The mass deportation to reservations didn’t help either in another disturbing way. Once there, it didn’t take long for the individual clans to lose their identity. (Note: To get a magnitude of this horrible act, consider the following situation. Try to imagine how the nationalistic English, Spanish, Germans, French, and Italians in Europe, for example, would like it if a more powerful race of people stripped them of their national names and gave them an artificial label.)
There are other problems with this initial assigning of labels by the Europeans. They selfishly exploited the words “America” and “American” as soon as they arrived. To distinguish themselves from Europeans, the new arrivals, especially those born here, began to call themselves “American” at the expense of first Americans who were already here, and whom they refused to accept as fellow human beings.
Irreparable damage was caused to the identity of the indigenous people of the New World. Finding the land populated by what many of the newcomers mockingly described as noble savages, the uninvited immigrants from Europe used their superior firepower to first defeat the inhabitants and then position themselves as their masters. Relying on laws they enacted in Europe, they then forcefully implemented those laws throughout the whole world. Thus, they took possession of practically every square inch of lands that they, the Europeans, “discovered”.
Thus, the label “American” immediately became an exclusive rather than an inclusive term. It was assigned by Europeans for European immigrants only (primarily those born of European parents in the New World, of course) without any consideration to the original Americans. As mentioned in the earlier paragraph, the word “Indian” was already being used as a matter of convenience to deprive the rightful owners of their land. In this form hides an ironic twist. The strangers from another land (England) successfully treat the indigenous people as strangers in their own land. Quite an irony indeed!
On a lighter note, it is strangely amusing that the white Europeans’ battle against Native Americans continues to this day. For example, in the current illegal immigration debate, European-descended “Americans” in the U.S. call themselves “nativists” and often use their hateful and vitriolic attacks toward brown-skinned Native Americans. Great amounts of energy and resources are spent to keep natives from traveling in their ancestral lands, such as the Sonora and Chihuahua Deserts that straddle both sides of the U.S. Mexico border.
Those natives who found themselves on the southern bank are forbidden to cross the Rio Grande. This is the same river that their ancestors crossed for thousands of years before the Rio was transformed into the invisible political border that it is today. This is also the river that the U.S. in its infinite wisdom has chosen as a permanent Mason-Dixon Line, and referring to itself as “America”. In true ethnocentric fashion, they don’t consider Mexico to be in “America”.
To continue this curious discussion, it is quite astonishing that the U.S.A., the most powerful nation in the world, does not have its own national label, as do other nations in America, such as, Canadian(Canada), Mexican (Mexico), Columbian (Columbia), etc… Those countries are in “America”, but they have their own national title; not so with the U.S.A. It is clear that the “A.” in “U.S.A.” refers to “of America”. In other words, “U.S.A.” refers to the Continent of America as a whole. Yet, the U.S. has for all practical purposes, arrogantly hijacked the words “America” and “American” to refer to the predominant amalgamation of its mainly white citizenry.
Not by their own choice, most all other racial or ethnic groups in the U.S.A. that do not fit the amalgamated “white” American mold have been given hyphenated labels, such as, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, and yes, even Native-Americans, and so on. As an adaptation of the “Big Lie” theory, the ruse has been so successful that even Spanish-surnamed people, “Americanos” themselves by birth, ironically use the term Americanos to refer only to Anglo Saxons from the U.S.A.
What’s in a name? As it pertains to the real identity of “Americans”, it is not an easy question to answer. The exclusive use of the word to refer mainly to the white citizenry of the U.S. has blurred its true meaning. Simply stated, the original inhabitants are the ones who by natural rights have the right to simply and respectfully be called “Americans”. Since there were no other humans around when they got here, that statement is undeniably true. That is no different than what we call inhabitants of other continents, such as, Europeans (Europe), Africans (Africa), and Asians (Asia). Unfortunately, most modern-day “Americans” don’t even give it a second thought. They consider themselves the Americans and that is that, at least for now.
Many U.S. politicians and pundits like to brag that the U.S. is a “nation of immigrants”; meaning that we all came from Europe and other parts of the world. Such a perverse mantra of mostly “white” European descendant Americans sounds good. However, it conveniently ignores the fact that Native Americans are not immigrants to the U.S.; they were already here! The same goes for Spanish-Mexican people living in the U.S. Southwest when the U.S. took over half of Mexico’s sovereign territory.
In other words, descendants of Spanish Mexican pioneers are not immigrants either, since their ancestors were also already here! The fact that a large part of the U.S. was settled by Spanish Mexicans still perplexes many citizens of our country who do not understand that Texas and the Southwest have Spanish Mexican roots. For example, many U.S. citizens will be surprised to learn that in the U.S., “New Spain” is twice as large as “New England”.
Adding more confusion to the issue, many politicians and news pundits wrongly use the term “Native Americans” to refer only to those inhabitants whose descendants now reside in U.S. Indian reservations. Others use it to refer to the people who lived within the current “political” boundaries of the present U.S.A. Not so! “Native (First) Americans” refers to all original inhabitants and their descendants in the American Continent, from Canada to the tip of Tierra del Fuego in South America. In the final analysis, it is they who should be called “Americans”.
(Note: As a descendant of both the first Spanish European settlers to set foot in Texas and the first Americans, I had to come to grips with the emotions guiding my writing projects. These seemingly opposing sentiments have reached the deepest recesses of my soul throughout my adult life. That in itself was not my biggest problem in writing the book.
My biggest challenge in writing the story was the constant reminder that throughout U.S. history literature, there is a deliberate anti-Spanish viewpoint called the Black Legend. Very briefly, that is a method that mainstream U.S. historians use to condemn only Spanish Europeans for invading America. Curiously enough, they do not criticize the English, whose brutality toward the first Americans was masked by a self-serving concept called Manifest Destiny.
Clearly, that approach is unfair. In the case of the initial contact between our ancestors, there’s no doubt that there was little understanding between the two diverse cultures. It may have taken some difficulty, but eventually their conflict turned into co-existence. Through inter-marriage, it then graduated into full brotherhood and sisterhood. I have always wished that their first meetings would have mutually been beneficial. Sadly, it didn’t happen.
However, I cannot condemn my Spanish European ancestors for their brutality any more than I can condemn my Native American ancestors’ brutality against weaker indigenous people. All I know is that I am the product of both. To illustrate, my appearance may be Spanish European (to include Sephardic Jewish lineage), but my DNA identifies me as Native American, specifically as a first American.
As such, to chastise only one part of my family tree is simply unrealistic. It has been a wrenching experience for me to try to balance the pride I have in both of my bloodlines. After all, their blending is what designates me as a Mexican-descent U.S. citizen. (Readers must realize that in this case the word Mexican is used only to identify our long cultu
ral heritage and not meant as a nationalistic identifier.)
Appendix 3
“They came, they saw, they destroyed…”
From the moment that Spanish, French, English and other white Europeans landed on the shores of this hemisphere, their arrival symbolized an ill omen for the native inhabitants. Getting ahead of our story a bit, the following important considerations are offered:
a. Of the three major white immigrant groups above, only the Spanish and French got to assimilate with and accept Native Americans as fellow human beings. For example, as regards the Spanish, all one has to do is look at Spanish Mexican-descent U.S. citizens originating in the Southwest and see the results. Their names may be Spanish European, but their demeanor and appearance is purely Native American.
Spanish Mexican-descent U.S. citizens look like both their Spanish European and their Native American ancestors, attesting to a near-complete assimilation. That’s the bottom line. In short, if one identifies himself/herself as being of Mexican-descent, he/she is also Native American. It’s that simple; both bloodlines run through their veins.
b. On the other hand, the English shunned the indigenous people in America (first Americans) from the very beginning. Instituting a permanent apartheid system in the U.S., the English-descent immigrants introduced horrid Indian Reservations. As briefly discussed above, it was calculated to insulate themselves from Native Americans. That is why even today, most English- and Northern European-descent U.S. citizens look only like their European immigrant ancestors.
Regardless, the indigenous people did not merit nor deserve what lay ahead after 1492. In truth, the ravenous Europeans overwhelmed the natives with greed and disease. For the vulnerable indigenous tribes, equipped only with basic rudimentary weapons to defend themselves and their land, there was no escape. They were no match for the technologically superior force of European immigrants, who came to America armed with another weapon unknown to first Americans – an insatiable hunger for land ownership.
A different perspective:
The Mayflower, Thanksgiving Day, Ellis Island, and Mount Rushmore.
In the U.S., Native Americans were forced into two tracks. One, they either succumbed to vicious white man’s greed by being pushed into reservations by the tips of cavalry swords and rifle bullets. Or two, they died en route or in their camps by the thousands slain by a massive personification of Typhoid Mary aboard the Mayflower and subsequent ships from European ports.
Using the technique of information omission and repetition methods used in the art of brainwashing, white citizens are taught to identify with the European immigrants only at the expense of the first Americans. The exclusive methods of persuasion that are used involve the repetitive memorization of two basic concepts; one the Europeans were good, and two, the native inhabitants were bad.
The story told to legions of young eager minds in elementary school classes and engraved in the white American mindset is as follows. Mayflower European immigrants and subsequent waves of refugees from Europe represented a bastion of virtue. Forced to leave their homeland because of intolerance, their beliefs, and their way of life in Europe, they came here to begin anew. The reality is opposite to that premise. So, we must honor our brother and sister Native Americans for having a different perspective than do white citizens of the Mayflower.
The supposedly “persecuted” whites did not compassionately apply their lessons of enduring persecution in Europe when they landed in America and met another group of human beings that looked and acted differently than the whites did. So, as with the significance of the Mayflower, Native Americans don’t share white citizens’ view of that special day in November called Thanksgiving Day.
Almost immediately, white invaders victimized the indigenous population. Sadly, we have been taught from kindergarten to look up to and admire Mayflower settlers and successive waves of European immigrants, such as those who will reach Ellis Island in overcrowded boats many years later. Such invasions must be learned in context with the cataclysmic impact on first Americans. Just like the Mayflower and Thanksgiving Day, Native Americans have a totally opposite view of Ellis Island.
Curriculum lessons in our school classrooms have a long way to go before equity is reached. Repeated time after time is a deeply ingrained version in books, patriotic songs, and films unkind to Native Americans. Worse, the lesson is so embedded in the “American” culture that most citizens miss the unmistakable clues as to how evil the westward push by the U.S. was on the native people who got in the way of its Manifest Destiny expansion.
Most white people disregard the terrible thought that establishing a European-style nation symbolizes a deep stab wound into the Native American collective heart. No other sign represents that fact more than the giant faces of four white men at Mount Rushmore that most whites are taught to venerate. In fact, the gigantic outdoor temple desecrates Six Grandfathers Mountain, a much older sacred Native American (Lakota Sioux) natural peak. Yet, the ethnocentric symbol is so imbued in our society that no one questions it. That’s discrimination in its rawest form. As with the Mayflower, Thanksgiving Day, and Ellis Island, Native Americans have an opposite perspective of Mount Rushmore. I don’t blame them for it.
The truth is that the new European arrivals came, they liked what they saw, and they set out to destroy native inhabitants and their eons-old way of life. Right from the start of our nation’s history, the migrating Europeans wrote incessantly about wonderful concepts of freedom, equality, liberty, and justice for all. No one bothered to notice that those precious human rights applied only to white males. In establishing their “free” nation, their freedom documents did not apply to Native Americans, black slaves, or women. (To be sure, Black slaves were be emancipated after the Civil War, and women were given the right to vote in the 1920s. To date, no such emancipation has ever been given to the first Americans.)
To say that the new immigrants from Europe had little compassion for the inhabitants living in the future U.S.A. is a classic understatement. Little else makes European descendants beam with pride more than to let everyone else know that we are fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth generation Americans. In a most preposterous manner, some racist whites even have the gall to refer to themselves as nativists, not considering the fact that they originate from European immigrants.
Whether related directly or indirectly (by name association), English descendants often claim their connection to the Mayflower or the American Revolution as proof of their heritage. Some wear their pedigree as special lineage royalty badges of honor. They try to make themselves more legitimate than brown-skinned Native Americans whose lineage in America goes back for thousands of years!
The truth is that every successful story of Anglo Saxon triumph in the New World (America) stands on top of dozens of stories of misery, subjugation, and death they brought on the first Americans. When they couldn’t push them out of the way or trick them out of their land with worthless beads and trinkets, they viciously attacked and exterminated an incalculable number of men, women, and children. As horrible as the actions are documented as having occurred, our country’s leaders have never apologized for our government’s sanctioned actions to forcibly remove the first Americans from their land. Nor, have they ever considered a serious, meaningful reflection, redemption, or memorial in their honor.
So absolute was the Europeans’ takeover that “America” is the only continent, besides Australia, that is not ruled by its original native inhabitants. Of course, that is a heart-rending story that merits its own telling in a separate book. Suffice it to say that through history, there have been other attempts, some successful, others not so, where one group tries to completely destroy another to take over their land. This is a point that is very pertinent to our story. There have been several incidents of this sort throughout the world, but one in particular within our own state merits discussion at this time.
After the 1836 Tex
as Revolution, the victorious Anglos turned on and viciously betrayed their Tejano allies. The directed, coordinated ethnic-cleansing efforts against the Tejanos in Texas cities and towns wreaked havoc on the Tejano population. In a strange way, they honestly thought that they could repeat the Anglos’ eradication of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River, simply because they believed they had a divine mandate or “Manifest Destiny” to do so. Of course, it didn’t work. Although the Anglos tried with mandates and vigilante attacks to push the Tejanos out of Texas, Tejano descendants are still here.
To get a glimpse and bitter taste of the hideous nature of the extermination efforts against the Native Americans in the U.S.A., the reader should at least learn about President Andrew Jackson’s appalling personal role in and his active support of and signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Most historians give this cruel and ill-tempered president a pass. The scope and breadth of this mandated tragedy is too bitter a contemplation for the descendants of the first Americans.
The deliberate execution of the cruel act took an agonizing eight long years. It ingloriously removed the Five Nations (Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole) from the southeastern part of the U.S. into reservations in Oklahoma so that white people could move into their land. There were many other extermination drives all the way to the Pacific Coast. However, this one was particularly heartless. Tens of thousands died due to hunger, exposure, and disease.
Providing a strange paradox, few symbols of U.S.A. machismo today top the use of pictures of Native Americans in full regalia, arrows, arrowheads, free-range buffaloes, and pristine panoramic views of the natives’ ancestral lands, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and the deserts, hills, and mesas of the Southwest. The symbols overwhelm us; in coins, flags, national parks, team mascots, and the like.
Friendly Betrayal Page 21