegal Aliens, and the Genocide of Native Americans

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Deconstructionists often argue that the white man committed genocide against the Native Americans.  The theory is that if they can anger you after convincing you of the atrocities of early Americans against the native population of the New World, then that must mean that our founding as a nation is flawed, and the American System must be abandoned.  These folks argue that the United States was erected on the blood of victims, and restitution must be paid.  History tells us that the slaughter of the native population did indeed happen, and the native women were raped and forced to become the wives of the new explorers.  The warriors poured over the New World for the purpose of conquering it, and robbing from the native civilizations their gold, silver, and other riches.  However, the perpetrators may not be who you expect.  The conquerors were not the white men we are constantly told they were.  In fact, the truth may be surprising.

The term I use for people who have immigrated into this country illegally is "illegal aliens."  Some folks find that term to be offensive.  One Saturday afternoon, on my Constitution Radio with Douglas V. Gibbs radio program on KCAA 1050 AM, I used that term, and a regular caller, an older gentleman of Mexican heritage who lives in San Bernardino, called into the program to challenge my use of that term.

"Who's the illegal aliens?" he asked.  "The Native Americans were here first, and the American Southwest was a part of Mexico until the white man came and took it."

Paul went on to tell me about the massive amount of Central American Indian he has in his bloodline, and how the land was stolen, and it takes some really big chicharrons to call the native peoples a bunch of illegal aliens.

I told Paul about my own Indian heritage.  My grandmother was quite a dark woman.  Her father was a full-blooded Black Foote, and my great-grandmother was half Black Foote.

"So that makes you 1/16th," he said.

"No," I replied.  "Combined with the Cherokee blood from my father's side, I am somewhere in between a sixteenth and an eighth."

"That's rare for white people to have so much Native American blood," he said.

And there's a reason for that.

What followed was a discussion about history.  Paul was convinced that my version of history was revised history to fit my political agenda.  I assured him that my version came largely from the textbook from my college history class, though you had to really pay attention to figure out the truth.

We have been taught as a society that the British Colonists came to America to steal the land, and they slaughtered any Indians along the way.  Hispanics especially love to tell that version of the story, when in reality it was their ancestors that were committing genocide, and raping the native women.

After Columbus discovered the New World, and brought back a few natives and the seed for a massive syphilis epidemic that wound up killing millions of Europeans, the Spanish decided that since a new route to the Far East was not going to enrich them because of the new found continents being in the way, they might as well become a rich empire by plundering the new land of its treasures.

Spain staked their claims on the new lands, intent on building an empire that yielded many riches. With those riches, however, came an empire rapidly becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. The Spanish monarchy claimed ownership to most of the land in the Western Hemisphere, and gave their conquistadors permission to explore and plunder.

Since the visitors were military men, no women were brought along for the voyage.  The conquistadors raped the native women, and forced them to become their wives.  When the Spanish colonists intermarried with the natives, it created a steep social hierarchy that placed people born in Spain at the top of the social status.

Eventually, the oppressive old conquistadors gave way for oppressive royal bureaucrats to become the rulers of New Spain.

The Spaniards used the Indians as forced labor to extract gold and silver from the ancient civilizations and mines of the New World. In the early decades Spain’s primary import from the New World was gold, but after 1540 silver became the primary Spanish import from the New World.

During the first hundred years of Spanish presence in the New World, a quarter of a million Spaniards settled in the colonies. Most of the new settlers were soldiers, laborers, and artisans (skilled craftsmen).

Entire civilizations were wiped out by the Spanish.  The exploits of Hernan Cortes, for examples, are legendary, and he is credited with slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Aztecs, and destroying the Aztec Empire.

Protecting the Spanish Empire from rebelling native populations, attacks against Spanish ships by pirates and privateers, and mutiny by the Spanish soldiers seeing their personal influence and power lessen with the arrival of the bureaucrats, made maintaining New Spain difficult and expensive. Spain added to its wealth, but New Spain became a long-term curse. Though the New World had vastly enriched Spain, the expense of maintaining their empire, and battling European monarchies that began to contest Spain’s domination of the New World, became difficult. Spanish influence over the colonies lessened, and other European powers took advantage by launching their own missions of discovery.

In 1607 the first English colonists arrived at Jamestown. The English colonization of North America was very different from that of the Spanish. The lessons of military conquest, and the financial expenses of empire, convinced the English monarchy to use different tact when colonizing the Atlantic Coast. Rather than conquer, adventurers were encouraged to invest in the New World. English colonists cultivated tobacco, and other crops, for wealth. They produced crop surpluses for export to the Old World, making the English colonies profitable in a potentially unlimited manner.

Taking gold and silver from the New World could only work as long as more gold and silver remained. Spain’s cost to maintain the empire, however, left the Spanish with less remaining as far as profit went. King James I did not wish to create yet another high risk, and expensive, system of colonization, so England’s colonization of the New World on the outskirts of Spain’s New World empire (where Spain could not defend the lands she claimed to rule) was encouraged by a system of investment by various companies with ambitions to reap riches, while benefiting England both overseas and at home.

Rather than invest in colonization directly, England offered charters to investors. English colonists were not soldiers filled with the desire of conquest and gold, but families filled with the desire of a new start, property ownership, and riches through farming and trade. Investors, like the Virginia Company, risked their capital because they saw great potential for profit in the new colonies. For the monarchy, the system was a win-win. If the colony failed, it cost England nothing, for the loss would be absorbed by the investors. If the colony succeeded, England would benefit through taxation, trade, global influence, and profits from the agriculture of the new land. Jamestown, however, failed to yield a profit for the Virginia Company, so after two decades of struggling to survive, the royal government took over operations.

The colonists endured Indian attacks, disease, and starvation with little assistance from the homeland. Bickering among themselves left the colonists with unplanted crops, and shrinking food supplies. In 1607 the local Indians began to bring corn to the colony for barter, which assisted in feeding the colonists, and stocking the Indians with Old World goods they desired. However, the corn was not enough, and in 1610 only 60 of the previous 500 settlers remained alive. These early struggles, however, had an important impact on the English colonies that the Spanish never encountered. The struggles, with limited help from England, instilled a spirit of survival, self-reliance, and independence into the English colonists. From the very beginning the virtues of hard work, and personal responsibility, were important for the sake of survival. Without these characteristics, which were taught to the colonists through their struggles, the English colonies would never have survived. The promised riches of the New World had not materialized at that point, however, but only because a cash crop had not emerged as had been hoped for.

Tobacco grew wild in the New World. The native population was using tobacco thousands of years before the arrival of European colonists. Originally, the Virginia Company had no plans to grow and sell tobacco, but by 1617 the colonists had grown enough tobacco to send its first commercial shipment to England. Before long, the colonies were sending so much tobacco to European markets that it became affordable, and became a product used by many people. From that point, Virginia transformed from a struggling colony of aimless adventurers to a society of dedicated planters growing as much tobacco as they could manage. By 1700 the nearly 100,000 colonists of the Chesapeake region (Maryland, Virginia, and northern North Carolina) had exported more than 35 million pounds of tobacco. The growing industry attracted droves of English indentured servants to work in the tobacco fields.

Colonizing by offering charters had paid off. The English colonies were prospering, and they did so with little interference from the English government. The colonies were self-sufficient, yet England was profiting from the burgeoning tobacco industry. The only thing holding back the promise of increasing profit to ever higher possibilities was the lack of labor. English arrivals were limited in numbers, and the indentured servants, after seven years of service, were striking out on their own. The southern colonies needed a new work force that was less expensive, not likely to strike out on their own, and capable of increasing in number quickly. The labor-intensive nature of the tobacco crop opened up the eventuality of slave labor.

The charter system served as a large part in creating the American virtue of self-reliance. In the southern colonies the promise of riches through property ownership and cash crops encouraged more Englishmen to arrive seeking their fortune. To the north, however, new colonies were being established with a different goal in mind. North of the Chesapeake region, colonies were emerging based on the desire for religious freedom.

Because the English colonists were families, rather than warriors, the rape and force intermarriage with the native population that existed in the Spanish Colonies did not emerge in the English Colonies (which may explain why Mexicans, for example, have more Indian blood in them than the average "white" person).  The English Colonists were not interested in committing genocidal atrocities against the native population as the Spanish had because the British did not come to the New World as conquerors.  As hunger became a constant problem in the English Colonies, the colonists were not only not interested in warring with the Indians, but sought peaceful trading with them for the sake of survival.

Violence did erupt later as the native population disagreed with the expansion of the white colonies into their hunting grounds, but the intent by the English was not genocide, as it was with the Spanish.

The ancestors of Americans were eager to try and make peace with the Indians because they needed their help to survive.  The ancestors of Hispanics were eager to war with the Indians, slaughtering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and stealing from them their treasures. . . for the sake of conquest.

My Mexican friend, Paul, who loves to listen to my show, is the posterity of the ones who committed genocide, and his stronger Indian blood line is not something he should be proud of as he is.  He is more Indian than I because of the rape, and force marriages, committed by his Spanish ancestors.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary