On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 08:53:30 -0500, Anne Pemberton wrote

> Please show me where the Native Americans passed title to their 
> lands to the French? Show me where the French even made contact with 
> the Native Americans who "held title" to their lands won to them by 
> historical occupation of those lands?

Anne, you say this as if the Americans and Europeans were the only people 
making land grabs at that time. It was pretty much universal, the Native 
Americans included. Besides the Native American were not some homogeneous 
group which had declared boundaries to their domain. They were a myriad of 
nations each competing for hunting and trapping grounds. The "land" that they 
occupied was subject to change depending on the vagaries of war between those 
nations and also their interaction with non-native entities such as the 
Americans and Europeans. The Powhatan Indians in Virginia were not opposed to 
wiping out a local nation that was inconvenient to them. Who pleads the case 
of the Chesapeac nation that Powhatan exterminated?

Land grabs, conquest, and genocide is all pretty abhorant to us today, but it 
was a matter of course back then. It's nasty, gruesome, unfair, and all the 
other negative words that aptly apply, but it all occurred in a different 
world that held different values than we do today. Passing moral judgements 
on the past is an exercise of futility.

> The land belonged to the Native Americans, not the French, nor 
> the Americans. This action led to the destruction of the way of life 
> of the Natives to that soil, punctuated by the American efforts to 
> exterminate them as if they had no right to exist.

The purchase of the Louisiana Territory was not part of a plan for genocide. 
Jefferson had the Lewis and Clark expedition equipped with the ability to 
innoculate natives that they met for cow pox. Does that sound like a plan to 
kill them all off? From the earliest days of Jamestown, the intent was to 
assimilate the Native Americans, largely with benevolent intent.  Granted the 
execution of that plan was not the best, but it's getting tiresome hearing 
that the European colonization of North America was some grand scheme to kill 
off all the natives and take their land. It's just not true! 

There were some individuals who sought the extemination of Native Americans, 
but for the most part it was never part of colonial or national policy to do 
so.

Regards,

Tom A.

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