Hayes Lowe
Europeanized vs. civilized
Mon Jul 23 13:43:13 2001


"I have read this thread with interest and have found interesting the notion that 'European' means 'civilized' or somehow better than a native lifestyle."

Scotty,

Your statement has caused me to re-read this entire thread.

And I just don't see that anyone has implied that "Europeanized" equals "civilized" at least in the sense of being less warlike, cruel, and/or vicious. Or, "better than native", either, for that matter. The involved tribes were called "The Five Civilized Tribes" at the time, but that was in another time and judged by a different standard than today (hopefully). Europeanized is *different* than native culture, and I think that is what has been referred to here.

In fact, much of the root cause of this war was the way that New Englanders viewed white Southerners as a whole as less-than-civilized, lazy, dirty, ignorant, dumb, savage, immoral, corn-eating, pork-eating, malfeasances. And white Southerners were predominantly from Europe... but just not the "Right" part of Europe, i.e. England. So, to think that even back then "European" necessarily equaled "civilized" would be a mistake.

I invite you to go back and re-read this thread, too. I think that you may have misinterpreted some of it.

Hayes