Culture Clash
Most people in the United States are taught, at least in general, about the poor treatment of Native Americans by European settlers. I’m originally from Massachusetts, which takes its name from the tribe living in the area when the English first arrived. Many of the towns near where I grew up were derived from the Massachusett tribe’s names for those areas. As a result, we were reminded every day of the culture which existed once, that no longer does.
The issue I take with most people when they refer to the treatment of Native Americans is that there’s always an implication that the settlers were simply bad people, and that if modern Americans were to be the ones settling in America, the end result would somehow be less unpleasant. But I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think that the people living in Massachusetts now, were they put in the same situation as the original settlers, would make all the same decisions. I don’t think the ending would be any better for the natives and their culture. Because the problem wasn’t the people - the problem was Western European culture, and its clash with Native American culture.
There’s just no way to have a group of people who hold, at their core, the concept of land ownership living next to a group of people who don’t have the concept of land ownership. There’s no way. It’s not even enough to separate the two cultures - the mere existence of one precludes the existence of the other, since inevitably population growth will demand that new land be allocated to one of the groups. Essentially, the moment Europeans arrived in America, the only possible endings were the failures of any European settlements, or the slow decline and destruction of Native Americans and their culture.
It’s pretty shitty, and it makes me have no desire to spread American culture anywhere I don’t have to. And it makes me resent people who think American values need to be spread across the world, because all that will do is destroy other cultures, much like the Native American cultures were slowly picked apart. The Massachusett people still live on through their descendents, but other than a few of their words spread throughout the state, you’d barely be able to tell.