An Outlet for Racism
and Hatred of Native Americans

Our opinion is that the other blog spreads racism, so this blog is to refute the negativity

Many of the readers of her blog have claimed that it is racist.  I share this opinion.  The author seems to use her blog, AND the power she holds as moderator, to try to persuade her readers that Indigenous People were savages.  She carries on and on about atrocities at the hands of Indigenous people.  It is clear to us that this is personal for her and to prove it, she spends more time talking about how horrible the actions of the Shawnee are than she does talking about what she says is the topic of her blog.

 

She recites time and time again how her own family, or her husband’s family, became victim to indigenous peoples.  She sets up her discussion by stating that everything she had been told, everything she had been taught, became untrue after she began her research and learned about the atrocities committed by not only Cornstalk, but also of tribal people in general.  I suppose that her conclusions of the subject as an educated ‘artist’, are more accurate than the information provided by academics and historians, and more believable than textbook accounts.  

 

At least she wants you to believe that. 

​

Lies about Chief Cornstalk and Native Americans in general

So alas, we have this epiphany from the great blogger that EVERYTHING that we have been taught about Indigenous People and about Cornstalk in particular have been lies!  Maybe I would believe that what we have been taught about Cornstalk is a lie, except that historians, usually white academians, have usually white-washed history as we know it.  Therefore, there would have been a more likely chance that if our textbooks were going to LIE to us about Cornstalk, it would have been to make white colonists look good, NOT Cornstalk!  

 

I saw this type of white-washing of history while studying archaeology.  Early archaeology was solely in the hands of white men who analyzed and published site phenomena from a white male world view.  It was apparent as I began working as an Africanist Archaeologist, as all of the written materials about African pre-history were told with a Euro-centric slant.  Native Kenyans could NEVER have developed large population centers without outside help.  They NEVER could have developed technologies without the help of caucasians!  Of course, I'm being sarcastic, but this slant on history is all too familiar.  

 

This is why I don't believe the apparent (at least to our family) lies that this blogger seems to spread about Chief Cornstalk, or Native American culture and history in general - for two reasons.  First, she seems to have no expertise on the subject.  She is not academically equipped with the tools to push her version of history as fact.   In my opinion, she is at best, an armchair genealogist trying to play historian on the web.  Nothing more..  Second, her motivation for spreading lies appears to be spawned by her racism and by the fact that she is butt-hurt that her ancestors were victim to them.  Maybe her ancestors were encroaching on Indian land and that is what led to their demise?  

 

We don't know, but it's just as valid to speculate about that as she speculates about what was really going on.

 

Even those who fought against the early Shawnee near Cornstalk’s hometown held them in ‘just esteem’ for their courage and virtues.  In regard to how the Shawnee cared for their captives and adoptees, Colonel Bouquet, in his “An Historical account of the expedition against the Ohio Indians, in the year 1764” records:

​

“The Indians too, as if wholly forgetting their usual savageness, bore a capital part in heightening this most affecting scene.  They delivered up their beloved captives with the utmost reluctance; shed torrents of tears over them, recommending them to the care and protection of the commanding officer.  Their regard to them continued all the time they remained in camp.  They visited them from day to day; and brought them what corn, skin, horse and other matters, they had bestowed on them, while in their families; accompanied with other presents, and all the marks of the most sincere and tender affection”.

 

He continues:

 

“These instance of Indian tenderness and humanity were thought worthy of particular notice”.  (See:  https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735056288214/viewer#page/42/mode/2up)

 

If you read the blog, you will see that the primary focus of her theory is that Cornstalk hated whites, and was a brutal, violent savage, and therefore could not and would not have fostered a relationship with any white person.  That presumption alone paints Cornstalk as a racist and savage.  Her entire body of work, from beginning to end, works to paint that picture about indigenous people in their entirety. 

​

Her obsession with stories of cruelty

 

She recounts story after story after story about horrific violence and savage behavior of indigenous Americans.  In fact, there are so many of these stories on her page, that they make up the majority of it.  There is VERY little discussion of Parker and Bluesky happening on her blog if you look at the sum of the information provided.   So what is REALLY the purpose of her blog other than to paint American Indians as savages?  Or maybe, just maybe, the purpose is to make you all think she is smarter and more enlightened than you about history?

 

​

Whatever her purpose, racism wreaks on her page.  Notice how she doesn't talk about the atrocities of Europeans on Native culture?  She doesn't talk about how Europeans decimated thousands of Natives by giving them blankets that spread diseases amongst them.  She doesn't talk about robbing Native people of their homes, lands, possessions, language and even their names.  The fact that her position and outrage is one-sided is why we hold the opinion that she is racist.

 

If she was genuinely interested in telling the truth of history, she wouldn't be cherry-picking her devils! 

​

But I won't do the same.  YES, the Shawnee inflicted unbelievable tortures.  I don't need to tell you any of those stories because you can go read her page and find more of them than you can read in a week.  But documentation exists out there that also shows Native Americans as being just and fair. 

In "The Assimilation of Captives On the American Frontier in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries", a dissertation by Joseph Norman Heard, we learn:

​

"Hundreds of redeemed captives have written or related accounts of their adventures, and many of them acknowledged that they had enjoyed the life style of their captors...  Scholars have speculated that both white and Indian children, when exposed to both civilizations, invariable preferred the Indian way of life" (page v).

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

An interesting story that Heard tells comes from a white man named Rufus Sage who was once a captive of a western tribe.  Rufus states that the Indian:

 

"has a heart instinctive of more genuine good feeling than his white neighbor - a soul of more firm integrity - a spirit of more unyielding independence..." (page 43).

​

Another factoid that the blogger doesn't seem to be aware of, is that many of the white males who were captured by Native Americans, not only were adopted into the tribe, but "became warriors and raided frontier settlements" (Heard, page 1) right along-side the Native Americans.  So clearly, whites are every bit as capable of cruelties as are Indians, even if Ms. Blogger isn't aware of that fact.  I think the most rational of my readers understand and accept that as truth.

​

But are her stories of Cruelty the ONLY stories to be told?

We can agree that Native Americans and Europeans treated each other cruely.  The blog author seems to miss one very important part:  And that is WHY did the Native Americans, who had at the earliest moments of European arrival, had been friendly to them?  They certainly had the numbers to have annihilated the few Europeans that initially landed on our shores.   But they did not.  That is more telling about Native Americans than later actions.   According to Heard:

​

"They held captives... largely to adopt as replacements for relatives killed in battle" (page 9).

​

Heard goes on to state:

​

"Yet in the typical initial contact between North American Indians and Europeans the natives were hospitable and helpful.  As long as the prime European objective was trade, relations between the races remained amicable." (page 25)

​

This is backed up by Dwight L Smith in his work "Shawnee Captivity Ethnography", Ethnohistory, II (1955)

​

"Several factors motivated Indians to take prisoners.  Capture frequently occurred as a natural outcome of war; and the captives were sometimes considered as much a war trophy as scalps..."

​

R.W.G. Vail even goes so far as to state that another reason why we have these stories, is because the ones telling them wanted to sensationalize their experiences while being held captive:

​

"... the captive, like most frontiersmen, was prone to exaggerate..." 

(Vail, Voice of the Old Frontier, 27).

​

In fact, part of the reason these exaggerations traveled far and wide is because they came from publishers of the time.  Captivity stories became news, verbally as the stories made their way across the frontier from settler to settler and in the printed papers of the day.  In Matthew C. Wards "Redeeming the Captives:  Pennsylvania Captives among the Ohio Indians, 1755 - 1765 (The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vl. 125, No. 3 (July.., 2001), pp. 161-139, it's reported: 

​

"Such atrocities were quite common, the colonial press assured readers, for 'they roast a Prisoner out of every considerable Party that they take".

The colonial press then added "Women are allowed a full Moon, to chuse the Embraces of an Indian or a Tomahawk" (page 164). 

​

The Colonial post story that was referred to above was printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette, October 21, 1756, the immediate time-period of Parker and Bluesky.  This writer then goes on to discuss how Ohio Indians were more concerned with adopting the captured into their tribe.  Rapes and torture of captives was avoided because when a group was taken, the Indian didn't know which would or wouldn't become a member of their family.  The writer acknowledges that some captives were executed, they were generally men of military age, troops or militia, who would be difficult to get to assimilate. 

 

Ward then states:

​

"While some captives were executed, the majority were adopted into Indian families, for the Ohio Indians welcomed the opportunity to replace their population losses.  During the 1750s the region had been wracked by several devastating smallpox epidemics.  The acquisition of captives thus provided an easy means of maintaining tribal populations.  Male captives often fulfilled an important role by hunting game while the warriors were away raiding the backcountry.  Indeed, many of the captives who escaped were able to do so because their captors had treated them as full family members and had provided them with weapons for hunting" (page 165).

​

Besides killing captive soldiers, another reason why captives might have been killed, according to Ward, is that they became ill, or were wounded, and slowed down their ability to travel.  This is the main reason why women and children or the elderly were killed.  Ward says it is 'unusual' for these groups to be killed.  Once in their villages, captives were made to run the gauntlet (which is described as running between two lines of villagers who yield various weapons through which the captive must run while being beaten).   This has been illustrated as being barbaric, and to some degree, it was.  Yet for the Indian, the purpose was to "break captives from their past lives through ritual humiliation and to force them to demonstrate their courage and fortitude" (Ward, page 167).  Those who run the gauntlet with brave determination were usually spared a beating, but those who showed cowardice may have a more painful experience.  At that point, captives were divided between families for adoption.  Those deemed not suitable were usually ransomed.

​

Also interesting as to why some preferred captivity to returning to civilization of the Europeans, was that women appreciated the more open and respected place in Native American society.  They were able to enjoy more relaxed sexual rules as well as higher social and political status.  Life in Native American villages was equally intriguing to men as to women.

​

One of the premises that the blog author makes is that Native Americans were not in the Franklin County, VA area.  Halifax County VA is very close by there.  One Isom Barnett was captured by the Indians on Smith's River there in 1758.  He was released, but his wife and son were not.  He sent an agent to Ohio to try to get them released.  Bouquet was also petitioned to secure the release of two sons of James McCullough, John and James who were captured in 1756.  There was even a reward of 15 pounds for all prisoners that the Indians brought in, but few were returned.  According to William Smith, clergyman for the Church of England and professor at the new Academy of Philadephia, some prisoners amongst the Shawnee had to be tied up and forced to return, and some women who the Shawnee captured found a way to escape and return to the Indian villages.

​

James T. Howard states:

​

"In the historical literature, especially the accounts of captivity the Shawnees are invariably depicted as a warlike, predatory tribe...  Curiously however, one of the earliest accounts of the Shawnees, that of Father Marquette in 1673, presents a very different picture:  They are not all warlike, and are a nation whose the Iroquois go so far to seek and war against without any reason:  and, because these poor people cannot defend themselves, allow themselves to be captured and taken Like flocks of sheep..."  

(James T. Howard, Shawnee!  Ohio University Press Athens 1981, pages 127-128).

​

Howard also says:

​

"As an anthropologist I should like to issue a warning against viewing any tribe or nation as inherently 'warlike' simply because it has been represented as such by several generations of writers.  War is a cultural and historical phenomenon, not a matter of genetics or individual psychology.  The Shawnees, like other Native Americans, fought bravely to defend themselves and their territory from other tribes and from whites.  The ways in which they did this were culturally determined, and any atrocities they may have committed in the course of their struggles were fully matched by the deeds of their enemies.  Their custom of burning captives at the stake was practiced by most of the tribes of the East and Midwest, and was abandoned by the Shawnees at the instigation of their own leaders, such as Tecumseh.  Their custom of scalping was also general and was, in fact, taken up by the white frontiersmen who fought the Shawnees, though it was unknown in Europe.  Simply stated, then, the Shawnees were as warlike as they had to be to survive in their historical and cultural milieu.  Let us hear no more then, of the 'warlike and cruel Shawnees'"(page 128).

​

Her use of language also hints at how she wishes to portray Natives

Oddly, or maybe NOT so oddly, she avoids the topic of what the Europeans were inflicting upon the Native Americans.  The repulsion that she exhibits towards Native Americans in her blog can be summed up by looking at how often she associates their culture with negative words.  The following is a list of words used to describe Indigenous people and events, and how many times that word can be found on her page.  This list does NOT include when the events mentioned were white-on-native tragedies. 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Eggleston and Seelye discuss several stories of whites murdering Native Americans.  Even when the perpetrators were arrested, most often, they were acquitted and never punished.  The Indian's response was that when an Indian committed a crime and the colonists demanded that they turn the culprit over to them, they rarely did, because they were not getting equal response to crimes committed against them.  The authors state:

​

"Some murders had been committed by certain Pottawatomies.  The Indians felt little inclined to trouble themselves about redressing these wrongs, because similar aggressions often took place on the part of the whites.  Governor Harrison says; 'I wish I could say the Indians were treated with justice and propriety on all occasions by our citizens, but it is far otherwise.  They are often abused and maltreated, and it is rare that they obtain any satisfaction for the most unprovoked wrongs"  

(Eggleston, Edward, and Seelye, Elizabeth Eggleston. Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet: Including Sketches of George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, William Henry Harrison, Cornstalk, Blackhoof, Bluejacket, the Shawnee Logan, and Others Famous in the Frontier Wars of Tecumsehs̕ Time. United States, Dodd, Mead, 1878.)

​

Eggleston and Seelye also tell how there was peace between the Shawnee and Delaware and with the Cherokee and whites until about 1774.  They tell that Indians had stolen some horses, and whites then murdered Indians lawlessly in response, not caring if the ones they killed were guilty of stealing the horses or not.    They also tell of Mingo Chief Logan, who had previously been friendly to whites.  When his relatives were murdered by whites, in response, he attacked several settler's families (page 34).

​

Brutal White Butchers and Peace-loving, God-fearing Indians:

Since we are talking about white attrocities - we can also point to the Gnadenhutten Massacre.  There were almost 100 pacificist Christian Indians who were killed on March 8, 1782 by US Militia from Pennsylvania.  They were rounded up from several Moravian villages after being given false promises of being protected, charged with being spies, and executed.  First, they looted the villages.  Women and girls who were amongst the group were taken out in the snow and raped.   There were two killing houses - one for men and the other for women and children.  The Indians were told that they were going to die the next morning and they spent the night in prayer and singing.

 

What makes this so very cruel, is the fact that when they were taken for slaughter, they were not simply shot and killed.  No, one by one they were butchered using hatchets.  Blow by slow, vicious blow.   One by one, the Indians waited, knowing they would soon fall victim to the white man's brutal assault.  And what did they do?  They prayed and sang hymns while they waited their turn!  Our great Blogger has some nerve to call Native People out for their barbarism. 

​

One Moravian Martyr said:

​

"One after another, men, women and children were led out to a block prepared for the dreadful purpose; and, being commanded to sit down, the axe of the butcher, in the hands of the infuriate demons, clave their skulls.... The dreadful work of human slaughter continued till every prayer, and moan, and sigh was hushed in the stillness of death.  No sex, age, or condition was spared, from the grey-haired sire to the infant at its mother's breast.  All fell victims to the most cold-blooded murder ever perpetrated by man.  There lay, in undistinguished confusion, gashed and gory, in that cellar, where they were thrown by their butchers, nearly one hundred murdered Christian Indians, hurried to an untimely grave by those who had but two days before sworn to protect them."

(James Bradley Finley (1855). The Christian Miscellany and Family Visiter, Volume 1. John Mason. p. 20, 21.)

​

Rob Harper, in his work:  Looking the Other Way:  The Gnadenhutten Massacre and the Contextual Intperpretation of Violence tells us that the murder instrument was a Cooper's Axe or  Mallet.  The deaths of these non-violent Indians was slow, brutal and calculated.  

(Harper, Rob. “Looking the Other Way: The Gnadenhutten Massacre and the Contextual Interpretation of Violence.” <i>The William and Mary Quarterly</i>, vol. 64, no. 3, 2007, pp. 621–644. <i>JSTOR</i>, www.jstor.org/stable/25096733. Accessed 20 Aug. 2021.)

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

To read more about WHO PARTICIPATED in this heinous act, visit this page online:  http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~gwilli824/genealogy/moravian.html

​

The body count:  28 men, 29 women and 39 children, none of whom were a threat to the white man, were butchered that day by white people.

​

The White Colonists Used Native Americans to Capture Other White Colonists

If we are looking at history truthfully, it must be pointed out that white colonists often used Native Americans to capture other white colonists to further their trade and war objectives.  This is especially true of the French in Canada and throughout North American against the British.  Ian K. Steele states: 

​

"A new type of captivity was emerging.  From the mid-1740s, the French compensated for their lagging competitiveness in trade by asserting claims of sovereignty in the region, and by offering gifts to warriors who captured and delivered Pennsylvanian traders.  A few traders were captured, presented to French post commanders, treated as illegal traders, and sent to jail in Canada and France".  Steele continues:  "English interest in Indian slavery waned after the Tuscarora (1711-13) and Yamasee (1715-17) Wars demonstrated the dangers of enslaving Indians and confirmed a growing English colonial preference for African slaves, who had no armed kin nearby"  (pages 15 and 16).

​

"Colonial captains and commandants, as well as Indian raiders, all took captives in peacetime, and helped to provoke the Seven Year's War".  

(page 11) Steele, Ian K.. Setting All the Captives Free: Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny Country. Canada, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013.

 

Steele also goes on to reflect on (at least) three reasons why Canadian colonists still pushed for slaving:  1.)  It "deflected Indian aggression away from New France and its allies".  2.)  reinforced kinship amongst Iroquois and Six Nation relatives in New York helped "insulate New France from attacks".  3.) Most importantly, it disrupted relationships amongst other Native tribes that had allegiances with the British (page 16).

​

On page 34 of his work, Steele says

 

"... the French found it necessary to induce Indians from outside the region to undertake raids that disrupted their rivals' trade and diplomacy". 

​

​Once again, another scholar (as opposed to a seemingly incompetent blogger), is telling us clearly that the act of capture of enemies was not done by Indians alone, that colonists had also participated in these acts, and that when Indians did it, it was sometimes done because they were being 'paid' to do so by the enemies of the British or the French.

​

Steele also explains how Europeans used Native Americans to fill their need for slaves and created cause for Indians to raid other Indians for that purpose:

​

"The English had earlier pursued the largest known Indian slave trade north of the Rio Grande.  Equipping Westo allies as slave raiders in the 1670s, the white settlers of South Carolina had acquired slave laborers for local plantations and for sale to West Indian buyers". 

​

Steele also states:

​

"Inflicting casualties is a universal military method, and suffering no casualties in return may be a widespread attending prayer, but Indians were unlike Europeans in deliberately shaping their warfare to take captives and scalps, while avoiding all casualties themselves...  Indians seldom conducted large-scale campaigns of extermination; in such campaigns, captives could be taken only at the end of the final fight because warriors were individually responsible for guarding their own prisoners" (page 13).

​

You Want to Bring Up Diets, OK, Let's!

In addition to painting Native Americans in a barbaric light, she even goes into excessive length about their diet, and the author does so with apparent disdain and an air of elitism.  Her disgust with their diet causes her to use this as a further example of their barbarism and seemingly cements her sentiment about Native Americans as being savages.  Even though Native American diet has absolutely NOTHING to do with the story of Blue Sky, Parker or Charity Adkins, she throws it in there, and does so with haughtiness and degradation.  Ask yourself why that might be.

​

A Diet That Will Make You Cringe...

So Ms. Blogger has had her turn.  Let's talk about what the Europeans on the frontier were like.  Holston, 1963, states:

​

"The average mountain man was an unwashed, unlettered, and unwanted individual.  He divorced himself from civilization for most of the year, preferring the solitude of a placid beaver pond to the confines of an Eastern City.  Unlike most Anglo-Americans, he was not adverse to marrying one or two Indian squaws....  When food was scarce, as often happened in this hunting and gathering subsistence, the mountain men were reduced to -

eating the grease in rifle stocks, fringes, and unnecessary parts of buckskin clothes, gun and ammunition bags, and every scrap of edible material, boiled up in an Assinaboin basket with hot stones, and finally were reduced to [eating] buds and twigs." 

 

He continues:

 

"When mountain men had been without meat for several days... all traces of Anglo-Saxon civilization vanished instantly.  Immediately, the bison's skull was hacked open, and the raw brains were wolfed down in great, bloody chunks".  

​

Wait, there's more:

​

"When food became scarce  both the Indians and the mountain men would scrape the putrid flesh from animal corpses". (page 305)  

 

One trapper wrote that he could:

​

"go for days without eating, and am pretty well satisfied if I can gather a few roots, a few snails, or better satisfied if we can afford ourselves a piece of horse flesh, or a fine roasted dog." (page 305)

​

Clearly, - you couldn't trust those white men around Fido!

​

Now, here is where it gets REALLY similar to the stories that Ms. Blogger tells:

​

"If the food situation became desperate, the mountain man might be reduced to one of mankind's most primitive dietary traits, cannibalism".  (page 306)

​

Now, what white colonist wouldn't be overjoyed to kill two birds with one stone, that being his hunger AND an Indian:

​

"... Charles Garnder, known as 'Old Phil'.  On a trip to Fort Laramie, supplies were exhausted, but Old Phil solved the problem by eliminating his Indian companion.  He amputated the legs at the hip joins and took them with him.  Witnesses at For Laramie swore that they saw him throwing away the gnawed remnants, which Phil referred to as his 'provisions.'  On another occasion, Gardner killed his own squaw, ate most of her, and left the remains unburied.  Old Phil stated that if the human hands, head and feet were cooked long enough, then they were as tasty as pork.  The other parts of the body were 'too gristly and tough."  (page 306).  

Holston, William E. “The Diet of the Mountain Men.” <i>California Historical Society Quarterly</i>, vol. 42, no. 4, 1963, pp. 301–309. <i>JSTOR</i>, www.jstor.org/stable/25155578. Accessed 30 Aug. 2021.

​

So Ms. Blogger - are you still feeling your white ancestor's diet to be superior to that of the Native American when living in the same environment???  

 

If you had any ethics at all - you'd rush over to your blog and remove what you've written.   

​

Her desire to use ANY topic at all - even diet - to make Native People look like savages, combined with the fact that this blogger seemingly wants to eliminate any Native American ties in the Adkins/Cornstalk forum and add to THAT her desire to discredit anyone with Native American ties that questions her one-sided approach to Native American genealogy, and the picture is clear. 

​