I found a remarkable observation supporting this conclusion in an article about the Pashtun (Pushtun) people of Afghanistan: “The only time the Pashtun are at peace with themselves is when they are at war” (14).

The Pashtuns (see Figure ​Figure55), who live in Afghanistan and Pakistan, have a system of ethics that regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices. A man who loses his honor is ostracized, along with his family, and he is obliged to take revenge. He may kill both his daughter's lover and his own daughter.

speaking of american indians or native americans if you wish do you agree that the trail of tears was a bad decision at the time

Under American law, they would still be free to practice their traditional customs on their own land if they chose, as long as they respected the rights of every other citizen, including the members of their own tribe.

The Cherokees did not have to go west in the first place, they could have agreed to come under the laws and jurisdiction of Georgia and Tennessee.

They insisted on maintaining themselves as a separate nation not subject to the laws of any state. This separate nation was based on principles contrary to individual rights.

The Indians had ample time to move west by themselves. Eight years passed between the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Trail of Tears in 1838.

The government paid the Cherokees enormous sums of money and valuable goods to ease the transition. They were paid $4.5 Million dollars in gold money in the 1830s. One website that I went to values that at $88 Million dollars in current value.

Plus they got the right to occupy 13 million acres of land in what's now northwestern Oklahoma. That's over 1000 acres for every Indian. And it's significantly more than the 10 million acres they were leaving behind.

They got a subsistence payment for their first year in the new land. And the government subsidized schools in the new land, and supplied timber and iron and steel for building. Rifles, blankets, axes, plows, hoes, spinning wheels, ...

[Marching over land weakened their immune systems, and congregating at polluted campsites used by previous travelers increased communicable disease, which was how most of them died]

The government supplied boats to take down rivers to the west. The Cherokees were extremely superstitious about traveling over water. They thought that rivers had mystic powers. That rivers and even small creeks were thought to be avenues to the underworld. To undertake a journey by water was to provoke the spirits and invite their terror and torture.

The fabled Trail of Tears, which might better be called the Trail of Fears.

We've already proven the idea of the noble savage is a fantasy. That's the main point of this thread. That doesn't mean one ought to take the position of the 'noble white man' in response. It's not an us vs. them argument.

You need not endorse any historical evil. Historical evaluation is not like a political election where you get one vote and you have to cast it for or against a candidate: Kerry "yes" ... Kerry "no" ... Columbus "yes" ... Columbus "no".

History is not some kind of ethnic football game where the Italian-Americans score 100 points for having Christopher Columbus on their team, and the whites get 650 points for Aristotle and Isaac Newton, and the Indians lose 200 points because they were not civilized in 1492.

What you want to do is separate out the good and the evil. Praise the good, condemn the evil.

There is no shame in having ancestors who were savages. It's not a reflection on the personal self-worth of any living person if his ancestors roamed the forest, and made bloody war on his neighbors, and ate the captives for dinner.

There is not a person in this room whose ancestors were not savages. There is not a single person alive today of any race whose ancestors were not savages.

Regarding the small pox thing, people knew since ancient times that association with a diseased person can spread it. Germ warfare is an old tactic. The wars of Greece come to mind.

This is no easy task if a child goes home and reports that he is being taught to respect and appreciate all other people, even if a clear distinction is made between respecting another person but not respecting their behavior. What if his family harbors a deep bitterness toward another ethnic or political group? Is he supposed to defy his own family's values? Family intervention may become a necessary part of the educational challenge.

In The Youngest Science, Lewis Thomas argued that civilization would be much improved if men retired for 100 years and allowed women to run everything. ...

I would like to see Thomas's wish come true.

And in a theoretical sense, it's certainly true that a society that respects no rights cannot demand respect for its rights. The problem is that this was not the case ...

The place to which they removed under this last treaty is said to be exposed to incursions of hostile Indians, and that they are

engaged in constant scenes of killing and scalping, and have to wage a war of extermination with more powerful tribes, before whom they will ultimately fall.

So, the Cherokee in Georgia were scared to move west, because they had heard about the "hostile Indians" there. This doesn't prove that they weren't, themselves, hostile (or rights-violating), it just proves that they did not want to leave an area that was safer (because it was more civilized).

Let me try a hypothetical. Let's say, as a thought experiment, let's say that the Cherokee in Georgia had a law that said: "If you disrespect an elder once, you get tortured, and if you do it again, you get hanged." Let's say that they had this law, this rights-violating law. Now, assuming that they had this law, what moral ground would they be on in order to argue against coming under the potentially more-civilized laws of Georgia?

And if they had laws like that, then wouldn't it be moral to deny or disparage their tribal sovereignty?

Ed