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Commenting on the behavior of the North Americans and the Spaniards toward the Native Americans, Alexis de Tocqueville
wrote:
"The Spaniards pursued the Indians with blood-hounds, like wild
beasts; they sacked the New World with no more temper or compassion than a city taken by storm: but the destruction
must cease, and frenzy be stayed; the remnant of the Indian population, which has escaped the massacre, mixed with its conquerors,
and adopted in the end their religion and their manners. The conduct of the Americans of the United States towards
the aborigines is characterized, on the other hand, by a singular attachment to the formalities of law. Provided that
the Indians retain their barbarous condition, the Americans take no part in their affairs; they treat them as independent
nations, and do not possess themselves of their hunting grounds without a treaty of purchase: and if an Indian nation happens
to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon its territory, they afford it brotherly assistance in transporting
it to a grave sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers.
"The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian Race by those unparalleled
atrocities which branded them with indelible shame, nor did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the
Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally,
philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of
the world. It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity.
[Taken from: 'Democracy in America' (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), pp. 442-23.]
Read: Indian Nations Tribal Sovereignty
See Also: Crimes Against Humanity!
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