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That's because they are HUMAN and so no different than any other in the brutality department. The English, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Africans, the Chinese- ALL of those people were, and are still, brutal. It isn't the brutality that is the issue. In fact it's normal. What is the issue is the right some people assume for themselves in taking over a land that they invaded. That's the issue. There is no automatic permission in place for anyone to do that. Manifest Destiny- well isn't that a sucky excuse dreamt up to make it all perfectly alright. WRONG! It's NEVER alright. It's a natural thing in our civilization to do- but it still doesn't make it OK. 'Pilgrims' robbed Native American grave site as soon as they got off the Mayflower. The plundering of NA graves continues but few know about the practice or its history: http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/324 "The looting of graves, however, continues. In 1999, 80% of the graves in a traditional Snoqualmie burial ground in Washington were looted by professional grave robbers using a backhoe"

Don't forget scalping was taught to NA's by the Europeans. Who broke almost every treaty between the US gov't and the sovereign NA Nations? Who gave NA's "gifts" of blankets that happened to be laced with smallpox. Bottom line, the Europeans were initially welcomed (for the most part) by the east coast NA's and it wasn't until later (and, too late) they recognized them as the invasion force they actually were and tried to initiate counteractions. Out west, the situation was a bit different as by then NA's were better armed (largely due to the French influence) and some tribes had adopted the horse culture and were therefore mobile to a greater extent. This made the suppression of NA's much more problematic with things basically culminating in Wounded Knee which was the army's revenge for the a$$ kicking they took at Little Bighorn. BTW, not all Europeans were dirty dealers. The French philosophy of accepting different peoples for who they were and what they were lends itself to the fact their problems with NA's were minimal compared to the British mantra of conformist dogma and it's belligerent bent toward all that didn't bend a knee. Andrew Jackson and Mirabeau Lamar were among the (higher level) worst offenders of bad faith dealings although others of their ilk were legion in numbers. Bottom line, those who don't realize and accept their history are often doomed to repeat it. So, if I were a Sasquatch, heck yes I'd take the covert lifestyle route...after what all I saw done to the First Americans by those thieving, lying, land grabbing, murdering sumbeatches.

Don't worry the land is coming back....with each pull of the slot machines....

TritonTr196 said: "That's why I said many, not all. But in the lovelock cave case, nope. The 49'ers didn't think any thing about this story because they were long dead when this tale was fabricated. Sorry but absolutely no legend of any thing was backed up by any archeological evidence from lovelock cave concerning any type of Bigfoot or any other giants. Until the Smithsonian finds those hidden giant skeletons or that girls decendants comes forward with the dress, it's still nothing but a story that was started by one girl writing a brief description about it in a book she wrote in the late 1800's with no evidence to back it up. In fact, she never even mentioned the word giant or gave any indication they were huge or fully covered with hair in her book. Hardly legend material. The paiutes themselves never told or heard of this story. Nothing but fantasy. " Ok, Triton. I know for a fact that you're full of it. I grew up just Northwest of Reno, Nevada in the late 60s and 70s. My father was a geologist who graduated from the Mackay School of Mines at UNR. One of his classmates, grandson of the man who founded the first uranium mines in Nevada, had one of the remaining skulls from the Lovelock Cave, handed down to him. He used it as an ashtray. It caused quite a stir at his parties due to its sheer size and the use to which he put it. When we weren't camping in the Sierras, we were exploring old mining camps, ghost towns, and archeological sites on weekends. That area was my backyard, and I've viewed three of the large ( seven and eight feet) intact red-haired mummified skeletons (excavated from Walker Lake Cave, in this case) a dozen different times over those years, while they were on display at the Mark Twain Museum in Virginia City for over a decade. We, on this forum, made an investigation to find out what happened to those three specimens and the others that were excavated from Lovelock Cave. They were collected from the Mark Twain Museum by the Bureau of Land Management in the early 80s and are not currently on display in any of the museums that BLM manages. During the 1912 and 1924 archeological investigations, the upper layers of the cave floor contained Atlatls, atlatl darts, and arrows, but no bows. There was evidence of a large fire built at the entrance to the cave, as the Paiutes claimed (they trapped the Si-Teh-Cah by building a fire at the cave entrance and firing on them to prevent them from escaping). The lower levels of the excavation contained atlatls and darts, but no arrows. Pretty consistent with the Paiute legend. Now why would a larger framed indian use an atlatl long after the short bow was developed and other tribes were using it? A larger indian would need a proportionally larger bow, and the vegetation in that area did not support a bow of that size with respect to material strength. So the Si-Teh-Cah continued to use the atlatl, the stick thrower. With longer arms, they could throw an atlatl with great power and at a greater distance than a smaller person; and they quite likely could hit targets at a greater distance than someone smaller using a short bow. There are extensive threads on this topic if you search for them; and the archeological report from 1924 is included, along with other documentation that I collected from the Nevada Historical Society a few years ago. And, for the record, the Si-Teh-Cah had nothing to do with Bigfoot.

There the were no words in NA language for "own the land" as that is a European construct. They occupied land and contested for hunting rights with some tribes (i.e. Comanches) heavily invested in the warrior culture. Family units were cohesive and elders respected and given honor by the younger generations. Much in the same manner at Korean New Year celebrations where the men then the women/children kneel on rice mats in front of their elders to ask for blessings for the coming year. While we're not supposed to discuss such things here, however as a historical fact, many of the atrocities committed against NA's had either their basis and/or justification based in Christianity. That most definitely is a European construct. Further, the $24 worth of beads the Dutch paid for Manhattan, invested at the 50 year CD rate of 6% would today, be worth more than the island and all of the real property sitting upon it.

Trinkets look pretty good and flashy when presented to a people who have "boxed themselves in". Now this isn't directed at you Incorrigible1 or anyone else- it really isn't. And this isn't an ethics thread but I need to say it anyway. Just because a people, no matter who they are, is considered primitive by some one's standards does not automatically translate into a right to invade, abuse, belittle, harass, kill, enslave, or otherwise do whatever it takes to usurp what the primitive people have or enjoy as a way of life. It just isn't right. Period. Rant over. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.