FOOD FOR THOUGHT: TRIBAL VIOLENCE

Larry McMurtry, Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846-1890 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005) ("Americans' lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there's no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future." "Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look--historical ignorance remains a national characteristic." Id. at 40. "To some extent, perhaps, it is human nature to think the worst about those who are not as we are. Tribalism was an instinct and an organizing principle for so long that it is planted deep in the human psyche. It can rarely be civilized out of us." Id. at 58. Sand Creek, November 29, 1894.  "I an not sure that Sand Creek admits of any conclusions. Two peoples with widely differing cultures were rubbing against each other, constantly and insistently. The Indians were trying to defend their cherished way of life, the whites to make that way of life vanish so they could go on with their settling, farming, town-building, etc." "On a word scale countless massacres have been perpetrated over those and similar issues. land is frequently a principal element in these disputes. It is my land or your land, our land or their land? Time after time, in the Balkans, India, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Middle East, large parts of Africa,the same concerns develop. People don't deem to be good at sharing land, even when there's a lot of it to share. Where land is in dispute massacres are just waiting to happen-it 's only a question of time, and usually not much time at that." Id. at 113.).