Being "indigenous" doesn't usually mean you're necessarily the original inhabitants of a region. It often just means you're the earliest surviving inhabitants because you were so successful at wiping out everyone who was there before you that now no trace remains outside the archaeological record.
Much sick hilarity in this regard lies in the history, archaeological and otherwise, of the Americas. Most discussions of the Iroquois confederacy leave out what we now know from archaeological evidence, that before contact with Europeans, the Iroquois confederacy was an ambitious expansionist and imperialist power that would have obliterated the Algonquians if they could have.
Oh, and I doubt that today's useless, historically-amnesic PC hand-wringers will ever be able to square themselves with the well-established fact that the reason Cortés was able to subdue the Aztec empire so easily (compared to the difficulty with which the Maya States of the Yucatán were subdued) had less to do with guns, germs or steel than the fact that many native groups were hideously oppressed by the Aztecs, such as the Totonacs, or threatened by Aztec expansionism, such as the Tlaxcaltecas. Such groups allied themselves with the Spanish eagerly, and fought alongside them. Indeed, had they not done so, Cortés original landing party of 508 Spaniards would have been killed. For example, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan fell to no more than 1,500 Spaniards fighting alongside 150,000-200,000 Tlaxcala.
At the very least, could we please for the love of all that is sane and decent do away with this widely-circulating pious delusion that there were no land-thieving imperialists in the Americas before White People came?
Bullshit, when perfumed with a scent of Truth To Power, smells so noxious I can't stay near it for too long without vomiting.
Much sick hilarity in this regard lies in the history, archaeological and otherwise, of the Americas. Most discussions of the Iroquois confederacy leave out what we now know from archaeological evidence, that before contact with Europeans, the Iroquois confederacy was an ambitious expansionist and imperialist power that would have obliterated the Algonquians if they could have.
Oh, and I doubt that today's useless, historically-amnesic PC hand-wringers will ever be able to square themselves with the well-established fact that the reason Cortés was able to subdue the Aztec empire so easily (compared to the difficulty with which the Maya States of the Yucatán were subdued) had less to do with guns, germs or steel than the fact that many native groups were hideously oppressed by the Aztecs, such as the Totonacs, or threatened by Aztec expansionism, such as the Tlaxcaltecas. Such groups allied themselves with the Spanish eagerly, and fought alongside them. Indeed, had they not done so, Cortés original landing party of 508 Spaniards would have been killed. For example, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan fell to no more than 1,500 Spaniards fighting alongside 150,000-200,000 Tlaxcala.
At the very least, could we please for the love of all that is sane and decent do away with this widely-circulating pious delusion that there were no land-thieving imperialists in the Americas before White People came?
Bullshit, when perfumed with a scent of Truth To Power, smells so noxious I can't stay near it for too long without vomiting.
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