> And there was no ideology of conquest and
> war on the scale that Europeans had developed
> going back to Greece and Rome.
>
What about the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans? Conquest was not unknown to the Native Americans. There were some civilizations in the southern part of the continent, around the Mississippi, which I am unfamiliar with, that practiced conquest. Slavery was also known in Native American societies.
> What I am getting at is that the indigenous
> people didn't have a conception of what
> the Europeans were doing in the long run:
> Conquering the whole continent.
I question whether the Europeans had this notion in mind at first. But, remember, the Europeans were in the midst of nationalist expansions in England, France, and Spain to name a few. The ruling _ethos_ was expansionist.
> They didn't conceive of
> themselves as one people or nation in
> the European sense , with accompanying
> chauvinist and imperial concepts.
Again, this is too generalizing. The Aztecs were certainly chauvinist and imperial minded.
> The
> indigenous people's were innocent of
> the final solution within European conceptions
> and so did not have a counter-final solution
> conception.
This begins to sound like the "innocent savage." Unfortunately, it over-generalizes the situation. The Native americans were not "innocent." The Aztecs decimated entire tribes through warfare and ritual sacrifice. This may not have been "solution" but it surely resembles what we might call "genocide," although I am sensitive to the difficulties associated with using that term in current political/historical debate.
On the other hand, I think what we see rearing its ugly head, and what motivated the kind of "final solution" mentality you are postulating is the racism that so many others are debating in other parts of this list. Without a doubt, the reason the indigenes were eradicated so ruthlessly is because the Europeans saw them as nothing better than draft animals.
chuck miller
-- http://www.users.uswest.net/~bautiste/index.htm