[washadjeffmad]

People... aren't smart by default. The belief that Native Americans were sub-human because they didn't demonstrate the highly developed behavior of gross public displays of affection was perpetuated by, if you couldn't guess, the early French. Others used that and similar ideas to perpetuate the image that they were irredeemable savages by nature, less evolved and stain on the bloodlines of modern man. How ironic.

Neanderthals got a similar wrap. Early ethnocentrists believed that what succeeds in time succeeds in quality, but from all modern evidence, you share ancestry with a more developed, intelligent race than most.

No guarantees you inherited any of those qualities, but still :)

[somenameforme]

It could've been the lack of public displays of affection. It could also have been things like the repeatedly observed acts including ritual cannibalism and other sorts of mistreatment of prisoners, such as in the Siege of Fort Henry for one famous example. [1] One should not white wash history, but going in the equal but opposite direction is absolutely no better.

Accurately recounting history is also the only way we can learn from it. If you turn a group into mindless evil idiots, then there's little to learn from such. But when you appreciate that there were real issues and awful acts that, in turn, drove no less awful responses from otherwise rationale and intelligent individuals behaving in what they felt was justifiable ways, in a sort of endless pendulum of death and destruction, until there was just one side left standing - it suddenly becomes strikingly similar to modern times in many ways, and there's yet much to learn from it all.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_William_Henry