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By Sam McCarran
A common argument used by leftists is that white people can’t complain about immigration because they were the original illegal immigrants, obviously referring to the colonization of the Americas. And yet, like nearly everything that is accepted as canon in today’s society, this is complete and utter hogwash. To be an illegal immigrant, one must first break laws regarding immigration. What laws did any of the hundreds of tribes living in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans have? The answer is none. They had no written law, and in the case of the North American tribes, they did not even have a written language. It is literally impossible for the white Europeans to have been illegal immigrants. Another related argument is that if white people want white lands they must go back to Europe (notwithstanding the fact that leftists also wish to eradicate white people from Europe and all other continents).
But why did Spain (the first colonizer of the Americas) even set up colonies to begin with? In 1492, after nearly 800 years of domination by Arab Muslims, the Spanish monarchs finally kicked Islam out of Spain and deported the arabs.
Spain wanted colonies to become strong enough to compete with the Islamic world to ensure they would never again be subjugated. If white people are to be chastised for their colonialism, why aren’t Muslims condemned for it?
Now of course, I’m an American and the Spanish Conquest of the Americas is neither here nor there regarding the creation of the United States. First things first: most of the loss of life among the indigenous peoples of the Americas was at the hands of the Spanish. Attempts to delegitimize the United States of America because of the actions of the Spanish (including their actions in what is now Florida and the Caribbean) are absurd and lazy.
Let’s first divide the English colonies up as they were historically: The New England colonies, the southern colonies, and the middle colonies.
As every Virginian child knows, the first permanent British settlement in the Americas was at Jamestown in 1607. At this time, Virginia included not only the modern day state but also West Virginia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas. It was huge. The first real conflict in this vast territory was in 1609 when the local Indians from the Paspahegh tribe (a slave people of the Powhattan) began raiding the colonists’ fort (that the colonists were given permission to set up by the chief of the tribe) thus starting the Anglo Powhatan wars. The Paspahegh were completely wiped out in a war that they started. In 1622, the Powhatan tribe launched a brutal unprovoked murder of colonists in which over 300 died. The English retaliated and over the course of the next ten years, made repeated assaults against native positions, forcing a treaty in 1632.
However, in 1644 the leader of the Powhatan tribe, Opchanacanough, launched another war that ended two years later with him suing for peace before being murdered by one of his captors. Thus, the history of Virginia and the southern colonies is one of native aggression being defeated by British superiority
The New England colonies were born in 1620 with the landing at Plymouth rock and the first winter with Squanto. We all knew this growing up. However, in the 1630s, the Pequot tribe began attempting to expand its territory at the expense of the neighboring Wampanoag (who were decimated by a smallpox epidemic in 1615-1619, BEFORE Europeans even arrived in their turf), Narragansett, and the Mohegan tribes. These tribes joined an alliance with the colonists and the Pequot were decimated. The next war in New England was King Phillip’s war. This war was a result of native anger over the expanding colonist settlements. In this war, the Wampanoag and Narragansett were allied together against the colonists and the Mohegans. This war ended with the colonists victorious. Thousands of native Americans died from combat and an equal number from diseases, with another 1,000 sold into slavery. Of the 10,000 Native Americans in New England in 1676, only 2,000 remained (including the Natives allied with the colonists).
But this was not genocide. This was simply war with no intent to wipe out the enemy (and all of the tribes involved still exist today).
The story of the New England colonies was similar to the Southern ones: Indians fired the first shots and couldn’t beat the Colonists’ superior warfare.
The story of the Middle Colonies is a bit different. The current states of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania were once a part of New Netherland. In 1667, this land was sold to the British. Each of these states had different histories with the Native Americans: the Pennsylvania colony (which also controlled Delaware) founded by quakers, treated the Natives as equals. The colony of New York allied itself with the Iroquois confederacy. There were no large-scale wars conducted against the indigenous tribes in the mid Atlantic region.
In 1763, the British defeated the French and received all their territory east of the Mississippi. The British ensured there would be no conflict by prohibiting whites to settle west of the Appalachian mountains. In 1783, the nascent United States government received this land in addition to the original colonies. The United States was therefore not founded on genocide, as the British empire did not engage in genocide.
So, how did the independent American nation conduct itself with regards to the native populations? Most of its land was acquired by selling, not by war. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson purchased New France from Napoleon. In 1819, Florida was bought from Spain. In 1846, the sparsely populated Oregon country was sold to the United States by Britain. The only pieces missing from the present day contiguous United States were Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Texas joined the Union in 1845, which kicked off the Mexican-American war. After three years of bitter fighting, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, giving the rest of the northern territories of Mexico to the United States.
Of course, no nation is without its blemishes, and the United States conducted two inexcusable acts against the Native peoples: the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and the California genocide in the 1850s. In the case of the latter event, the United States government picked up where Mexico left off, so it is truly unfair to demand that America apologize while exempting Mexico from any blame. As for the trail of tears, of the total of 55,000 Indians removed, around 13,000 (or less than 25%) perished.
Moving onto another of the left’s pet races, Africans, we constantly hear about the twin evils of Slavery (for guilting Americans) and of colonialism (for guilting Europeans)
Moving onto another of the lefts pet races, Africans, we constantly hear about the horrors of chattel slavery and how it had forever marred Black Americans in a subjugated state. There is one big problem with this lie: African Americans are far better off than Africans in Africa. The 45,000,000 African Americans have more wealth than the 1.2 billion native Africans. Furthermore this obscures the elephant in the room: Africans sold other africans into slavery. From time immemorial African tribes waged war against each other, carrying off the losers into captivity. The problem in the eyes of these deconstructionists is when the dreaded white man is involved, as it became in the 1500s when African Tribes began selling their enemies to the Spanish who populated their colonies with slaves. Of the 10,700,000 Africans who survived the middle passage, only 380,000 went to what is now the United States. If these deconstructionists were consistent, they’d be demanding Latin America pay reparations, but they aren’t, for reasons which will be discussed in another Essay. Furthermore, the first slave owner In the United States was Anthony Johnson, who went to court to demand his temporary indentured servant be his slave for life. Much like the Indians, Africans start wars they can’t win.
Another common refrain of deconstructionists is that slavery ‘built this country’. I have yet to find a single part of this country that is made of cotton but that is beside the point. Did Slavery Build Ohio? How about California? Wisconsin? No, because they never had any slaves and as every Virginia elementary school student will tell you, the North was the industrialized side in the civil war, mainly achieved WITHOUT slave labor. The south had few factories and most were staffed by non-slave labor. Slavery in an agricultural society is not a groundbreaking discovery. Finally, the south was burned to the ground after the Civil War and rebuilt with non-slave labor. They have no claim to the glories of modern society simply because their ancestors picked cotton, regardless of how evil slavery was, and on that, there is no argument.
