The settlement of Western America was a long and harsh process in the history of the United States. During this time, settlers displaced thousands of native tribes while attempting to establish new civilizations in relatively unknown places. Although the frontiersman committed countless inhumane acts, Patrick Wolfe states in his essay that this process cannot be categorized as genocide. Instead, he makes the point that the actions performed during colonization were in fact \u201ccontests for land\u201d and not the direct targeting for the extinction of a certain group (1).<\/p>\n

Wolfe uses the Indian Removal Act in the early 1800s to exhibit his point. He explains that the fact that settlers first turned to removal policies shows a stress for the advancement of modernity within their nation and not a genocidal course of action. While reading this, I could not help to notice a correlation between both Wolfe\u2019s and Willentz\u2019s categorization of Jackson\u2019s policies. Both sided with Jackson\u2019s reform measures and strayed away from placing the blame of the cruel measures on the administration. Wolfe does state that the removal was \u201cbrutal\u201d but that \u201cit did not affect each member equally\u201d in that many natives were able to find refuge within the United States (396). Similarly, Jacob Newton\u2019s post on 10\/30 quotes Willentz of saying Jackson was a \u201cbenevolent, if realistic paternalist\u201d in his view of natives. Jacob goes on to refute Willentz\u2019s description of Jackson. I agree with this claim, and in doing so, disagree with both Wolfe\u2019s and Willentz\u2019s account of Indian removal. Although it was probably the best option for citizens of the United States at the time as they attempted to modernize their civilization, settlers had no right to treat these people like mere objects. Although it may not be categorized as genocide in Wolfe\u2019s dictionary, that does not take away from it as being as bad or worse than a genocidal procedure.<\/p>\n

This essay also made me think of Jackson Turner\u2019s Frontier Thesis (1893), which stated that the frontier was a defining feature of American democracy and identity and that American procedures would surely change with the closing of the frontier. When the frontier was still intact, settlers focused on the deportation of Indian tribes. But when the frontier was fully settled, \u201celimination turned inwards\u201d (399). Cruel assimilation processes were put into place to make Indians\u2019 lives harder until civil liberties were realized in the 1920s. But although the lack of a frontier changed the American processes like Turner predicted, both time frames still culminated an overall feeling of resentment and neglect for the Indian tribes in the United States.<\/p>\n

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The settlement of Western America was a long and harsh process in the history of the United States. During this time, settlers displaced thousands of native tribes while attempting to establish new civilizations in relatively unknown places. Although the frontiersman committed countless inhumane acts, Patrick Wolfe states in his essay that this process cannot be … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Settler Colonialism: If Not Genocide, Then What?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[142,146,163],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-frontier-thesis","tag-genocide","tag-indian-removal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}