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"More Irish people killed more Indians than anyone else"

  • 12-08-2020 3:41pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭


    Floyd Westerman mentions this in his talk on the common struggle of Native Americans and the Irish. I didn't do leaving cert history and only recently learned of Irish involvement with genocide of natives in the USA. So I'm curious, when did you learn the extent of our history with the indigenous people of America?




    Mod Note:
    See warning on post 32 about straying from OP.

    When did you learn the extent of Irish involvement with anti-native forces in America 47 votes

    In school
    87% 41 votes
    College / Adulthood
    0% 0 votes
    This is news to me so
    12% 6 votes


«13

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 20,025 ✭✭✭✭neris


    The way its normally spun when in comes to native populations and the Irish is the Irish were always friendly towards the natives and it was British or Americans who were going around killing natives and beating slaves from Africa.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,457 ✭✭✭An Ri rua


    You'll find the same with any foreign forces the Irish joined.
    Even through our domestic (domesticated by the Brits) British colonial involvement, we no doubt oversaw serious abuse and slaughter of Africans, Asians and Arabs on their own soil. Just research the amount of Irish in the officer class of the British Forces and it becomes very obvious.
    We may never have colonised, as a sovereign state, but as one of the 'home nations' as it were, we certainly did.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,023 ✭✭✭Gruffalux


    General Philip Sheridan. Parents went from Co. Cavan to Ohio. He was renowned for his total war tactics against native Americans. Starved them in winter, slaughtered men, women and children with no remorse, drove them onto the reservations. A stain on his ancestors and ancestral roots.

    https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/sheridan.htm


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,714 ✭✭✭timmyntc


    Why should it be "our" history?

    If an Irish person emigrates and does some heinous crimes somewhere else in the world - why should we, the people who stayed in Ireland have any kind of responsibility or even association with same? Most of these people don't even have any modern day descendents who are Irish.


  • Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭TenLeftFingers


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    General Philip Sheridan. Parents went from Co. Cavan to Ohio. He was renowned for his total war tactics against native Americans. Starved them in winter, slaughtered men, women and children with no remorse, drove them onto the reservations. A stain on his ancestors and ancestral roots.

    https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/sheridan.htm

    I read of a Kerry man with a similar reputation (although probably not a similar rank / authority).


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  • Registered Users Posts: 15,630 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    neris wrote: »
    The way its normally spun when in comes to native populations and the Irish is the Irish were always friendly towards the natives and it was British or Americans who were going around killing natives and beating slaves from Africa.

    Incidents like the the Cincinatti Riots and New York Draft Riots put paid to the "We were a sound bunch of lads" narrative and the falsehood Irish were universally liked and tolerated.
    Of course Irish slaughtered native Americans and competed and fought over resources and jobs with African Americans. There were ugly incidents between Irish and Chinese in railroad construction gangs.


  • Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭TenLeftFingers


    Is any of this on the history syllabus in the leaving cert? We criticize yhe British for not K NJ owing the atrocities they commited which seems ironic, even if the scale was infinitely greater.


  • Registered Users Posts: 383 ✭✭8mv


    I remember reading 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' some years ago and being shocked at the number of Irish names who enthusiastically took part in the genocide of the indigenous people of North America. It had not occured to me before that Irish people and other Northern Europeans had contributred to that shameful episode of history.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 12,592 Mod ✭✭✭✭riffmongous


    Is any of this on the history syllabus in the leaving cert? We criticize yhe British for not K NJ owing the atrocities they commited which seems ironic, even if the scale was infinitely greater.

    The difference usually being though that the atrocities were committed in the name of the country, rather than the people. But yes, it should definitely be included in any discussion on the diaspora


  • Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭TenLeftFingers


    The difference usually being though that the atrocities were committed in the name of the country, rather than the people. But yes, it should definitely be included in any discussion on the diaspora

    But at the end of the day, by the people. But I take your point at the same time.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Is any of this on the history syllabus in the leaving cert? We criticize yhe British for not K NJ owing the atrocities they commited which seems ironic, even if the scale was infinitely greater.
    The difference usually being though that the atrocities were committed in the name of the country, rather than the people. But yes, it should definitely be included in any discussion on the diaspora
    The story of the Irish diaspora is not really addressed in the history syllabus (at second level, anyway), exept in so far as it has implications for the history of Ireland (e.g. the role of Irish-America in the Fenian movement).


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    I don't think anyone has systematically studied this question but what bugs me about this kind of anaysis is that it supposed that the Native Americans lost their lands and way of life due to genocide. In some areas there was true ethnic cleaning but even if there wasn't, even there was no killings, the end result would be the same. The 90% die off from disease and the huge numbers of European immigrants doomed them. The real cause was not ethnic cleaning, it was dispect of Native Americans natural rights to their land.

    Can you edit the poll? Some people learnt ofIrish involvment as kids or teenagers through their own reading


  • Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭TenLeftFingers


    Unfortunately, it seems that I can't even update my first post to say that "In school" can cover school-going years in general in the poll.

    I agree with you on this; genocide wasn't the only thing they had to contend with.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    . . . The real cause was not ethnic cleaning, it was dispect of Native Americans natural rights to their land.
    How is dispossesing people of their land, so forcing them to move off it and allow it to be settled by a different people, not ethnic cleansing? Genuine question.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    How is dispossesing people of their land, so forcing them to move off it and allow it to be settled by a different people, not ethnic cleansing? Genuine question.

    That is not the point I am making. Before Columbus arrived there was millions in the New World but it was still occupied at far lower densities than Europe. in areas without farming there was a huge difference. Than came along the plague of epidemics, these wiped out 90% of the native population. This alone empied the land in a transformative fashion. So in many areas the land was so empty that no ethnic cleaning was needed.


  • Registered Users Posts: 27,381 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Post famine Irish or Scots Irish like Andrew Jackson?

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    That is not the point I am making. Before Columbus arrived there was millions in the New World but it was still occupied at far lower densities than Europe. in areas without farming there was a huge difference. Than came along the plague of epidemics, these wiped out 90% of the native population. This alone empied the land in a transformative fashion. So in many areas the land was so empty that no ethnic cleaning was needed.
    No. I think you are conflating two very different periods of history.

    The plague of epidemics followed first contact/exploration; it was rapid and severe. But "rapid" is the key word here; from about a century after first contact the population was recovering again - i.e. from the early 1600s. And the repopulation of the land with new, changed societies - e.g. the plains Indian culture - was extensive. As well as acquiring smallpox from Europeans, Native Americans acquired domesticated horses, and this completely changed their way of life, enabling different, and very successful, patterns of land use, settlement and migration.

    It was another two hundred years or more before European settlers on the Eastern seaboard began their aggressive westward expansion and settlement program. They were not settling in depopulated lands, but in repopulated lands, of which the well-established indigenous people had to be disposessed.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,251 ✭✭✭speckle


    As a teenager.reading I think a book called o harts pedigrees which led me to further reading is were I realised first, but didn't know at the time about 'more than anyone else'


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,811 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio


    timmyntc wrote: »
    Why should it be "our" history?

    If an Irish person emigrates and does some heinous crimes somewhere else in the world - why should we, the people who stayed in Ireland have any kind of responsibility or even association with same? Most of these people don't even have any modern day descendents who are Irish.

    Would you apply the same logic to someone like Tom Crean?

    Left Ireland young and joined the British navy. Returned sporadically but not permanently to Ireland for about 30 years.

    Without the British he would not be known. Should they have more claim to him than us?
    If not, should the same not happen of Irish who commit atrocities?


  • Registered Users Posts: 27,381 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    No. I think you are conflating two very different periods of history.

    The plague of epidemics followed first contact/exploration; it was rapid and severe. But "rapid" is the key word here; from about a century after first contact the population was recovering again - i.e. from the early 1600s. And the repopulation of the land with new, changed societies - e.g. the plains Indian culture - was extensive. As well as acquiring smallpox from Europeans, Native Americans acquired domesticated horses, and this completely changed their way of life, enabling different, and very successful, patterns of land use, settlement and migration.

    It was another two hundred years or more before European settlers on the Eastern seaboard began their aggressive westward expansion and settlement program. They were not settling in depopulated lands, but in repopulated lands, of which the well-established indigenous people had to be disposessed.


    Indian populations had recovered from 90 percent losses to smallpox etc ... you have figures for that?

    Also what was the carrying capacity of the land for the plains indian lifstyle.
    Did they possess the lands in terms of settlements or use them as hunting etc lands periodically.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,014 ✭✭✭tylercheribini


    Donald Harman Akenson has written a lot about the Irish's brutality towards indigenous populations around the world, worth checking out.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    Indian populations had recovered from 90 percent losses to smallpox etc ... you have figures for that?
    Lookit, we don't have figures for the 90% losses. These are estimates. Since we don't know what the population numbers were before the plagues, it's impossible to say whether they later recovered or exceeded that leve.

    But it's irrelevant whether population numbers had recovered to the numbers before European contact; all that matters is that they had recovered to the point where the indigenous people were occupying and exploiting the land. Which we know they were, not least the US had to engage in a variety of treaties with them and wars with them in order to clear the land for settlement.
    odyssey06 wrote: »
    Also what was the carrying capacity of the land for the plains indian lifstyle.
    Did they possess the lands in terms of settlements or use them as hunting etc lands periodically.
    What of it? Neither of these questions are relevant. It doesn't matter whether the indigenous people farmed the land, formed urban communities or exploited it as hunter-gatherers (and in fact they did all fo these things in different places); all that matters is that they occupied their land and one way or another they had to be driven off it to accommodate white settlement. You might argue that the white settlers populated the land more densely and farmed it more intensively and you might (or might not) be right, but so what? This is a very different claim from the one you are advancing above and, even if it is true, it hardly amounts to a justification or vindication.

    I think the only relevance these points might have is that, if the indigenous people were few in number and population density was low, that would make them weaker, and so make it easier for the more numerous white settlers to dispossess them; it makes it easier to deny or disregard their rights. But that is hardly a point you would wish to make, I think.


  • Registered Users Posts: 27,381 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Lookit, we don't have figures for the 90% losses. These are estimates. Since we don't know what the population numbers were before the plagues, it's impossible to say whether they later recovered or exceeded that leve.

    Yet you said they recovered. It was your claim.
    And switch into attack mode when asked for figures to support your claim.
    And then query any other figures bandied about.
    The 90% figure seems to be a widely accepted estimate for losses after contact through disease.

    And it's not your claim but figures do seem relevant to the idea that "More Irish people killed more Indians than anyone else."
    What Irish people.
    What Indians.
    What centuries... decades and territories\states did these deaths occur.
    What else killed Indians.

    I'm not saying the person quoted is lying, or should shut up, they are making an important point but just that it represents a specific time in a centuries long process.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    Yet you said they recovered. It was your claim.
    I never said that they had recovered to the previous level - just that they had recovered enough to repopulate the land.

    Recovery to the previous level is irrelevant. After all, the population of Ireland has yet to recover to its pre-Famine level. You would hardly argue that this means that the land of Ireland is abandoned, unpopulated and available to settlers.
    odyssey06 wrote: »
    And switch into attack mode when asked for figures to support your claim.
    Don’t be dramatic. I haven’t attacked anybody.
    odyssey06 wrote: »
    And then query any other figures bandied about.
    The 90% figure seems to be a widely accepted estimate for losses after contact through disease.
    It’s a widely quoted estimate. I’m not arguing with it (though I would point out that it’s the upper end of a range of estimates that have been produced) . I’m just pointing out that neither before the plagues nor before the (much later) white settlements was there anything like a census, so we don’t know (a) what the population was before the plagues, (b) what it was just after the plagues or (c) what it was when the settlement push came a bit over 200 years later. And my point is that we don’t need to know. Even if the (c) figure was substantially lower than the (a) figure, this does not imply that Indian territories were unpopulated and awaiting settlement.
    odyssey06 wrote: »
    And it's not your claim but figures do seem relevant to the idea that "More Irish people killed more Indians than anyone else."
    What Irish people.
    What Indians.
    What centuries... decades and territories\states did these deaths occur.
    What else killed Indians.
    I’m not particularly interested in defending the “more Irish” claim. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a very dodgy claim. I was more responding to your claim that “no ethnic cleansing was needed” to facilitate the settlement of Indian territories by white settlers. It certainly was.


  • Registered Users Posts: 27,381 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    I’m not particularly interested in defending the “more Irish” claim. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a very dodgy claim. I was more responding to your claim that “no ethnic cleansing was needed” to facilitate the settlement of Indian territories by white settlers. It certainly was.

    Re: the "more Irish" claim, fair enough

    Re: the ethnic cleansing claim, if you are going to put it in double quotes it implies I used that sentence in a post. I did not.
    I think some ethnic cleansing did occur, but I don't think the centuries long process can be properly categorised in that manner.
    Sheer weight\density of numbers on one side v the other was always going to cause a large amount of displacement.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users Posts: 143 ✭✭BillyBird


    An Ri rua wrote: »
    You'll find the same with any foreign forces the Irish joined.

    And here with the famine. How many Irish landlords and Irish agents of English Landlords were responsible for the evictions and starvation that occurred during the famine.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    Re: the "more Irish" claim, fair enough

    Re: the ethnic cleansing claim, if you are going to put it in double quotes it implies I used that sentence in a post. I did not.
    I think some ethnic cleansing did occur, but I don't think the centuries long process can be properly categorised in that manner.
    Sheer weight\density of numbers on one side v the other was always going to cause a large amount of displacement.
    What you actually said was this:
    That is not the point I am making. Before Columbus arrived there was millions in the New World but it was still occupied at far lower densities than Europe. in areas without farming there was a huge difference. Than came along the plague of epidemics, these wiped out 90% of the native population. This alone empied the land in a transformative fashion. So in many areas the land was so empty that no ethnic cleaning was needed.
    This suggest that, because of infectious diseases, previously populated land was effectively cleared, and so was available for settling without needing to be "ethnically cleansed".

    I dont' think this is correct at all. Any land that was still unpopulated in the nineteenth century was unpopulated because it was unproductive; it couldn't sustain viable settlement (and as a result hadn't previously been settled by native Americans, and experienced little white settlement). I'm not aware of any area in what is now the US that was settled by indigenous people, cleared by plagues following European contact, and was still empty more than two centuries later when it was (in effect) colonised by the US. But the reverse is true; there are signficant areas that had been sparsely settled before European contact but were much more densely settled by the mid-nineteenth century as a result of the development of the Plains Indian horse cultures (and in fact these are the areas that offered the stiffest resistance to white settlement).


  • Registered Users Posts: 27,381 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    What you actually said was this:
    This suggest that, because of infectious diseases, previously populated land was effectively cleared, and so was available for settling without needing to be "ethnically cleansed".
    I dont' think this is correct at all. Any land that was still unpopulated in the nineteenth century was unpopulated because it was unproductive; it couldn't sustain viable settlement (and as a result hadn't previously been settled by native Americans, and experienced little white settlement). I'm not aware of any area in what is now the US that was settled by indigenous people, cleared by plagues following European contact, and was still empty more than two centuries later when it was (in effect) colonised by the US. But the reverse is true; there are signficant areas that had been sparsely settled before European contact but were much more densely settled by the mid-nineteenth century as a result of the development of the Plains Indian horse cultures (and in fact these are the areas that offered the stiffest resistance to white settlement).

    Do you realise you have just quoted two different posters?

    And I'm not talking exclusively about the 19th century.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users Posts: 7,645 ✭✭✭growleaves


    Lots of potentially dubious claims thrown around and I'm not seeing any sources. I'm withholding belief for the time being and encouraging others to do the same. The whole Revisionist juggernaut is designed to demoralise and stump people. "Did you know Irish people are the worst in the world?" Proof please


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  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    Do you realise you have just quoted two different posters?
    God, you're right. My apologies. :o
    odyssey06 wrote: »
    And I'm not talking exclusively about the 19th century.
    Fair enough. Though I think the "more Irish" claim (which we are both sceptical of) refers to what went on in the nineteenth century, and it is in the nineteenth century that the bulk of Indiand dispossession occurs.


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