Native, Or Not, Americans

Once upon a time, Europeans sought to find a route to Asia and so they sailed west to find a route but ran into land way before they should have. Of course, they didn't know that... they had no idea how far Asia was... so they called the people they found on the land "Indians" thinking they had landed in the East Indies. You know who I am writing about, don't you?

Nowadays it is popular to call these "Indians" "Native Americans" but they aren't. What they are is immigrants from Asia. And, since there were no centralized governments back when they immigrated, we could call them "undocumented."

I am talking about North American Indians here, which Columbus probably never met (others would meet those people). South American Indians may have come from the Pacific islands, we don't know that yet but the DNA should confirm or deny that.

There is much talk about how we stole their land and all but we didn't. Not really. You see, when a tribe wanted the land another tribe was on, they would attack that tribe and take it if they could. An Indian told me that the "dominant" tribe would take the land. Well, Europeans and the later Americans (who had immigrated from Europe) were the new dominant tribe and did what came naturally. They took as much land as they could and treated the existing population like dirt. When the first of these "Indians" came to this land, apparently there were no other inhabitants. There might have been but no evidence exists to substantiate that. If there were a native people, the odds are that the new arrivals would have vanquished them and taken over... being a new tribe and wanting the land for themselves.

So, do I feel guilty about what we, as a people, did to the first Americans? Not a lot. We did what our culture and history expected of us.