[lbo-talk] What's your evidence?

knowknot at mindspring.com knowknot at mindspring.com
Tue Apr 5 08:34:23 PDT 2005


On 4/5/05, Charles Brown said:

> Given the well known, historical context,

> the burden of proof is on . . . [prof.] Brown

> [and like minded others] to prove there was

> no genocidal intent on the part of soldiers

> stationed around Indians in that period.

I hesitate to become embroiled in this perfervid thread; but, perhaps, factual accuracy warrants noting that, in light of what each of Churchill and Brown have written about the "that period" apparently here referred to (the mid-1837s) in the places here referred to, the statement above is something of a red herring.

Relatedly, however, Brown's comparatively narrow definition ought not be overlooked either -- i.e., that he was not discussing (nor questioning) a "well known historical context" that included (he, too, as said) "genocidal intent" (and for that matter, behaviors by the U.S. military during the mid-1800s wars in the Great Plains he, himself, characterized as "massacres that can easily be construed as genocidal in intent").

> We all have some general, historical evidence of

> the intents and purposes of whites confronting

> Indians on the frontier in that period, especially

> soldiers. Even though all the witnesses are dead,

> since at the time the whites didn't consider that

> being anti-Indian was wrong, many openly confessed

> general, deadly hate of Indians. I doubt that the

> legend of the motto "the only good Indian is a dead

> Indian" reflects no reality of the time. That general

> anti-Indian ideology is conveyed to us through many

> sources. That general pattern is _some_ evidence of

> the states of mind, the mens rea ,of the specific

> soldiers in the area of the Mandan. It gives rise

> to a presumption of genocidal intent that is your burden

> to overcome.

The critiques by Brown of Churchill I've read nowhere question any of these "general" conclusions.

The (again: actually quite narrow) issue Brown primarily addressed was Churchill's treatment of and also the facts insofar as Brown claims they are known whether the U.S. military carried out a "genocidal assault" on American Indians _not_, in general, by This or That "massacre" but, in particular, by "means of biological warfare" in the form of having distributed infected small pox blankets during the times here referred to.

(None of this is to disagree with D.Henwood's questioning of Brown's motives or criticism of Brown's participation in the political [mis]uses of what Brown has written in Brown's professed "outrage" about Churchill's scholarship.)



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