The Holocaust of Native Americans: the genocide forgotten by history

We recently celebrated the day of memory, to remember the horrors of the Nazism of which the Jews were victims, but there is another massacre, which we still speak too little, which began On February 1, 1876. On this date the United States declared war on the Sioux people, who refused to abandon their ancestral lands where gold had been discovered.

Before the arrival of the Westerners, the American continent was inhabited by numerous indigenous ethnic groups that were almost completely canceled.
What is called “500 years of war” caused the death of about 100 million people, destroying unique cultures, traditions and environments. The natives were exterminated through wars, diseases such as smallpox, hunger and devastation of their territories.

The notorious “Discovery of America” He represented the beginning of the end for indigenous communities. Some historians show that the extermination practices of the American indigenous subsequently inspired Hitler’s Nazi policies towards Jews. This dramatic chapter of American history still remains widely underestimated today and little told in official historical reports.

The whole American continent underwent a radical transformation with the arrival of Columbus and the Westerners did nothing but what Hitler implemented in the concentration camps. In various historical texts, it is said that the Nazi dictator for his crazy idea of ​​extermination of the Jews in favor of the Aryan race was inspired by the Holocaust of the American indigenous people.

A extermination in general indifference

The attitude, already from the discovery of America, was clear: the colonizers had erected to higher entities judging the natives as “Wild and to civilize”.

During the sixteenth century to decim these populations, smallpox, influence, chickenpox, measles, all pathologies landed together with the Westerners also thought about it. Diseases non -existent in America, for this reason, while the European populations had developed antibodies, the American Indians fell ill and died without care. It is estimated that about one tenth of the entire world population was decimated.

But why all this horror? There are many reasons behind the base even if everything is linked by a single common thread, that of taking possession of native lands and wealth, often however wars and killings were justified by ideological reasons.

During the war of American secession, among the most bloody episodes not to forget, the Creek sand massacre of 29 November 1864, which took place during the Colorado war. A dramatic episode in which 600 Native American members of the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes were attacked by 700 soldiers commanded by Colonel John Chiverington, despite the peace treaties stipulated with local tribes. An unprecedented massacre of women and children who resulted in several investigations by the US army.

Unfortunately today the situation is not so different. As revealed by numerous investigations, the South America indigenous people They are constantly evicted, threatened and killed by the golden seekers, breeders and illegal tags. Many communities are victims of a new genocide, which the world is ignoring.