Were the English Colonists Guilty of Genocide?

Genocide the term "genocide" is a harsh word. It is a word used to describe the decimation of an entire people and culture. Sadly, this word has also become common cultural and political parlance in the vocabulary of America and the world today, given the horrific events that transpired during World War II in Europe, and later, during the 20th century in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. But is the present American nation, long before these chronicled events of recent memory, stained with a similar historical blemish of cultural eradication? Were the words spoken by one English colonist, "the only good savage is a dead savage," (Relle & Madras, 2003) merely hyperbole or representative of the English nation's entire ideology regarding the native peoples of the Americas?

David Stannard says yes, what transpired between the colonists and the natives was genocide. Specifically, he states of the war between the colonists of Connecticut and Massachusetts and the Pequot Indian tribe, that death and cultural annihilation were the only goals of the representatives of the English nations. As early as the first colonies in 1500, there was debate amongst the settlers if it was best to kill all the natives, or to capture them and to put them to work as slaves. (Stannard, cited in Relle & Madras, 48) The Indians were always judged by Western European standards. Thus, their methods of fighting were often scoffed at. (50) They were inferior peoples, clearly, because of the "leaping and dancing" they engaged in, although Stannard suggests that rather than a winner take all strategy in Indian warfare, the braves were attempting to demonstrate their prowess at shooting arrows in a way that the English colonists did not understand.

Regardless, this shows that although the Indians were mocked as a military threat, the settlers were still determined to move against them. For instance, when the British stormed the Pequot encampment, in contrast to the Indian shows of might, the English settlers simply slashed at anything that moved, with their superior technology and ruthless use of force. (52) Thus, the Pequot were hunted to a state of "near extermination" as a result of this military ethic. "Having virtually eradicated an entire people," moreover, the English wished to erase all cultural memories of the Pequot as well, all traces of "past existence." (53)

But historian David Katz says, in contrast to Stannard's characterization, that the war must not be viewed in strict terms of "red vs. white." (Katz, Cited in Relle & Madras, 57) Katz concedes that the mere presence of Europeans, for the Indians, constituted in their eyes an act of aggression. (58) But as a defense against the charge of genocide, he points out that none of the mainland Pequot were to be harmed -- if they capitulated to English demands to keep the territories settled by the English. (58-59) This, states Katz, demonstrates that the English simply wanted to establish a territorial and economic presence. It mattered very little to them if the Pequot remained as a cultural force. Only because the Pequot "plagued the settlers with a series of raids, ambushes, and annoyances" did the English move against them. (59)

Katz seems to suggest that this was a war of contested territory, fair or unfair, not culture, and thus was not deserving of the term genocide. "In effect, both side moved to defend what they saw as rightly theirs." (59) The colonists of Connecticut and Massachusetts feared the Pequot establishing more secure alliances with neighboring tribes, which could have made the Pequot a formidable fighting force, according to one report -- a complete contrast to the portrait painted by another source in Stannard of a weaker, less militarily astute tribe.

Katz is convincing in suggesting that the Indian wars were not simply waged by whites out of hatred against Indian culture. However, his remark that what transpired was simply the result of two sides fighting for what they perceived to be their own territory is chilling, when one considers this was a remark used by Hitler to defend his acquisition of Poland, and later of Serbia's encroachment into Bosnia. Territorial possessiveness, particularly of a territory that the colonialists had no historical claim to other than the fact that the land was apparently there for the taking, and sparsely although clearly inhabited, is hardly an ideological preclusion to the charge of genocide.