From: dbernard@clesun.Central.Sun.COM (Dave Bernard)
Subject: Re: Who's next?  Mormons and Jews?
Organization: Sun Microsystems
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Distribution: world
Reply-To: dbernard@clesun.Central.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: clesun.central.sun.com

>>This is a stretch.  In fact, a great many of the persecuted Indians were
>>Christian, a great many.  It would be simpler to state the obvious, that
>>white people wanted land the Indians dominated or threatened.  I really
>>don't think the government cared a hill of beans about the Indians' religion.

>My Native American Girlfriend asks: "If the government really doesn't
>'care a hill of beans' about our religion, how come they're still
>busting us for it in Oregon, Washington, and a few other places?
>You'd be a Christian, too, if the U.S. Army marched you into church
>at gunpoint."

Are you saying that the Indians who became Christians did so because the
US Army marched them into church at gunpoint?

This will be news to the Indians of the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi
basin-- of the Southwest-- of Mexico and South America-- who converted even
before there was such a thing as the US.  Are you saying that Indians are
incapable of coming to a decision themselves about their religion without
being forced to at gunpoint?  What about the Christian Cherokees who were
given the boot by the US government after the Civil War... because the
Cherokee nation gave mild support to the Confederacy, since they themselves
owned black slaves.  No, reducing it all to a matter of religion is to
support a much too narrow view of history.

I've never heard of a single treaty, whether broken by the US government or
not (were any NOT????), that said, if you guys convert to Christianity, you
get to keep all the land you claim.  No, treaties were invariably about land...
it meant ceding Indian claims to the government.  Sometimes in return the
US government promised the hunter-gatherer tribes (and plenty of tribes were
already farming for centuries, but we don't hear about non-Plains Indians
in movies) food and training in return for taking up a non-nomadic existence.
Promises, of course, which all to often proved empty. 
