The Real Number of Native Folks in Turtle Island
Quoted from Counterpunch
from the article What the Flag Means to Me
by S. Brian Willson dated
Independence Day
July 4, 2002
I began a serious reflection that included careful
study of U.S. and world history. When I was a teenager living near
Seneca Indian reservations in western New York State I occasionally
heard Seneca acquaintances utter "jokes" about how the "White man speaks
with forked tongue." We thought it funny at the time. But then I
discovered how my country really was founded. There were hundreds of
nations comprised of millions of human beings--yes, human beings--living
throughout the land before our European ancestors arrived here in the
1600s. The U.S. government signed over 400 treaties with various
Indigenous nations and violated every one of them. And over time these
original peoples were systematically eliminated in what amounted to the
first genuine American holocaust.
When I reread the Declaration of Independence I
noted words I hadn't been aware of before: "He [the King of Great
Britain] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless
Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished
destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." Honest history reveals
that the very land upon which our founding fathers began this new
experiment in freedom had been taken by violence and deceit, ironically
using the same diabolical methods the framers accused of those already
living here. It became obvious after extensive reading that my European
ancestors did not believe that Indigenous Americans were human beings
worthy of respect, but despicable, non-human creatures, worthy only of
extermination. The pre-Columbus population of Indigenous in the Western
Hemisphere is estimated to have been at least 100 million (8-12 million
north of the Rio Grande). By 1900 this population had been reduced to
about 5 percent of its former size. An Indigenous friend of mine, a
Seneca man who had served the U.S. military in World War II, Korea, and
Vietnam, and then after retiring, discovered his ancestral roots as a
native American, once remarked to me: "I call the American flag 'Old
Gory,' the red representing the blood, and the white, the bones, of my
murdered ancestors.
S. Brian Willson
is a Vietnam veteran who in 1987 had his legs cut off at Concord,
California, while protesting a Naval train carrying weapons headed for
Central America. Visit his website at: http://www.brianwillson.com