Enter the white race.
When the white man first set foot in the New World, he soon found the people of the forest. Thinking he had found the West Indies, he labeled them "Indians", a name that is widely used to this day. This first encounter aroused more curiousity than fear.
Before long, more white people came, this time as settlers. Still the two races did not feel threatened by one another. By and by as word spread about the "new world" they came in greater and greater numbers. A few came with greed in their hearts. In some cases they invaded the Indian villages, stole their riches and outraged their women, justifying their crimes by rationalizing that the Indians were a heathen race, or somehow subhuman.
As the white population steadily grew, the Indian could see what was beginning to unfold. The whites were taking more and more land for themselves, crowding the Indians from their ancestrial homelands. They frequently took advantage of the Indians by cheating them in trades, and promising things that they had no intention of delivering.
The Indians, like the Hebrews of old believed in "an eye for an eye". If you take one of theirs, they will in turn take one of yours. If one of their tribe was killed by some injustice at the hands of the whites, they did likewise, or took white captives to fill the void left by the killed tribesman. If you did them wrong, they waited for just the right opportunity to do likewise to you. While kindnesses were never forgotten, the same can be said of injustices.
As the 19th century was dawning the white people had attained a greater and greater desire to move the Indians away from their rapidly expanding settlements. This was effected through the use of treaties that promised the Indians better lands where they could remain "forever", far away from the white man's interference. "Forever" proved to be a loosely used term, as the whites pushed farther and farther west. Again and again the Indians found themselves in the same situations as were present in their previous homelands. The use of military force was more and more likely to be put into effect with each passing year. The use of force was justifyed by referring to the indians as "savages", and by painting them as a heathen subhuman race.
Finally, as the Civil War was coming to a close, the vast majority of the Indian race had been pushed west of the Mississippi River. The Indian Wars that followed, and the widespread skirmishes that peceded the Civil War effectively exterminated a great majority of them by 1890. A race that once lived and prospered throughout the North American continent was now herded onto relatively small reservations in a few states.
Our treatment of the Indians in pursuit of our national ambitions is a crime for which no attonement can be made. While it was effected over a much greater period of years, this extermination of a race of native Americans is nearly comparable to the Nazi's extermination of the Jews. While it will never begin to undo the massive wrongs done to the Indian race, we are morally obliged to admit our crimes and vow never to repeat them. We must sincerely acknowledge the horrible wrongs that we as a race have been guilty of in the past. Only then can our great nation be a truly credible voice in speaking out against other world nation's crimes against humanity.
With their dwindling numbers and intermarriage, the "pure blooded Indian" will soon be a thing of the past. When the last "pure blooded indian" is laid to his rest the world will be forever changed. While our nation's heritage as a "melting pot" for all peoples may cause the blurring and mixing of racial lines to be an inevitabillity, it is sad that this process has been so greatly accellerated by our own shamefull acts. In the meantime, let us strive to preserve as much of the Indian's history and heritage as we possibly can in a dilligent and honest manner. It is the very least we can do, in light of the terrible crimes of our ancestors.