Oct 2– From The Voyage of The Beagle by Charles Darwin (1839)
Summary: Darwin talks about exterminating the Indians.
Commentary: This could've been *insert any time period here* about *insert slightly different groups of people here*.
"I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife." This is a dark picture; but how much more shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood! When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he answered, "Why, what can be done? they breed so!"
Every one here is fully convinced that this is the most just war, because it is against barbarians. Who would believe in this age that such atrocities could be committed in a Christian civilized country? The children of the Indians are saved, to be sold or given away as servants, or rather slaves for as long a time as the owners can make them believe themselves slaves; but I believe in their treatment there is little to complain of.
Different times and places might have different opinions on who it's okay to slaughter while stealing their children for reeducation, but it still happens. Darwin is refreshingly frank about it. I think a lot of people find it depressing when something like this comes up as a thing that happened a almost 200 years ago and still does today, but I'm more optimistic. There's less of it today at least. And seeing all the shit humanity survived over hundreds or thousands of years makes me feel better about us making it through the next hundred years.
Also, this is literally a thing in Afghanistan: "I imagine the summer is chosen as the time for the main attack, because the plains are then without water, and the Indians can only travel in particular directions."
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