Opinion

COULTER: Real Americans Honor Indians And The Courageous Pilgrims Who Civilized America

(Photo credit: Shutterstock)

Ann Coulter Political Commentator
Font Size:

As every contemporary school child knows, the first Thanksgiving took place in 1621, when our Pilgrim forefathers took a break from slaughtering Indigenous Peoples to invite them to dinner and infect them with smallpox, before embarking on their mission to fry the planet so that the world would end on Jan. 22, 2031. (Copyright: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)

Consider this description of the Pilgrims’ treatment of the Indigenous Peoples:

“They were the worst of conquerors. Inordinate pride, the lust of blood and dominion, were the mainsprings of their warfare; and their victories were strained with every excess of savage passion.”

You’ve probably guessed — unless you are an American college student — that that’s not a description of the Pilgrims’ treatment of Indigenous Peoples at all. It is a description of some Indigenous Peoples’ treatment of other Indigenous Peoples, provided by Francis Parkman, the world’s foremost Indian scholar.

It was Indians, not Pilgrims, who let out the “Mohawk war-cry” that made the blood run cold.

This is why the Wampanoag had a lot to celebrate that first Thanksgiving. They were delighted to have such excellent (European) allies against the terroristic Iroquois and Narragansett.

The Pilgrims also had much to be thankful for. Of more than 100 passengers aboard the Mayflower, only 44 survived the first winter, felled by scurvy, malnutrition and the bitter cold. Even the ones who made it did so largely thanks to the friendly Wampanoag, who shared their food with the Europeans and taught them how to till the land.

The Puritans, who came soon thereafter, so loved their Indian compatriots that the great missionary John Eliot translated sermons for the Algonquians in their own language. Indeed, the very first Bible printed in the Western Hemisphere was Eliot’s Massachusett-language Bible, published in 1663, titled “Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.”

(For those interested in Coulter arcana, Eliot was an assistant of Rev. Thomas Hooker, the same Puritan minister that my ancestors followed to the New World.)

The warm relations between Pilgrims and the (mostly) gentle Algonquins doesn’t fit the White Man Bad thesis that is the entire point of all history taught in America today. In fact, as any sane, reasonable person can probably surmise: Some white men were kind, and some were cruel. Some Indians were neighborly — and some were bloodthirsty killers.

Parkman describes a typical Iroquois celebration that would cap off a war raid on their fellow Indigenous Peoples:

“The village was alive with sudden commotion, and snatching sticks and stones, knives and hatchets, men, women and children, yelling like fiends let loose, swarmed out of the narrow portal, to visit upon the captives a foretaste of the deadlier torments in store for them …. [W]ith brandished torch and firebrand, the frenzied multitude closed around their victim. The pen shrinks to write, the heart sickens to conceive, the fierceness of [the captive’s] agony … The work was done, the blackened trunk was flung to the dogs, and, with clamorous shouts and hootings, the murderers sought to drive away the spirit of their victim.”

The Iroquois, he writes, “reckoned these barbarities among their most exquisite enjoyments.”

[ASIDE: Compare Parkman’s thrilling passage to droning cliches like, “While America’s indigenous population at large is underrepresented in politics and popular culture, Native women are even more marginalized” (a current Harvard offering) — and you’ll understand why the kids don’t like to read anymore.]

And here’s an Iroquois practice that university professors might want to steal and ascribe to the White Man — don’t worry, your students aren’t bright enough to figure out that you’re lying to them.

After killing “a sufficient number of captives,” Parkman says, the Iroquois “spared the lives of the remainder, and adopted them as members of their confederated tribes, separating wives from husbands, and children from parents, and distributing them among different villages, in order that old ties and associations might be more completely broken up.” JUST LIKE TRUMP!!!

Here’s one for the Womyn’s Studies Department: Having completely conquered the Lenape, the Iroquois humiliated the survivors by making them take women’s names.

Before the first European stepped off Mayflower, the Iroquois’ genocidal wars against their fellow Indians had already depopulated large parts of New England. Their murderous raids had scattered the farming tribes in all directions, often to their demise. “Northern New Hampshire, the whole of Vermont and Western Massachusetts had no human tenants but the roving hunter or prowling warrior,” Parkman writes.

The irony of the moron’s version of Thanksgiving is that the brave and honorable attributes of the American Indian are drained from all the PC stories. In the made-up history, Indians are only pathetic.

By contrast, the true story told by Parkman shows both the savagery and superstition, but also the courage and honor. Thus, for example, the Hurons “held it disgraceful to turn from the face of an enemy when the fortunes of the fight were adverse.” As the Indian captive of the Iroquois was being tortured alive, Parkman reports, he raises his voice in “scorn and defiance.” How’s that for machismo?

That’s the reason we name our sports teams and military armaments after Indians. It’s a tribute to their honor, intelligence and bravery. It’s why Americans love to boast of having Indian blood — even when it’s not true (and not only in order to land a professorship at Harvard).

But that’s not the image the left wants for Indians. Oh, no. They want to re-brand Indians as loser victims, in need of liberals’ tender ministrations.

Real Americans honor Indians and also honor the courageous Pilgrim settlers who brought Christian civilization to a continent, a miraculous union that we celebrate on this wonderful holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!

Ann Coulter is a syndicated columnist and lawyer.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel