I thought the indians did teach colonists how to grow crops like corn and often shared food with them. But then large amounts of Indians would die from a plague every time the colonists visited (disease moment), and then they became suspicious that they were purposefully killing them. And then the colonists grew suspicious that the Indians were planning on killing them and then they all killed each other. Except the colonists had guns and so they won.
Plus hundreds of treaties saying "OK we gonna occupy only up to this line but no more pinky promise, just stop raiding us and we'll all get along in peace UwU" that were systematically broken by the same crakkkers that imposed them in order to stiffle the natives from full on war
Reminds me of something messed up I once read where native Americans who had tentatively been 'accepted', who chose to try and live like crakkkers and even fought other native Americans and were given some place to live ended up finding the acceptance they thought they'd achieved disregarded by crakkker settlers eventually and hunted down and murdered, the supposed protection they were promised nothing more than empty promises.
Yeah isn't most of Oklahoma legally native territory? Like, even according to current US laws, it's supposed to be native territory. Americans don't even pretend to act like their treaties with indigenous peoples are legitimate.
I think it’s ok to keep using the term Indian because many within the Native American community have indicated a preference for it.
Also “Native American” is a kind of sterile word made up in the 1970s by coastal libs and so some within the Native American community feel it’s too clinical and empty of meaning.
It’s true that Indian is colonial and hilariously inaccurate but it’s been used for centuries and so becomes imbued with meaning and identity through so much use.
Ideally you use the specific tribal name since they aren’t a single people, like it’s a false category since it isn’t a singular identity anyway except for being defined in contrast to non-indigenous Americans. So where possible avoid the collective noun anyway but when the collective noun is required then the general consensus within the Native American community is that either “Indian” or “Native American” is acceptable, with some taking strong exception to “Indian” due to it being inaccurate but also many equally taking exception to “Native American” for being clinically dehumanizing and equally imposed by white colonizers.
I think the best is to defer to the preference of current company but the idea that the term “Indian” at least has been imbued with a strong cultural identity makes sense to me.
The natives were chill and their help was the only reason the settlers survived in a lot of cases, but uhh... the same could not be said the other way around.