Sunday, June 23, 2019

Joshua Fit the Battle

Once or twice a year, the Chaucer Boys, a bicycle club I belong to, drives to Clear Lake and pedals by the site of the Bloody Island massacre. In 1850 a genocidal cavalry militia group murdered up to 100 helpless Amerindians there: men, women and babies. I learned about this by reading a roadside sign. Genocide had not been part of my public school education when I was growing up in California. 

The first US governor of California, Peter Burnett, went on record supporting the extermination of the Amerindians. He put a bounty on them. California today contains over 700,000 Amerindians, the most of any state, no thanks to the racist killers humans have often celebrated. 


It's likely that on any given day in the last 7,000 years at least one culture somewhere was committing genocide. The earliest recorded example is the celebrated fall of Jericho.  The walls came tumbling down. No one was spared. 

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