In the movie " Avatar ", in order to explore the rare mineral resources on Pandora, the earthlings came to this distant and mysterious planet.
However, the indigenous people of the planet were very dissatisfied with the arrival of the Earthlings, which led to a war between the Earthlings and the Navi people.
This movie also makes people think of the grievances between white people and Indians . The colonization process of white people on the American continent is exactly the same as this movie. The difference is that the Navi people finally won with the help of Ava of the Holy Tree, while the Indians were slaughtered by the white people.
This matter also creates a question, even if the Indians are behind, they have the opportunity to fight with their strength. However, in history, there are few stories of their resistance. Why don’t they resist?
In fact, the Indians' counterattack once made white people frightened, and the Indians' failure also had other reasons. Today we will talk about the stories.
The initial interaction
1492 In the early morning of October 12, 1492, in the faint light, Columbus vaguely discovered a new continent. When the fleet arrived on the shore, Columbus mistakenly thought he had come to India, so he named this continent Indian .
When exploring this continent, Columbus and his group were surprised to find that there were already indigenous people living here, and those people's skin was yellowish-brown and retained extremely primitive living habits.
The primitive tribes not only still use bone and stone tools, but not even every tribe can master the use of fire. The indigenous people were also very surprised when they saw Columbus and his group.
In their eyes, these outsiders not only wore strange clothes, but also wore strange tools. The most important thing is that their skin was as white as snow, and the two sides completed their first meeting in surprise with each other.
mentioned above that Columbus insisted on deciding that this continent was the Indian continent. These indigenous people also received the title of Indians. The two sides were very friendly to each other when they first dating and gradually became familiar with each other in a friendly atmosphere.
As time goes by, more and more Europeans have developed a strong interest in this continent, and they are clearly aware that this continent can definitely bring huge wealth.
So, a large number of white people rushed towards the American continent like jackals smelling blood.
With the experience of dealing with white people, Indians received white people like they met old friends when they met them, and some tribes even really made friends with them.
In a friendly and pleasant atmosphere, the white people expressed their true intentions, hoping to do business with the Indians.
The white people who came to the American continent were only interested in two things here, these two things were fur and land. It was obviously inappropriate for newcomers to trade land with Indians, so they tried to trade fur with Indians.
However, because of the large differences in civilization, although white has a clear trading goal, the Indians are novel about all the goods brought by white people. Therefore, in the initial stage, white people only need to pay a very small price to trade the best fur.
After several transactions, the Indians gradually gained a clearer understanding of the white world, and these Native Americans began to screen out what they needed most from what they brought.
After careful screening, the Indians focused their attention on wine, horses, tobacco and musket . The whites also expressed their desire for land because they became more and more familiar with the Indians.
Indians used land to exchange their favorite goods from white people, but they were always the weakest party in the transaction, because no matter what kind of goods they exchanged, they would eventually be consumed, but the land they traded to white people will always exist.
The beginning of the contradiction
As time goes by, the Indians not only found that they were inexpensively making transactions with white people, but also found that the goods they exchanged were changing their lives invisibly.
With the help of horses and muskets, hunting became much easier than before. They gradually gave up their original way of survival and replaced it with a more relaxed and convenient life, but at the same time it also made the Indians lose the ability to run and shoot archery.
Because a large amount of land was traded to white people, the land that Indians could cultivate became less and less, and the young Indians gradually forgot how to plant crops on the land, and the emergence of wine brought endless hidden dangers to Indian tribes.
Indians had never tasted the taste of wine, and after taciturn people became overwhelmed. After drinking, the taciturn people began to become excited and talkative. After drinking, the people with pain on their bodies were surprised to find that their symptoms were relieved.
At that time, the Indians regarded wine as a "gift of God". Their desire for wine gradually made them lose their minds. Many Indians even did things that were fratricidal after drinking. The arrival of wine has brought unprecedented changes to all Indian tribes, but white people only need to exchange a small amount of wine to get a lot of land from their hands.
The knowledgeable people among the Indians realized the many problems in the transaction and advised their chiefs to terminate these absurd transactions.
Unfortunately, the whites who obtained a large amount of land had established colonies of their own country one after another. When the Indians realized the problem, the whites not only made a lot of profits from their business, but they had also taken root here and became their enemies.
Indians were completely in a passive state. They originally thought that white people just wanted to share this continent with them, but now their living space is getting smaller and smaller, but white people invisibly control this land.
They were already used to hunting with muskets on horseback, and if the whites stopped supplying them with these supplies, the Indians would have to endure hunger. Not only that, the white colonists were secretly supporting different Indian tribes in retaliation against other tribes.
Originally, there were only some contradictions between the two tribes. At the instigation of the colonists, these tribes began to attack each other, and the American continent was also trapped in war.
After seeing these actions of the white people, the Indians finally realized that these outsiders were not friendly angels.
They began to form alliances and fought to continue to survive on this continent. One battle after another broke out, which was also the most brutal war history in the history of the American continent.
The gap in strength cannot be made up for
In some film and television works, the battle scenes between Indians and whites are usually described as one-sided. The Indians rode on horseback, waving their spears and swords in their hands to charge at the whites, and only a few of them had simple shotguns in their hands and shot at the whites from time to time.
The white army formed a square formation and shot the Indians in an orderly manner. After one round of shooting, many Indians fell down with their horses. The white people who had just finished shooting retreated to the rear of the team to load ammunition, and the second row of soldiers launched the second round of shooting.
The Indians were in the beginning of fighting against the whites. Because they were unable to make guns, the Indians could only attack the whites in the most primitive way.
Whites can rely on their weapons to make the Indians frustrated in charges again and again. But after several defeats, the Indians finally realized that the simple sword in their hands was no match for guns and cannons at all.
If you want to win on the battlefield, you must change your original tactics. Their biggest advantage is that they have much more people than white people, and only by taking advantage of their numbers can you defeat these colonists.
so the Indians no longer had direct conflicts with the whites, but instead were surprise attacks and sneak attacks. When they saw a few whites, they would rush forward and hide like ghosts after destroying the enemy. Tactics like
quickly achieved good results. Spanish navigator Alonso de Ogheda came to Panama to find gold, where he relied on the power of guns and destroyed several local Indian tribes and expelled the Indians here to clear obstacles for their gold search path.
But when night fell, his camp was suddenly surrounded by a group of Indians. Under the cover of the night, these Indians hid in the shadow and shot poisonous arrows at them. Alonso and his group could not find the enemy's position at all, and could only escape frantically in a hurry.
In the end, Alonso escaped alone, and all the 70 followers he led died. After safety, Alonso found that countless arrow pits were shot out by bows and arrows on his shield.
Compared with other explorers, Alonso was already quite lucky, after all, he was able to survive the siege of Indians. More white people were attacked violently by Indians while going out, and in many cases, none of them survived.
Whether it is day or night, Indians can always use their number and geographical advantages to give unexpected blows to white people. Not only that, Indians often used white clothes stained with blood as battle flags, and such actions were undoubtedly a shock to white people.
For a moment, the colonists were panicked, and no one dared to step out of the colony. Every day, they could only curl up in their territory under the protection of the army.
But this situation did not last long, and the whites quickly found a way to restrain the Indians. Before the whites arrived, the American continent was almost completely closed, so that these Indians had almost zero resistance to bacteria.
whites took advantage of this defect of the Indians to spread bacteria on the American continent. The first choice of bacteria is smallpox and typhoid fever. Faced with such invisible enemies, the Indians were powerless to resist, and soon one-quarter of the Indians died of illness.
This practice completely curbed the Indians' resistance. The sick Indians were no longer able to fight against the whites. The original owners on these American continents had to accept the fate of being oppressed by the whites under the power of bacteria and guns.
From this point of view, no matter when and where the two civilizations are, they will not be peaceful in exchange, because conflicts of interests will inevitably lead to bloody wars. Such things are common in our history. Higher civilizations will always fight lower civilizations.
What are your different opinions on this?
