re: CNN Drops Rick Santorum After Racist Comments About Native Americans

Alcoholism IS a big part of our culture.

Maybe someone can help me out I haven't delved much into the diff tribe histories outside of what we learned in school.

We didn't have any of the huge civilizations like you saw in Central or South America and I feel like at some point someone would have came and wiped out the tribes here anyway. Or they would have just died off and not have advanced their communities.

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The Comanches were the worst. They were up there with the Aztecs in their brutality.

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And they would have been nothing without the European introduction of the horse.

I mean, if we’re being honest, the Indians in North America, for all intents & purposes, were a collection of Stone Age Hunter/Gatherer societies. Most were uncivilized and savagely brutal tribes, practicing things like cannibalism, genocide, systemic rape, and slavery.

Well, I mean libs aren’t creative, they generally destroy

Some areas, especially in the Southeast, the natives were very good farmers and had cleared large areas to farm.

I’m 20% Native American (Creek) and his commentary is typical of American history in general.

Am I going to go BLM and start a culture war?

Nope...

BIA/CDIB card?

Are you speaking of Santorum's comments or just American History in general?

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Well that is a woefully ignorant statement.

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For someone that claims to be a physician you seem pretty ignorant, you don't even understand what he was saying.

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Rail, roads, cities... we built that!

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It is surprising how untrue that is. Eastern tribes were reasonably civilized. For example, Indian roads existed throughout the East. Many originated as Eastern Bison migratory routes over millennia, and were further cleared by Indians as the Bison went extinct. "The Great Indian Trading Road ran from present-day Petersburg Va to Columbia SC." (I-85 route) All were serviceable for early colonial travel. Many present roads in the East still follow those old Indian routes.

Eastern Indians were agrarian. They lived in permanent villages or towns. They cleared thousands of acres of farm land, used crop rotation and combination agriculture to maintain soil fertility (e.g., corn and pole beans or sunflower in the same field when acreage was limited, or rotation allowing fallow recovery when multiple fields were available).

Over hundreds of years vast farm fields were cleared with fire, then progressive felling, and eventual stump removal.

As Europeans arrived with smallpox in tow, Indian populations were decimated. In some cases populations dwindled to 5-10% of original size. As small groups continually reconsolidated, they abandoned their roads, settlements and farmland. Europeans took advantage.