The examples of early natives torturing an executing people is a strange choice here.
Readers, don't forget that these people are the contemporaries of the perpetrators of chattel slavery, and the french revolution, to name a few popular examples.
The sordid atrocities committed all around the Americas by indigenous Europeans are very well-documented and continued beyond the 18th century, legitimized by the US society and government.
To bring such a thing up in defense of borders created during and with the help of those same atrocities is disingenuous, to put it kindly.
It appears to me that such a defense is an attempt to compare 18th century natives to modern US citizens, an obviously unfair comparison, much the same as if I were to compare modern native Americans to Columbus or 18th century slave-owners in the south.
I don't think the intent was to draw a comparison between contemporary native americans and those of the 18th century. Instead, I think it serves to demonstrate that atrocious behavior is not exclusive to the european settlers.
The point is that among the tribes, there never was constant territory. They warred among themselves, conquered each other multiple times over, and there were numerous atrocities committed by some of the tribes who claim to deserve reparations. For the record, I don't think any of this is productive for humanity, but since this has become a popular movement of the moment, let's disentangle this. When the Sioux conquered the Anishnabe, when the Aztec sacrificed humans from "lesser" tribes by the thousands [1], when the Mayans conquered other tribes and did the same, when the Iroquois tortured their conquests, what reparations are these tribes owed? If we're going to rewind the clock 200 years, why not rewind it 300, 400, 1000 years? Let's untangle all of humanity's historical atrocities and try to really see how far this rabbit hole goes.
Readers, don't forget that these people are the contemporaries of the perpetrators of chattel slavery, and the french revolution, to name a few popular examples.
The sordid atrocities committed all around the Americas by indigenous Europeans are very well-documented and continued beyond the 18th century, legitimized by the US society and government.
To bring such a thing up in defense of borders created during and with the help of those same atrocities is disingenuous, to put it kindly.
It appears to me that such a defense is an attempt to compare 18th century natives to modern US citizens, an obviously unfair comparison, much the same as if I were to compare modern native Americans to Columbus or 18th century slave-owners in the south.