Prehistory Said: Elohim Gave Hybrid Human Civilization White Men Do Genocide

The genocide of indigenous peoples is the mass destruction of entire communities of indigenous people. [Note Indigenous peoples are understood to be people whose historical and current territory has become occupied by colonial expansion, or the formation of a state by a dominant group such as a colonial power.

Any history of the relations between Native Americans and European colonists written by a White historian is fraught with the potential of being what Calvin Martin has called "historiographic colonialism."1 Since this is a study of the genocide of Native Americans, it necessarily focuses on the indigenous people as victims; however, I have tried to portray something of the lives of the native peoples during this period of colonization as they were never merely "acted upon" by the European settlers but also acted in ways which were important to the outcome. In so doing, I fully accept Michael Dorris's statement that "whoever attempts to write Native American history must admit in advance to fallibility."2 Another problem in writing about Native Americans is more basic: What is the proper term to use to identify the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas erroneously labelled "Indians" almost five hundred years ago? I believe that a people should be able to choose its own name, and, at present, both "Indian" and "Native American" seem to be equally acceptable to the descendants of the original native peoples of the United States. I have chosen to follow the example of... Jayma Ann Abdoo College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences