Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

27 страница из 156

In early colonial days Englishmen made war captives out of the Indians of the southeastern parts of the United States and forcibly sent them through the port of Charleston to slavery in the plantations of the West Indies. Between 1770 and 1810, Spanish soldiers escorted three thousand Apache “prisoners-of-war” to Mexico City. Women and children became domestics in central Mexico, while the Apache men were sent to work the fields and ports of Cuba. By the nineteenth century Mexican slave traders were busy kidnapping Navajo women and children to serve as domestics and laborers in the fields and homes of New Mexico. A similar situation occurred in California. Slavery or “servitude” was justified on the grounds that the uncivilized savages were having their souls saved by the actions of Christian overseers.

As for the use of the words “genocide” and “holocaust,” because of the volatility of these words I have use them sparingly. In some instances, where extermination was not the object but land acquisition was, “ethnic cleansing” may be the preferred phrase. This study follows the definitions of genocide of the Proposed Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1997) intended to supersede the United Nations Convention of 1948. Genocide, by these definitions, may be threefold: Physical (deliberate and direct or indirect killing of a specific ethnic or racial group); Biological (including sterilization and psychological conditions leading to birthrate declines and increased rates of infant mortality); and Cultural (eradication of the mores, habits, traditions, and languages of a specific group).