Indigenous Americans Became Red: Racism as Justification for Exploitation of Native Americans

This article presents how an admixture of humans first arrived in the western world during the last Ice Age and spread throughout both continents, developing more complex cultures and agriculture, then civilizations. The arrival of Columbus began colonization by white European countries, justified by bringing the indigenous population Christianity and European civilization. Native people were dehumanized by white settlers out of greed for their land, which was said to have been used unproductively. A contention of early British colonists was that Indians were born white but their uncivilized life prevented them from remaining so, giving them a range of hues. Other white beliefs presented in the seventeenth century were that Indians and Blacks had descended from a different Adam, also that God had promoted a superior white race while red people were deservedly punished. Racist views and abuse became more rigid in the eighteenth century when indigenous people were specifically assigned the color red. That was followed by expansion of the white population from coast to coast, and denial of citizenship to indigenous people until the twentieth century with the vote denied to some until 1958. A public apology for treatment suffered is a minimum appropriate response