[dntbnmpls]

It's sad but true. People even deny native genocide. I had a comment yesterday saying the natives didn't experience genocide but were simply "moved off their land".

But I guess I can understand it somewhat. It took me a long time to come to terms with it as well. The genocide of the natives didn't sink in until I saw a list of the native languages that were wiped out along with the natives. It was dozens and dozens of languages. Many times more languages than exists in the whole of europe.

[throwlaplace]

>"moved off their land"

"Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides ... they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated. "

Bartolomé de las Casas - A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

[netcan]

Europe had many more dialects and languages than now... Some of extinction stories are genocidal as well. We have to assume a lot about what happened as Rome colonised southern europe, for example, but much of it probably rhymes what happened in the americas.

[chewz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotvingia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Prussian_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudovian_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs

[dntbnmpls]

> Europe had many more dialects and languages than now...

Yes I know. The difference is that with the natives, the language disappeared because the people got exterminated rather than through forced standardization/adoption of national languages.

[throwlaplace]

this is like people comparing the indigenous african slave trade to the triangle trade - completely facile.

>Rome colonised southern europe

colonization in the ancient world wasn't rapacious like it was in the new world. conquered peoples maintained much of their way of life and simply became vassal. in the roman case (towards the end) they even got roman citizenship.

Edit:I finally figured out hn downvotes - paper over a genocide nbd - use the word facile downvotes

[mikepurvis]

The people being conquered in Europe were also a lot less vulnerable in several key ways— my understanding is that they were largely overwhelmed by superior military tactics and infrastructure (roads and so on), but once conquered they were at a similar level in overall technology and well positioned to participate in the larger Roman economy.

North American native peoples faced new infectious diseases that they weren't at all prepared for, a huge technological disparity (guns), and a lot of predatory economics (trading away valuable furs for beads and trinkets).

[Spooky23]

Tell that to the Gauls!

[throwlaplace]

>In the five centuries between Caesar's conquest and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Gaulish language and cultural identity underwent a syncretism with the Roman culture of the new governing class, and evolved into a hybrid Gallo-Roman culture that eventually permeated all levels of society

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Gaul

Can you point to symbiosis with native American culture that resembles that to any extent today in the US? All we have are racist football team mascots

[mikepurvis]

I think the parent may be making a joke about the village from Asterix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix#Description