Was manifest destiny fair to the native americans and mexicans?

Question

Was manifest destiny fair to the native americans and mexicans?

Answer 1

Why don't you ask them ? I'll bet they say no.

     How could it be fair for a bunch of Europeans to come to America and say we have a right to your land .. cause God says so .... And if you don't give it to us , we have the right to take it from you . Why?  because God says so.

Answer 2

Antithesis (opposite) of fair..

For example, Mexico allowed a number of Americans (under the direction of Stephen Austin) to settle in what is now Texas. But that was under condition of sworn loyalty to Mexico. Of course, in retrospect it was a terrible idea, but at the time Mexico felt Texas was too sparsely populated and it seemed a good idea to have immigrants (ironically, we have the opposite demographic problem today). Can you guess what happened?

Well, Americans being so rebellious an all, they didn't like taking orders from Mexico. Mexico had imposed tarriffs on goods from the US (keep in mind, Texas was not part of the US at this time) and it also abolished slavery (since slavery in all of Mexico had been abolished in the 1830s)  So they had a nice little war.

Texas gained its independence in 1836.

But Texas was not formally part of the US at this time. And Mexico didn't recognize its independence. So what to do? Another war. Under James K. Polk, the president most associated with "manifest destiny" America not only took Texas (which was already in the bag, but could have potentially been lost to Mexico), but also California and much of the Southwest. Of course, this was massive land-grabbing unjustified even for thepurported "defense" of Texas. After all, we got much more than Texas.

Now as far as native Americans and Mexicans, we basically either forcibly assimilated these populations or moved them to reservations. We told the native Americans they could "keep" the holy lands of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Oklahoma.

Well, you know how that ended up. We took the lands right back once we "discovered" we needed more land for the white settlers. So back to the reservations the native Americans went.

Answer 3

Lets say I'm not happy where I'm living so I go to your house and kick you out. If you resist I kill you. Then I say God gave me the right.

Does that sound fair to you?

Answer 4

As a "native american" (we don't use the term, generally), I would say a loud and resounding, "no."  Expanding the United States to the western border and pushing everyone else who was already there out of the way (or killing them) . . . how does that in any way denote fairness?

Answer 5

Generally speaking no. In very rare instances, and the Mohave are about the only group I can think of that enjoyed this advantage, native peoples were moved from their ancestral homelands to an area far less conducive to such luxuries as eating and living indoors. The Mohave happened to have made friends with Kit Carson, and he was influential enough to see that their reservation was on their ancestral lands.

Mexican peoples were not treated well at all. The biggest influx of anglo-Americans into what was once Mexican territory was in California, and a gold rush tends to draw the worst sort of people. Most of them are there with the intention of getting rich in a hurry, and failing to do so on the turn of a digging spade, some tried to do so with a King of spades, hidden in their boot. Others chose to take a shortcut by concealing a more lethal get rich quick devise in their boot.

Big ranches were broken up, some by "pettifogging lawyers" as they were called, others by squatters.  John Sutter, on whose land the sawmill John Marshall was building when he found "color", said that "it's said the only things someone won't steal is a milestone or a millstone, they stole my millstones".  He wasn't Mexican of course, he was a Swiss who had left Europe a few steps ahead of the police, some say, and changed his name when he arrived.

I am attaching a link about Mariano Vallejo of California from the PBS website.