Now that I think of it , there are two levels of "cases" to be proven. First there is the accusation against the U.S. military unit of intentionally infecting Mandans with small pox. Secondly, there is the accusation against Ward Churchill that he manufactured some bullshit, lied, committed a fraud, intentionally misrepresented the material fact that the soldieres gave the Mandan infected blankets.
In the first case, Churchill is the prosecutor. In the second case, T. Brown and others are the prosecutors/plaintiffs.
I'm saying that, given what we generally know about the practice and function of U.S. soldiers in that time and place as on a mission to use violence to control the Indians, the general presumption is that at least the soldiers had a "mental" state of deadly hostility toward the Indians. So, this sets the general presumption against T.Brown and crew, and they have the burden of overcoming it in their "case" against Churchill.
The general evidence is enough for Churchill to make a historical speculation, well within the history norms of speculation that this was intentional on the part of some U.S. military personnel. T. Brown and followers do not have evidence to meet their burden of proof and go around finding Churchill liable for fraud, or putting out bullshit; because the evidence in this case is not below the norm for speculating in history.
T. Brown and crew's pronouncements must be much more uncertain. Like, "we kind of think, but aren't really sure, that Churchill _might_ , and we emphasize _might_, be off". Certainly, not surly certain pronouncements like "Churchill is putting out bullshit". They don't have the definiteness of evidence for their speculation to be so definite that Churchill is wrong or committing fraud.
Charles
^^^^
knowknot ________________________________
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.)