The Americans call The Winchester Model 1873 Rifle the gun that won the west a direct indication that it was used to subjugate the Native American population of the plains of the mid west of the USA.
I remember a Western I watched as a child where a wagon train guarded by US soldiers was under threat from a tribe of Native Americans not only that but the wagon train “pioneers” were also suffering through a severe epidemic, I forget the disease maybe measles, maybe smallpox.
Anyway I remember the Army captain had the brilliant idea of sending a wagon full of infected clothing out into no man’s land to be captured and plundered by the Native Americans, therefore making the Native Americans sick and allowing the wagon train to continue on unmolested.
I realise that this Western may have been fictitious but it does show how openly the Americans acknowledge even fictitiously that they did whatever it took to take the land.
I mean how brave or naïve to admit to biological warfare in a Saturday afternoon cinema Western for kids!
Yeah why not? Really!!!!!
I as a child I knew all about “Cowboys and Indians” and how their conflicts were pivotal to each great Western’s plot but I had no idea about the conflicts that raged between the British colonists and Aboriginal people.
Only maybe in the past 20 years have movies such as “The Tracker “ starring David Gulpilil or maybe before that “The Chant o Billy Blacksmith” been produced that have shed some light on the true nature of the British interactions with and attitudes to aboriginal people. For me being a keen student of 18th century English History it would seem incomprehensible for me to consider that the British Imperial power of the time, a regime that sent its own citizens to rot for years in hulks on the Thames river for crimes as paltry as the theft of a loaf of bread, would suddenly become incredibly beneficent toward Aboriginal people in Australia.
No I’m sorry I can’t believe it. They may have spoken eloquently but they behaved harshly.Those of us with interest in knowing the truth have read books such as “The Secret River” By Kate Grenville and we have spoken to Aboriginal elders and asked questions about their experiences of British settlement/invasion and listened uncomfortably to the answers.]
In my mind it’s time to acknowledge the truth of our history of colonisation. That it is no more palatable or honourable than the Conquistadores invasion of South America.
The truth will set us free.
Click on the link below that will take you to a web site that explores an Aboriginal perspective of the Frontier Wars.
They know it was a conflict.