austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

34 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
of more violent expulsion) in a new treaty that would also be broken by
the USA at some point thereafter (Domenech, 1860). The USA eventu­
ally signed over 350 treaties with various Indian tribes or nations and
it broke each and every one of them (UAINE, 1998). Only thereb; was
the USA able to expand westward.
While the American Revolutionary War had freed the USA from the
all-important British infringement on the country 's "right" to steal more
land, the original 13 USA states generally maintained most of the same
laws that they had created when they were autonomous states under
British colonial rule. These laws included providing rewards for the
extermination of Indians. In particular, the state governments set up
by the settlers had begun in 1641 to establish legislation that offered
rewards fo r the killing of any and all Indians (including men, women,
and children, although special rewards were offered for Indian boy
scalps), with such legislation continuing in effect into the late nineteenth
century (Waters, 1977). Note that these laws and killings could
scarcely be blamed on European countries, since the colony states had
had full autonomy in setting such Jaws. In particular, the American settlers
had locally elected their own legislatures and many other government
officials (generally exhibiting even more democracy than existed
in England itself), and "the common people probably had a stronger
voice in their government in the English colonies than they did in any
other part of the world at that time" (Chitwood, 1948).
Having seen the prior "success" of the extermination laws in the eastem
states, many of the new territories seized by the USA also adopted
legislation paying fo r the killing of any and all Indians. Over ten territories
and states with such extermination laws, including California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New
York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and
Virginia, are listed just as examples by Waters (1977) and Churchill
(1994).
Although the individual states and territories were allowed to set up
their own decentralized reward system for killing Indians, the genocide
campaign was national in scope. The country's first president, George
Washington, told his fellow Americans that Indians were to be "hunted
like beasts," and the USA hero Thomas Jefferson said that the USA
should "pursue [the Indians] into extermination" (Churchill, 1994). As
[NTRODUCT'ION
a result, Indians were hunted like animals, and their springs were delib­
erately poisoned (Waters, 1977). Their villages were burned, their crops
were destroyed, and successful efforts were undertaken to keep them
fr om obtaining fish for food (Craven, 1968) . In addition, diseases were
deliberately spread among the Indians, and force was frequently used to
drive the Indians fr om their hunting and crop lands (Thornton, 1987).
Cook (1943) wrote that, to USA citizens, "all Indians were vermin, to
be treated as such .... Since the quickest and easiest way to get rid of his
troublesome presence was to kill him off, this procedure was adopted
as standard for some years. Thus was carried on the policy which had
wiped out en masse tribe after tribe across the continent." Stannard
( 1992) reported, "In 1784 a British visitor to America observed that
'white Americans have the most rancorous antipathy to the whole race
of lndians; nothing is more common than to hear them talk of extirpat­
ing them totally from the face of the earth, men, women, and children."
This attitude eventually resulted in the "American aphorism 'The only
good Indian is a dead Indian"' (Brown, 1970) .
Besides being offered cash rewards for killing Indians, USA citizens
were also given a strong incentive to kill (or disperse or otherwise dis­
pose of) the native American Indians in order to be able to seize their
land that the USA government claimed and "sold" very cheaply (Stro­
bel and Peterson, 1999). Miller (1975) has documented one case where
a few USA settlers shot thousands of unarmed Indians (possibly over
10,000, including many on a reservation designated by the whites) from
one peaceful tribe alone (the Yuki) over a short period of a few years
in the mid-nineteenth century, and, despite the successful slaughter of
virtually the entire tribe with almost no settler casualties, the murder­
ers actually protested formally to their state governor when soldiers
refused to help with the massacre. While the speed of the genocidal
actions of this case (with over 90% of the tribe being directly murdered
in less than a decade) may have exceeded the norm, the latter settler
protest provides evidence that such genocidal acts were not only nor­
mally sanctioned but also expected.
However, not all 5+ million Indians were shot. In true capitalist
fashion, the USA succeeded in its genocide at a minimum cost in
terms of resources expended, as those Indians who fled the livable land
seized by the USA with its guns often died of starvation and disease
35