Genocide Wiped Out Native American Population

Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job.

September 20, 2010

The Gist

Mutilated and processed human remains has been found in the American Southwest.
The remains and other artifacts at the site, Sacred Ridge in Colorado, indicate ethnic cleansing took place there in the early ninth century.
The genocide likely occurred due to conflict between different Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ethnic groups.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/234428352149.jpg[/atsimg]
The unearthed bones and artifacts indicate that when the violence took place, men, women and children were tortured, disemboweled, killed and often hacked to bits.

Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.

news.discovery.com...

Why would they commit genocide, another exclamation could be that they could have been crushed by an earth quake or landslide. If this were the case what would be the reason behind it and who did it.

It's interesting that they found dogs that were mutilated, doesn't make sense to me and also indicates it could have happened by a natural disaster. Sune they are doing on going reseach to find out what really happened. I would be interested to know more in the future.

It's sad to see how all the First People Of The Americas were wiped out by all these so called European explorers.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel




There were no Europeans in the New World at 800 A.D.

It is possible that the Aztecs were a wandering tribe for a while and lived by marauding other tribes. That's my theory for the disappearance of the Chaco canyon culture.

Genocide wasn't invented by the white race though they may have perfected it.

There were many, many wars between various tribes throughout the Americas. There was also a good deal of ritual warfare where tribes would fight more like a sporting event, where it only ended when someone was seriously hurt or killed - then it was over, shake hands and go home.

The Rousseauian image of the noble savage was a European romantic invention that has somehow altered our perceptions of native americans. There was killing, genocide, torture, slavery - all existed in the Americas long before white man ever showed up.

This is not written as a criticism of native americans, just an effort to try to get people to see a wider reality that existed.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


umm last time i checked the year 800 (thats when this was supposed to happen correct?) i dont think europe or any white man killed these native americans so for once whiteys off the hook for this one atleast!

reply to post by Asktheanimals

Genocide wasn't invented by the white race though they may have perfected it.

You may be correct, but there was certainly a lot of this kind of thing going on in during the Dark Ages and long before that, also in Europe well into the middle ages, mostly in the name of religion. The Pagans are a good example, they were slaughtered wholesale because they wouldn't except the new religion that Rome created.

Based on the archaeological findings, which include two-headed axes that tested positive for human blood, co-authors Jason Chuipka and James Potter believe the genocide occurred as a result of conflict between different Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ethnic groups.

news.discovery.com...

Nothing has changed since those days, whether it's ethnic, religion, land you name it, there is always an excuse, it may be true that this is built into our DNA, we are a violent people, always was and always will be it seems. All you have to do is look at what is happening today.

As a species, our propensity for rationalizing violence knows no bounds. One moment we can be extolling the virtues and beauty of life, with tear filled eyes, and the next ruthlessly lashing out at our fellow humans with deliberate zeal and hatred.

The question "why" is always intriguing to me.

One answer is that we tend to be different. Different skin tones, different hair colors, different physical attributes. And we tend to distrust what we see as different.

Even when there are no physical differences, this hateful side of us seems to find a way... We create differences. Difference in belief. Difference in opinion.Difference in priority. Difference in faith. Difference in interpretation of data. So the distrust spreads.

And, as we all know, distrust is just a hair away from fear... And fear, a hair away from violence.

Another answer lies in the stark reality of survival. We have needs. Real, mandatory, legitimate, pressing needs. And sometimes events align that deprive us of those needs. If one tribes river dries up, or their crops die, they will go out seeking remedy. If any stand in the way of that goal, then they become that awful word that we've created to give voice to this uglier truth about ourselves...

Those who stand in our way, or are different, become "enemy".

And once they become enemy, anything goes. Everything goes. Rationale melds with instincts of survival and the enemy is dehumanized and pressed beyond marginalization. It becomes "us" or "them" and we revert to our animal natures.

So... Who would have attacked these aboriginals so many years ago? Maybe their neighbors. Maybe people from further afield, with a taste for travel. But, maybe, it was even those that these people would have called friend, or brother, or son.

All could have motive for killing, given any number of circumstances.

Why would this kind of killing occur, in spite of our ability to value and treasure human life?

Probably simply because of want or need.

reply to post by Hefficide

Why would this kind of killing occur, in spite of our ability to value and treasure human life?

Probably simply because of want or need.

Excellent thoughts Hefficide, we as a species are an ultimate contradiction, maybe it's our life that we treasure, certainly much evidence that we don't treasure someone else's life.

Thank you for posting.

they're still savagely killing each other to this day. We just call them Latino or Hispanic but most of them are native to the Americas (North and South). It's sad. And at the same time I can't help but wonder what kind of possible problems the U.S. could have if disease and the European settlers hadn't wiped out most of our Native Americans..

reply to post by Electric Crown


The Europeans wiping out so many Native Americans is a sad part of our history, if so many hadn't been wiped out centuries before and had there been a much larger Native American population it could have been a different story, they could have wiped out the Europeans and you and I wouldn't be talking about it today.

Thanks for posting.

We seem to keep doing this because we somehow cannot escape that "jungle monkey" inside of us all.

It seems wierd to think that native tribes waged war on each other, but they did, and probably for the very same reasons that we do today.

Despite the high regard that we hold of ourselves and our supposedly wonderful way of life technology, and all that, I remember hearing somewhere that it is estimated that we are something like 9 meals away from total chaos.

Originally posted by akalepos

Despite the high regard that we hold of ourselves and our supposedly wonderful way of life technology, and all that, I remember hearing somewhere that it is estimated that we are something like 9 meals away from total chaos.

You have that right, with so many unemployed today we are seeing more and more violence, people will do anything to feed themselves and their families, not so sure I have a high regard for this country, at least at the moment, we are racing toward a society of the very rich and the very poor, the middle class is shrinking as we speak.

Thanks for posting.

reply to post by Aquarius1

The unearthed bones and artifacts indicate that when the violence took place, men, women and children were tortured, disemboweled, killed and often hacked to bits.

This is beyond me, killing them is one thing but the horrendous violence is sickening, what kind of people would do that, I know that mutilations happen today but not on this scale, we call it mental illness, but is it?

Anything is possible. My own people the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) wiped out the Algonquins. In this day and age I don't condone genocide of any kind. After the Revolutionary war my own people were down to about 7000. By some estimates there were more than five million of us before the Europeans came. We can only hope nothing like this ever happens again.

Originally posted by alonzo730
Anything is possible. My own people the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) wiped out the Algonquins. In this day and age I don't condone genocide of any kind. After the Revolutionary war my own people were down to about 7000. By some estimates there were more than five million of us before the Europeans came. We can only hope nothing like this ever happens again.

I agree with you, it is nice to a Haudenosaunee member here on ATS, the membership is so diverse and I am always pleasantly surprised.

Welcome to ATS and thank you for posting, would be great if you put up a thread on your people and their history.

Genocide is a concept from century XXI, dont make sense to apply modern concepts to century IX.

Genocide is deliberate, and must have a reason, racial, religious, etc etc.

The problem with indians in all the continent is that in much cases they were not killed because they were indians, a different race, but because they were enemies.

I can't talk about North America, but i can talk about South America, here if a indian tribe accepted the authority of the king they were let in peace, the hostiles one were wiped.

If there was a racial reason behind that, then the friendly would had been killed too, and that was not what happen.

In fact, in those times the way europeans killed indians was the same way they kill europeans in Europe, they were not softer with an european enemy, so it doesnt make much sense to say it was racial or something like that.

There were places where the indians chieftains were recognized as castilian nobles with all the advantages, big part of the spanish conquest were maded with indian soldiers, the king encourage mixed marriages between indians and spaniards, even in the independence wars here most indians fought for the king.

Anyway, there is something i always found funny, and is how a lot of people talk about "our indians, our natives", "how all will be better without Europeans settlers or conquerors", i think is funny because must people who talk like that is descended from Europeans, not from indians, they are not ours, without the Europeans must of us wont be here today, wont exist in this timelime, our countries wont exist, nothing of that will exist.

The indians from my region were real savages, they call themselves carib, the name change to caribal/caribales, and from that word came "cannibal", i have some blood, not much, (im not brown) from their enemy tribe that was not wiped out and support the spanish conquest, but im not indian myself because im too spanish white.

P.S. I use the word indian, i know english speakers prefers native american, but here we dont call them that way, so dont get offended.

Originally posted by Electric Crown
they're still savagely killing each other to this day. We just call them Latino or Hispanic but most of them are native to the Americas (North and South). It's sad. And at the same time I can't help but wonder what kind of possible problems the U.S. could have if disease and the European settlers hadn't wiped out most of our Native Americans..

Must of us hispanics/latinos are not indians and definitely are not savagely killing each other.

reply to post by MonteroReal

Anyway, there is something i always found funny, and is how a lot of people talk about "our indians, our natives", "how all will be better without Europeans settlers or conquerors", i think is funny because must people who talk like that is descended from Europeans, not from indians, they are not ours, without the Europeans must of us wont be here today, wont exist in this timelime, our countries wont exist, nothing of that will exist.

You are correct, I for one do not consider Native Americans as "our", they are in my opinion the real Americans and here for how long no one knows for sure. I am second generation American, after my grandparents migrated to America they met, so yes I wouldn't exist if they hadn't come here, they wouldn't have met in Europe since they came from different countries.

You make some excellent points MonteroReal, thank you for posting.

What very grim reading.

It seems that every so often pockets of humanity are gripped by a bloody madness that carries people with it. Bloodlust and hysteria overcomes our empathy and atrocities are focused. The aftermath is rarely celebrated and slips quietly away into the shadows of history. I like to believe that when the period has passed...guilt and realisation puts the events in perspective. Perhaps that's naive, but it's how I see it.

This particular mass killing reminds me of events just 20 years ago. In 1994, Rwanda went insane and became a bloodbath for a 100 days. Just like in the Pueblo article, some few hundred Tutsis were driven into a church by rampaging Hutus. Once inside, they embarked on a massacre that shows the dark potential of humans...

During the day, they hacked to death man, woman and child until darkness fell. As the day drew to a close, they slashed the ankles and feet of the survivors so they could return at daylight and finish the awful task. We only know about this due to a young girl who was hiding beneath the corpses of her family. She escaped in the night and was able to bear witness to the cruelty months after the country regained its senses. A mass grave testified to her account.

There was no want or need...it was fuelled by hysteria and hatred. Mob violence and crowd conformity swept the nation and left behind the silence of the guilty and the small voices of the witnesses. As much as these incidents are sickening and terrifying, they are part of us. Not a colour or culture thing...we can all find ourselves on one side or the other if the circumstances are ever repeated.

Jeez Aquarius1, you've took the shine off my day with this one...

Ethnic cleansing, as earlier posted, is nothing new. It is said that certain tribes in the Americas were even accused of being Cannibals due to what some archaeologists have found. Maybe it's a possibility that these things were done because of sicknesses...bottom line...what happened was done, and since we were not there we will not know the reasons.

Now later on after colonization of the Americas began, ethnic cleansing went into full gear...and of course as always happens...the Government, used it's military to control The People. They were murdered, tortured and inilated if necessary, as well as lied to when called for.

Ethnic cleansing is nothing new, but it is usually carried out by those that feel threatened by one thing or another...in otherwords FEAR is the key player and it's easier when people do not need to deal with it, TPTB have always found a way and will continue until the day we find a way to take care of them.

Thanks for the post.

~holly

Originally posted by Aquarius1


You are correct, I for one do not consider Native Americans as "our", they are in my opinion the real Americans and here for how long no one knows for sure. I am second generation American, after my grandparents migrated to America they met, so yes I wouldn't exist if they hadn't come here, they wouldn't have met in Europe since they came from different countries.

You make some excellent points MonteroReal, thank you for posting.

Well, they are not real "americans" too, the name is european, without europeans the name wont exist.