Afraid not. That is fake history to make snowflakes feel good.

Another writer referred to white men who “took over their [Indian] world,” but where did he get the idea that this world (America) belonged to the Indians? There is an abundance of evidence that today’s Indians replaced another group altogether. How far back must we go to be highly principled—doing the right thing?

However, let’s assume the commonly held belief that the Indians were the original occupiers and “owners” of the land until we choose, at another time, to get into the almost unknown, undesirable, and unpleasant details of prior ownership.

Merely living on the land does not confirm ownership. This issue is the most important factor in the discussion. Riding on horseback across land does not confer or confirm ownership. The land is “owned” when occupied by families in homes and is controlled, defended, tilled, and fenced.

After expulsion from the Garden, God told Adam and Eve that in the future, they and all ancestors would have to live by the sweat of their brow. God was saying, Adam, this is your new home, and as punishment, you will live by the sweat of your brow to produce food to keep your family alive. You will have to fight the bugs, beetles, briers, and brambles until you return to the ground from which you were taken.

Englishman John Locke lived in the 17th century and agreed with God. Locke is known as the “Father of Liberalism,” who greatly influenced the French and American Revolutionary leaders. He argued in the late 1600s in his Second Treatise of Government that God gave the earth for man’s common good, but land can only be “owned” when a man’s labor, which obviously belongs only to him, is mixed with the land to improve it. That would be removing stones, swamps, trees, and other obstacles. It would involve building a home or other structures on it. The land would be his when he tills the ground, plants seed, and brings in a harvest.

Locke taught that each person has property in his own person—that is, each person literally owns his own body. With that body, he can acquire or own property by using his body to improve the land. That means a man purchases land not with silver but with the sweat of his brow.

With that accomplished, the land is his. He has put himself into the land. He has removed it from common property and made it his by working it with his own hands.

Locke lived when the king claimed a divine right to rule everything and everyone, and the king owned everything. The land was held by tenants who used the land and served in the king’s army when needed. The tenants had sub-tenants who actually worked the land, but the king owned everything.

After 1492, Spain and Portugal started making outrageous ownership claims throughout the Western Hemisphere. They claimed vast territory that they had not seen and had no plans on settling. Pope Alexander VI stepped into the morass, hoping to untangle the knots by dividing the hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. Of course, Alex had no authority to deal with international and national land claims. Unless a nation built a substantial permanent settlement on the land they claimed and were willing and able to defend it, a claim meant little to nothing.

On the North American continent, the various Indian tribes made the same bogus claim as European kings about owning the land.

The same principle of land ownership applicable to our world would also apply to the Moon or Mars. Who can claim ownership of either? The first nation that landed on the Moon was America, followed by Russia and Japan; however, landing there could not justify ownership. However incredible it was, only a fool would suggest that success could qualify as ownership.

If a nation lands on the Moon, it must explore the land, erect buildings, build streets, water systems, power stations, and produce breathable oxygen from the soil and rocks since there is no breathable atmosphere. Oxygen on the Moon is abundant, but it is very difficult to become usable to men. There is more than 40 percent oxygen on the Moon’s mass, but the soil and rocks must be heated, thereby forcing oxygen to emerge so it can be useful to humans. Various scientific entities are looking at different ways for extracting oxygen from Moon rock, so researchers are examining potentially cheaper ways to produce oxygen on the Moon.

NASA scientists have many ideas about how to extract it. Simply heating lunar soil to a very high temperature causes gaseous oxygen to emerge. Or, they can collect the rocks and “either treat it with chemicals or blast it with heat, and you can free up unlimited quantities of oxygen both for breathing and for rocket fuel.”

The first nation to make the Moon livable can claim “ownership” to that portion of it.

The Indian tribes who fought for “ownership” of the land could not legitimately claim ownership only because they rode across the land on horseback or claimed to have been the first men to occupy the land. Furthermore, they believed if any land was not used or occupied for a year or more, anyone could claim it. War between Indian tribes was almost constant because they believed that the stronger tribe had a natural right to subdue the weaker ones. Fighting was a way of life for Indians. They kept resisting the Whites because to admit Whites were stronger was to admit the white man’s right to occupy the land the Indians had traditionally used.

Unquestionably, the Indian/White conflict about land is a mixed bag. There was a clash of cultures and disagreements as to right and wrong. Moreover, there were many failures and massacres on both sides, with numerous treaties made and broken by each group. Fools and bigots claim that it was the Indians’ fault, while others declare it all the fault of Whites.

According to Indian law, the white men owned the land because they were stronger and could hold it by force. Of course, white men were not bound by Indian law, but they are bound by discovering (or claiming) land, removing the stones, trees, and debris, building homes, barns, and corrals, farming and fencing it.

Early Americans “bought” the land by their own sweat. They didn’t steal it from anyone.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

The developing culture started going downhill when Cain killed his brother with a rock. From that day, man would struggle with divine revelation and his conscience when making choices—good and bad. That is man’s story down through the millennia, as his choices become the culture, morphing into a civilization.

Western Civilization gave us individual freedom, democracy, personal responsibility, advanced agriculture, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, ease of travel, organ transplants, space exploration, etc., and yes, vulgar rap music, the woke culture, sleazy entertainment, and the drug culture.

Civilization is always a mixed bag with progression and retrogression. With passing centuries, the hope is that the good will be appreciated, accepted, and applauded while the bad will be recognized, repudiated, and finally rejected.

For sure, all cultures are not the same and are always changing.

Did the first Europeans in the early days of America think they were superior (more advanced) than native Americans who sometimes graciously greeted them and sometimes fiercely fought them? Of course, the white Europeans thought they were superior because they were superior! The Indians in North America had no written language, had no knowledge of the wheel, scalped their enemies, kept other Indians as slaves, eating them during bad times, and basically lived in a Stone Age.

Only a fool, a liar, or one looking to win the trophy for being the most politically correct wacko on the planet would say otherwise. Of course, as far as God is concerned, each person has worth and is part of His plan on an equal basis with everyone else. But of course, the Whites were far superior to the Indians, and the Indians often emulated the worst of the Whites they met.

Other Indians were impressed with some of the white culture and learned from them. Of course, the white people also learned some basic survival techniques from the Indians, proving that many circumstances impact a culture. Both the Indian and white cultures changed—some for the good, some for the bad.

Cultures have slowly changed over hundreds of years to civilizations. Men, even kings, realized that sleeping around was irresponsible, even vile; women realized that sex was not acceptable for acquiring or advancing their profession—it was, in fact, slutty to do so.

Obviously, modern entertainers’ culture has not caught up with our civilization.

Over time it was unacceptable, even shameful, to have babies out of wedlock. It was normal when I was a teen for a pregnant, unmarried girl to be sent to “visit a relative” for a few months. I didn’t know one personally. Today, unmarried pregnancy is often planned and discussed without shame, and the most admired personalities are often, too often, the most slutty.

Young men finally realized that everyone should contribute to society and should, therefore, work even if family status did not require it. In the late Middle Ages, knives, forks, and spoons were invented, and civilized people stopped using their fingers. Changes came slowly.

Over the centuries, all cultures changed, primarily for the better, but many societies are still undisciplined, unprincipled, and uncontrolled. And some of the better cultures have streams of uncouth, unkind, and unlawful behavior. Even in our day, probably half the citizens are fornicators or adulterers; however, in a moment of honesty, I think most of them would agree what they are doing is wrong, but most have no plans to change. That has always been true.

I’m still embarrassed when I see the legislative bodies in South Africa brawl while the Speaker yells, “This honorable body will come to order. This honorable body will come to order.” And the mêlée continues, and one honorable member throws a punch at another honorable member. The same thing happened in the South Korean legislature in 2015.

Such actions are disgraceful, and those who defend such behavior are part of the culture clash.

It was also disgraceful last year when politicians in Taiwan threw punches, pig guts, and water balloons during a legislative session. It was the third brawl in that parliament in two weeks.

U.S. culture would never permit that; however, we will permit adulterers, sodomites, thieves, drunks, and consummate liars in our Congress and the Oval Office.

And too often in our classrooms and pulpits.

I was embarrassed when South Sudan’s ambassador to the U.S., Gordon Buay, in an eight-man video conference, urinated during a live zoom discussion panel! The seven other African leaders found it impossible not to laugh as the world watched him using the potty. At least he did not use a typical hole in the ground, so I suppose one could say that some progress has been made.

I’m embarrassed when rappers use filthy language to perform their gutter rap “music” and am shocked that they are considered distinguished and courted by the public and are considered musicians. No, not in the same class as Nat King Cole and Perry Como.

I was embarrassed when a hillbilly in West Virginia, in the presence of my wife, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and tucked in his shirt as he spewed numerous four-letter words—not in anger but as if it was the normal thing to do. That was acceptable to him and his clan in that area, but my culture was far above his, although I had lived in a log cabin 20 miles from that location.

I’m embarrassed when professing Christians act, talk, and dress in vain, vile, and vicious ways. I see athletes, politicians, and entertainers wearing a decorative cross around their necks as they dishonor the real meaning of that cross. One prominent black entertainer promised that his wife would no longer prance around in her underwear (that she designed), yet she often appears almost naked as a jaybird (as my dad would say.)

Evidently, that husband has no problem permitting his wife to degrade herself, disgrace Christianity, and deprecate his authority as the family leader. Of course, she always wore a silver cross around her neck. That family is now divorced.

Yes, some cultures are better than others are, and every society has a vast mixture of various levels of culture in the mix.

Radicals don’t want you to be comfortable with your values. They will call you self-righteous and bigoted as they do me. They will get you to question your superior values, and then they will try to convince you that your values are not superior. They demand that all values have equal value; then, they will move on to cultural domination when they have the upper hand and acceptance. They are determined to make you approve of their vile habits to give them comfort in their vileness. Radical leftists tolerate deviant behavior while they condemn Western Civilization.

So, yes, I think America’s conservative values are better than others are, although the BLM, Antifa, and the LGBTQ crowds will consider that the ultimate crime.

A lesser offense would be if I were caught wearing a dirty MAGA cap while sexually molesting autistic three-year-old girls during a Nazi torch rally.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

The Indians in North America were sleeping peacefully in their hogans, wigwams, and longhouses during the early hours of October 12, 1492. They were dreaming as their ancestors had for centuries, of flashing salmon, thundering herds of bison, the thump of an arrow striking a deer, and the sound of corn rustling in the evening breeze, with no idea of the events that would happen when Europeans stepped out of a small boat into the pounding surf.

As the Indians began to stir from a sound sleep, Admiral Christopher Columbus was nearing the island of San Salvador. While looking for the old world, he had discovered a new world.

Columbus had arrived. He delivered civilization to this continent—and all that went with it, good and bad. He brought culture and corruption but far more good than bad.

Columbus knew he was nearing land when he saw driftwood floating near his ship and land birds flying around the masts. He, no doubt, wondered what people were watching his ship from behind the screen of foliage as he neared the shore. Would the people be friendly, noble savages, or hostile, brutal savages? Both ideas would be promoted for many years back in Europe, but the idea of noble savages was popularized by writers in recent times to prove they are woke. (See, I did it again and it’s still silly.)

It is true that what may be accurate of one tribe would not be correct of all tribes. Also, the time in history would make a difference in some comparisons. There would be a big difference in 1650 and 1850.

The internet and schoolbooks are loaded with humanist, inaccurate propaganda that American Indians were not violent as American movies present them as being. (As an aside, if I have to choose between what a humanist says and what John Wayne clearly portrayed, the choice is easy to make.) We are told their women were not slaves that worked all day so the braves could hunt and fish. We are expected to believe the women were good and noble when fornication was the norm. The revisionists always reveal bloody massacres by whites but don’t usually balance it with the fact that there was brutality and broken treaties on both sides.

The “noble savage” is a product of imaginative writers with humanist leanings. Some of the Indians were brutal savages, even cannibals! The New Columbia Encyclopedia reported on some Northwest tribes such as the Kwakiutl who “had a highly classified society with chiefs, nobles, commoners, and slaves….This distinctive culture, which included cannibalistic rituals, was not greatly affected by European influences until after the late 18th century….” Yes, some Indians kept slaves and ate them during hard times!

Wonder why that is not taught in any public schools? Or Christian schools?

Indians are alleged to have been preservers of pure air, water, and the forests while modern Americans are made to feel guilty for highways, homes, and hospitals. And cities, colleges, and churches. We are told that is not progress. I suppose deer trails, wigwams, and kids dying by the thousands is preferable!

The modern factory spitting out smoke is said to be obscene and a blight on mankind, but a smoking factory means jobs, money, bills paid, and food for children, gifts to charities, higher Gross National Product, and a higher standard of living for most people.

Yes, I choose smoking factories to silent, dark factories because I love people better than I do clean air. If I have to choose between an unobstructed view of a field of buttercups and a housing development, I will choose the houses every time. While being interested in cleaning up the environment, let us not become fanatics and follow the self-serving hypocrites in that movement who use the altruistic concern of sincere people to “feather their own nests.”

We are supposed to feel guilty for being white, middle class, and Protestant/Baptist; or black, upper class, and Episcopal. This is especially true regarding what we have done with the land since “taking it from the noble savage.” However, the Indians were not always careful with the environment. The Columbia Encyclopedia reveals the Choctaws “hunted with bow and arrow and blowgun, caught fish by poisoning streams.” Yes, friends and neighbors, the “noble savage” was often a polluter. Sorry about that.

Merely living on the land does not confirm ownership. This is the most important factor in the discussion. Riding on horseback across the land does not confer ownership. Land is “owned” when it is occupied by families in homes and is controlled, defended, tilled, and fenced.

Before Columbus, the Indians had lived here for hundreds (some say thousands) of years but were still living in crude homes; eating and warming themselves over an open fire; and letting their old people die alone without help. No Indian in North or South America had the concept of the wheel even though the wheel was used for transportation in Mesopotamian chariots in 3200 B.C.

Indians had access to all the gold, silver, iron, water, trees, etc., that the white man had, yet it was the white man who built the greatest, most advanced society in the world. If that sounds like racism, so be it. It is also factual. Most Liberals don’t like facts; they prefer fantasy, or fiction, or faith in old, discredited theories that informed, honest people discarded years ago.

If the white man had not beached his boats on the sands of Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, and Cape Cod, the Indians would still be huddled around their soot-lined tepees warming themselves over a fire made by rubbing dry sticks together. They would still be burying their children because of childhood diseases, and maybe the air would be cleaner if the white man had never come, but who would be alive to care?

As I think about the previous two paragraphs, I’m convinced all sane people know the truth of my statement; it’s just I’m not supposed to say or write it because it makes some people unhappy and uncomfortable and unsure of themselves. Well, they will get over it with enough time.

While the Indians in Central and South America had more advanced civilizations, they were still savages. In Mexico, the Aztecs sacrificed thousands of young virgins every year and literally jerked the hearts out of their enemies before the terrified victims were burned on a much-used altar. The dead were then eaten.

But the modern race hustlers tell us Chris was a bad guy and is worthy of our disdain, disgust, and denunciation; however, many minorities make heroes out of thieves, thugs, and tyrants. And that seems to be acceptable. Columbus was far from perfect, but he was one of the most courageous men of all time. His coming to the New World helped end brutality and gave impetus to the greatest civilization on the face of the earth—America.

The Columbus haters should leave his memory and statues alone and go out and get a job, take lunch to a sick neighbor, and volunteer at a soup kitchen.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

However, we are not supposed to speak or write about the “noble savage” being so ignoble.

Free Blacks also owned slaves, black and white and of course, Whites owned slaves, black and white. Slaves were not taken or purchased because of their color but because they were available. Profit, not racism was the motive.

In the colonies, Europeans carved out a civilization from the forests, drained the swamps, removed the rocks, dug precious metals from the earth, and built the most philanthropic, powerful, and prominent nation in history.

Admittedly, much credit goes to black slaves who were forced to work the tobacco and cotton fields of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Furthermore, much credit goes to white indentured servants who chose to work those same fields to pay off their debts for travel to the colonies.

During the 1600s, slavery became a trade and a valuable commercial venture. The early Puritans thought slavery was justified if the captives were taken in a just war, and even Roger Williams condoned slavery for a time!

I would be unfair and inaccurate if I implied that Blacks were without some guilt in this whole wretched business of slavery. Richard Hufstadter wrote in America at 1750: “Africa had a system or systems of slavery long before white men came to the Guinea Coast, and had regularly enslaved war captives and criminals . . . Other persons sold themselves or their families for food during famine, or were kidnapped by native gangs. Many native [black] kings ran profitable slave businesses, and responded eagerly to opportunities for greater profits. The slave trade became a recognized and entirely legal form of business in Africa.”

In different parts of Africa, slavery became a major source of income for the authorities. The river ports became an efficient way to move slaves from the mainland to the New World. Whites and Blacks cooperated in this nefarious business of selling humans.

One black King of Bonny said in response to England’s demand for an end to slavery, “We think that this trade must go on,” he exclaimed. The king continued: “That also is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.” And the trade went on until it seemed as if some countries would be emptied of its strongest people. Notice that the black king appealed to religion to justify what he was doing to his own people. Of course, men have used religion to justify their wickedness for centuries.

Some countries protested, but the trading in human lives went on—and grew, aided and promoted by local black chiefs. One former slave wrote, “But I must own, to the shame…of my own countrymen, that I was first kidnapped and betrayed by some of my own complexion, who were the first cause of my exile and slavery; but if there were no buyers there would be no sellers.”

And there were plenty of buyers—Portuguese, French, English, and Dutch.

Historian John A. Garraty wrote: “The local king dictated the rules of trade and filled a slave ship in his own good time. The Europeans’ power lay in the insidious luxuries which became necessities: liquor and firearms.” So Whites used liquor and guns to reward black kings and chiefs for attacking their own villages at night and carrying away in chains their own people to be sold at auction in the markets of the West Indies, Latin America, and Jamestown.

The slaves were sold for two ounces of gold in some ports while in other ports, a healthy, strong male brought 115 gallons of rum to his owner. Women sold for ninety-five gallons of rum.

Some slavers were convinced that the Blacks didn’t have souls so that made slavery acceptable! However, the Portuguese believed Blacks had souls and could be redeemed like anyone else. They convinced themselves that slavery was not wrong because slaves would be taken to Christian lands where they would be exposed to the Gospel. Many thousands of black slaves were sprinkled (called baptism by some church leaders) before the ships sailed out of the harbors of the Congo and Angola.

Some have estimated that from ten to twenty million blacks were sold into slavery yet many never reached land and were buried at sea. Garraty reports they were kept below decks “in two rows, one above the other like books on a shelf.” One ex-slave Olaudah Equiano wrote, “The stench of the hold (beneath the ship’s deck) while we were on the coast was intolerably loathsome but now that the whole ship‘s cargo were confined there together it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, was…aggravated by the galling of the chains.”

Many colleges use Equiano’s book; however, few admit that he was not born in Nigeria as the story is told, but in South Carolina and got his very interesting information from other slaves. However, Equiano’s statement was true. The air was so foul below decks a candle would not burn! Many Blacks committed suicide rather than endure such conditions while others simply stopped breathing, dying of suffocation.

Those who lived were sold on auction blocks in Latin America and North America and were destined to be worked, beaten, and sometimes killed by their owners. Twenty Blacks arrived in Jamestown on a Dutch ship in 1619 and were sold to tobacco planters. The tobacco planters had large tracts of land that had to be worked and they had now found workers. There was a large profit in tobacco, more than six times as much as in grain.

Obviously, the slave system was a major building block of the economies especially in the tobacco colonies. However, less than three percent of all the Blacks sold into slavery in the Western Hemisphere came to America. Most of them were sold in Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Slaves were treated worse, worked harder, and had a higher death rate in those areas than in America.

Slaves were not only working on the tobacco plantations in the south but they were also laboring in every colony in the north. The northern masters were just as cruel as those in the south were and penalties were just as harsh for unacceptable activity.

And the face of America received a scar that has never healed because racists keep picking at the scab.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA TODAY for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)