Gee’s Reviews > Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World > Status Update

People lament the fact that the Indian population dipped below a few hundred thousand by 1900, but it might easily have dipped far lower, had the federal government not intervened to provide medicine, food, and other material support to the remaining Indians. It is indisputable that the US government’s vaccination policy saved far more Indians than were massacred during the entire nineteenth century

this early pattern of marrying Indian “nobles” we may detect an assumption on the part of Europeans that Indian society would be long-lasting and permanent—just like Islamic society had proven to be. There would be no point in marrying into the nobility of a society that one expected to disappear over the course of a few generations

The Apache are thought by archaeologists to have originated in Alaska and then rampaged southwards. Conquering and intimidating as they went, like a group of New World Huns or Vandals, the Apache finally reached the region of Texas by the time the first Spanish arrived in the early sixteenth century.

The idea that European land ownership was tied to “patriarchy” has impelled some feminist scholars to assert that Indian property holding systems were “matriarchal” while European property systems were “patriarchal.” According to Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood: “Post-colonial feminist theories and research have shown how the social institution of patriarchy, including sexual relationships, was fundamental to European

Having kindled a fire, they selected a victim, and proceeded to excoriate his back with red-hot burning brands, and to apply live coals to the ends of his fingers, where they would give the most exquisite pain. They tore out his finger-nails, and, with sharp slivers of wood, pierced his wrists and rudely forced out the quivering sinews. They flayed off the skin from the top of his head, and poured upon the bleeding

the adoption of African slavery by the Five Civilized Tribes was merely an adaptation of preexisting practice. During the Trail of Tears marches of the 1830s, thousands of African slaves were moved westward, along with their Indian masters. In the lead-up to the Civil War, some tribes were split into pro- and anti-slavery factions

Slavery was widespread not only in Mesoamerica but also throughout the Indian tribes of the New World. Even far to the north, in present-day Canada, Native Americans routinely enslaved one another. The French were able to take advantage of this preexisting practice, buying slaves from the Indians and sometimes selling them in Caribbean markets

The Aztecs were notoriously short of large domesticable animals to use for food, so this steady ritual of human sacrifice met a social need for protein. The town where this occurred was previously named Zultapec—but after this windfall of sacrificial victims, its name was changed to “Tecoaque,” which meant “the place where they ate them.”