Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Native Americans
As much as nine-tenths of the indigenous population of the Americas died in less than a generation from European pathogens.
In the summer of 1605, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed along the coast of New England, looking for a likely spot to place a colony — a place more hospitable than the upper St. Lawrence River, which he had previously explored.
250 years ago, Major Robert Rogers and his rangers launched a daring wilderness raid against an enemy village, but paid a steep price.
A dozen miles north of the British fort of Crown Point on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, amid the buttonbush, bulrush, and cattail wetlands that crowded Otter Creek’s delta, Major Robert Rogers glassed down the lake for the lateen sails of a patrolling enemy French sloop or schooner. Pulled into hiding within the marsh lay 17 whaleboats, each bearing eight oars and provisions for a month. It was Saturday, September 15, 1759, in the midst of the French and Indian War, the titanic struggle between the French and British empires for dominion over North America.
AN ARIZONA BURGER KING TELLS THE STORY OF A UNIQUE UNIT OF MODERN-DAY NAVAJO WARRIORS
So spoke Sitting Bull, greatest of Sioux chiefs, as he bitterly watched his people bargain away their Dakota homeland
The Indians who sold Manhattan were bilked, all right, but they didn’t mind—the land wasn’t theirs anyway
By now it is probably too late to do anything about it, but the unsettling fact remains that the so-called sale of Manhattan Island to the Dutch in 1626 was a totally illegal deal; a group of Brooklyn Indians perpetrated the swindle, and they had no more right to sell Manhattan Island than the present mayor of White Plains would have to declare war on France.
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