I tell you, in this country, you don't get much of an education. Throughout high school, through junior college, which is all I went, I didn't know anything about the annihilation of all the Indian nations that were here.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The Indians knew that life was equated with the earth and its resources, that America was a paradise, and they could not comprehend why the intruders from the East were determined to destroy all that was Indian as well as America itself.
They weren't immigrating to some existing society; indeed, they often did whatever they could do to destroy whatever existed here in the way of Indian society.
The Indians, I was now speaking of, were not content with the common Enemies that lessen and destroy their Country-men, but invented an infallible Stratagem to purge their Tribe, and reduce their Multitude into far less Numbers.
We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.
Step by step a powerful and enterprising race has driven them back from the Atlantic to the West until at last there is scarcely a spot of ground upon which the Indians have any certainty of maintaining a permanent abode.
The whole Indian thing, I always say it's really the American holocaust. It's something we need to look at.
I don't think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.
For 2,500 years, India has never invaded anybody.
I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.
America has absorbed people from around the world, and there is an Indian in every part of the world. This characterizes both the societies. Indians and Americans have co-existed in their natural temperament.