Injuns and guns
November 24th, 2007“Jonas” is a very intelligent man. He’s well-read, cultured, is a top-notch teacher, and has a wonderful sense of humor. Unfortunately, he has an irrational fear of firearms, a common side effect of being white, suburban, and middle class.
Jonas’ irrational fear of firearms has led more than once to arguments between he and I, and because of his irrationality, most of the stupidity has come from his side of the argument.
One such offense is one day, he spat out how could I love guns so much considering how pro-Native American I am. I quickly corrected him and exposed the absurdity of that statement.
Jonas and I are both historians. Jonas should know better. It wasn’t guns that lost the Americans to the white settlers. It was numbers, and more importantly, disease.
We will never know the numbers of Native Americans killed by European diseases, mainly smallpox. Smallpox raced ahead of white settlers. Keep in mind, Native peoples traded heavily among other tribes and peoples, carrying the diseases further. All we have now are estimates, and many estimates are saying that in some of the hardest hit areas, over 90% of the populations were killed by smallpox before white settlers even built permanent settlements. Some estimates even put the smallpox epidemic in the New World as bigger than the Black Death of the 14th Century, which killed 2/3rds of Europe.
Back to firearms, by the time of the mid-1700s, Native Americans had firearms, because the English, the French, and the Dutch were all fighting each other at various times and disposing muskets and ammo to their respective Native allies. If you read history, battle by battle, the whites didn’t always win, and often lost. Sometimes, the whites got absolutely slaughtered.
The Natives were bad ass warriors, and could cover ground much better than the whites. They lost because of numbers. By 1790, there were already four million Americans. That number grew steadily, and with a fast population growth, Americans continued moving West, displacing Native peoples.
That statement about firearms and Native Americans is an insult to these brave warriors, who to this day, military historians still study their tactics. I also do some Apache workout tricks, like sprint up hills with water in my mouth. Do that once a week and you’ll have stronger lungs than a swimmer.
In the 20th century and beyond, Native Americans have served this country wonderfully in our armed forces. I can’t say enough good about how brave these men and women are, and Jonas’ crap was a low blow.
If you’re curious and you want to read more about bad ass Native Americans, pick up histories of Geronimo, Tecumseh, Captain Jack (if I’m not mistaken, the only time an American General was killed in battle), Sitting Bull, or Blue Jacket. There are plenty of others, those are just some names I thought of off the top of my head.
