George E. Ellis Quotes
We have a full right, by our own best wisdom, and then even by compulsion to dictate terms and conditions to them [Native Americans] .... The Indian must be made to feel he is in the grasp of a superior.
George E. Ellis, 1814-1894, Clergymen and "Indian Expert", 1882
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Alexie, an American Indian, studied wrote about the phenomenon whereby the Indians who were brutalized and attacked by whites with modern weapons and other technological advantages, in the process of defending themselves and their way of life became oppressors to whites in many situations where they could dominate a local scene. Likewise, the Israelis, who were totally oppressed in the Middle East for years and dominated by the more numerous Arabs with over a dozen established national armies attacking the Jewish civilian population when Israel first became a state. However the Jews survived and each time the Arabs attacked and further oppressed the Israelis, the Jews became stronger until at some point the became oppressors of many of the Arabs. The oppressors became the oppressed and vica versa.
Many social scientists believe that this is one of the reason for so much racism amongst the lower class whites. If blacks are “below” them, the poor whites have power and are not at the bottom of the sociological pyramid of society. To many this is better than being better off themselves but starring the bottom with the Negroes.
The Boers, the early Dutch settlers to South Africa were a “scurvey lot” who were very uneducated, narrow minded, and insular. They eventurally esterminated whole tribes of Blacks, caused the Boer War, and operated the disasterous apartheid era of South Africa. But the early Dutch governors of South Africa had great trouble with the Boers as well. See {583928} & {583928} for English similar assessments.
The “We” to which he was referring were the British officials and civil servants who governed all of India as a colony of the British Empire.
He was urging the majority Sinhalese to be more aggressive in dealing with the Tamils.
This statement was widely interpreted to be a statement of Western Christian superiority over the Muslim world.
The officer who testified at the inquiry of the Sand Creek Massacre, Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, was murdered thereafter in Denver by a supporter of Chivington’s. Sand Creek’s Indians were mutilated even after death with breasts and scrotums cut off as souvenir tobacco pouches. Ironically, President Lincoln had med with some of the killed Cheyenne leaders at the White House the year before and his quotation presages those whites who would break treaty.
Referring to the Arawak natives he found when he landed in the "new world—San Salvador:"
