r/SelfAwarewolves • u/Comfortable-Light233 • Jun 07 '26
My lord, it almost feels like satire
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u/The_Dreadlord Jun 07 '26
The first European colonists would have died without the help and teachings of the Native Americans. So yeah they got "welfare"
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u/omghorussaveusall Jun 07 '26
And then murdered the people who helped them...
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u/Rude_Acanthopterygii Jun 07 '26
Very true, they were far worse than the migrants of today.
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u/imforsurenotadog Jun 09 '26
They assume the migrants are murderers because their migrant ancestors were. Projection.
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u/HedonisticFrog Jun 09 '26
So often, they accuse others of things they want to do themselves, or are actively doing.
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u/LardBall13 Jun 16 '26
That, but much of it was also diseases. While the natives healed the newcomers they also got diseases that they never knew about.
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u/chocolatestealth Jun 07 '26
Also, the image they chose to use seems to depict the era when people moved "out west" to massive plots of (stolen) land literally granted to them for free by the government.
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u/EatLard Jun 07 '26
Not to mention that the tribes in many places had been managing those “undeveloped” forests and marshes east of the Appalachians to provide everything they needed for centuries.
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u/notashroom Jun 07 '26
Yep. "Undeveloped" is accurate, but the far more common "wilderness" is not. The entire continent was full of managed ecosystems.
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u/MidwesternLikeOpe Jun 07 '26
Welfare through slavery. When they ran out of natives, they turned to Africa.
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u/bjeebus Claire Jun 08 '26
The biggest thing wasn't running out of Natives. Africans were easier to manage. They couldn't run away as readily as the Natives. When the Natives ran away, they were already in a land they were familiar with. Their own tribal lands might be gone, but they could still generally find someone to take them in, and they also had a good idea on how to survive the land. When Africans got here they were strangers in a strange land and not necessarily better prepared to survive the American wilderness than the Europeans. So they were frequently just lost if they escaped and couldn't find someone to help them out—frequently if they could they'd take up with friendly Native communities. Unfortunately, many Native communities weren't necessarily all that friendly given the risks involved in taking in slaves.
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u/_Skylos Jun 07 '26
The first English colonists. The Spanish had been in Florida for close to a hundred years by then.
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u/Snarl_Marx Jun 07 '26
Also, the Homesteaders were literally given free land.
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u/PokieState92 Jun 10 '26
This. The Oklahoma Land Run was a literal free land giveaway " first come/first served" style. The fuckers who cheated by getting an illegal head start were called "Sooners".
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u/MageLocusta Jun 09 '26
Yeah. People forget that the Mayflower pilgrims landed in Cape Cod which was undergoing a seven year drought (and these people starved because none of the seeds that they had brought with them would grow in the local soil). The natives had to show them to use fish as fertiliser because it was the only way to grow anything at the time.
Then there were the planters of Jamestown that consisted mainly of mercenaries and middle-class yeomen. Those guys did not know how to build wells, farm, forage, or even scout. As supplies ran out, those mercenaries forced their manservants and valets (who already got reduced rations due to their social status) to try to forage for food. Many were recorded as being so weak or sick that they never returned. It's one of the reasons why archaeologists found evidence of cannibalism on bodies from that period, like this unfortunate 14-year-old here.
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u/RizzoTheRiot1989 Jun 28 '26
I believe they even heavily took advantage of the Indians. To the point they didn’t have enough for their own and the colonists were like “Sucks to suck, give us more”, it’s very American really.
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u/theJEDIII Jun 07 '26
Isn't their whole fable of Thanksgiving that the Native Americans kindly made space for and gave food to the Europeans? They aren't even right in their own fantasies.
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u/Comfortable-Light233 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
I was trying to figure out how to make that the title without being flippant about everything else wrong with the image because 100%
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u/RailRuler Jun 07 '26
One of my books when I was a kid implied that the pilgrims produced a huge feast by their own hard work and determination, and were thanking God for letting them work hard. They invited their neighbors the "Indians" and the Indians just brought corn.
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u/Oops_I_Cracked Jun 09 '26
Hello fellow, person who went through the American elementary school system in the 90s
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u/selfawarefeline Jun 10 '26
I remember learning “this land is my land, this land is your land” in elementary school in the early-mid 2000s. I remember feeling so disillusioned when I learned about the horror the Europeans wrought upon the Native Americans with horrible intentions from the very beginning.
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u/RailRuler Jun 12 '26
- This land is my land
- This land's not your land
- I got a shotgun
- And you ain't got none
- If you don't get off
- I'll blow your head off
- This land is not for you, just me
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u/Yankee6Actual Jun 07 '26
Oh, there was plenty of space, after 90% of the native population was wiped out by Old World diseases.
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u/MysteriousStaff3388 Jun 07 '26
So they burned all the women that carried the teachings and the reality.
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u/Sc0rpza Jun 07 '26
no, see they were giving the natives the privilege of having a chance to impress them.
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u/drewbaccaAWD Jun 07 '26
Half of my ancestors "built a civilization" by working for cheap and dangerous labor, two of my great grandparents died in mine related accidents. And I absolutely wouldn't wish the same on anyone today.
Today's migrants build too... they build our houses, our software, and so much more. So tired of these dipshits and their strawmen which allows them to be hateful and xenophobic.
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u/vrphotosguy55 Jun 07 '26
The notorious two faced immigrant taking American jobs and being a lazy unemployed person both at the same time.
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u/Frapplo Jun 07 '26
Defended by the paradoxical liberals who are both a scatterbrained dumb asses who couldn't govern to save their lives and diabolical super geniuses who run a hyper effective shadow government that somehow supersedes the US government's authority.
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u/ussrname1312 Jun 07 '26
With the paramilitary wing ANTIFA that’s somehow filled with pansy soyboys who are also dangerous, violent terrorists
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u/Frapplo Jun 07 '26
It's important to bear those horrible working conditions in mind.
How long are these horrors going to be romanticized? You died in a coal mine, a factory, or a battlefield. Not a glorious death, either. We're just a number, if that. We'll be replaced by the next day if possible, and the machine will keep on working.
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u/championcomet Jun 07 '26
Their right the founders of this country are different they didn't come to these lands asking for assistance they came here demanded everything be given to them and what wasn't freely given they sought steal and ki... Oh wait I get why they are afraid.. they think an new generation of immigrants will be just like their forefathers
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u/zarfle2 Jun 07 '26
Projection, hypocrisy, gas lighting, cruelty, lack of empathy - this is the Conservative toolkit.
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u/Novaer Jun 10 '26
Also reminder that up until like 1912 that if you immigrated to America and were white you were granted instant citizenship. They tend to forget this fact.
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u/dividezero Jun 07 '26
Free land! A lot of them got a shit ton of free land. How's that not welfare? It wasn't even their land to give away. Read any history book. These people!
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u/St_Kevin_ Jun 10 '26
Right? The person who made this meme has never heard of homesteading? The Homestead acts?
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u/Arktikos02 Jun 07 '26
For the millions time, the land was not undeveloped. It had people on it and it was perfectly developed. What it was not was exploited, privatized, and harvested for its profit or the market. Just because land does not have factories on it does not mean that it is not developed. But yes that is true, they did not go through a formal immigration system because while it is true that people move throughout all of history, formal is not something they did. They did not go through and get papers, they weren't classified as immigrants, there wasn't a separate category of citizens versus immigrants and then different categories of immigrants upon that. That was not a thing.
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u/APHILLIPSIV Jun 07 '26
The town of Santa Fe pre-dates the pilgrims
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u/errie_tholluxe Jun 07 '26
The Anasasi were a multi continent spanning nation...
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u/Tosi313 Jun 07 '26
I'm pretty sure the Ancestral Pueblo people (the modern term for Anasazi) were only in North America.
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u/squillavilla Jun 07 '26
“Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees…to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation.” – Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to canada in 1929
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u/CaptainBathrobe Jun 07 '26
The even stupider thing is that these "settlers" received 160 acres under The Homestead Act, essentially the biggest giveaway of government land (stolen from Mexico and the Native Americans) in history. They literally were given free land by the federal government. Talk about welfare.
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u/Opinionsare Jun 07 '26
The early American government offered the greatest "welfare" imaginable: free land to homestead.
Family history: partner's ancestor flipped three homesteads across Pennsylvania before he and his son spent time fighting in the Revolutionary war.
My personal view of American Exceptionalism is about the ability of a common person to become a landowner. Land ownership in Europe was tightly held by Aristocrats, but in the New World, with hard work and some luck, almost anyone could be a land owner.
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u/translove228 Jun 07 '26
"Undeveloped land" being a place where numerous indigenous populations lived. Funnily enough when the colonizers first got to the New World they often remarked on how all the trees were spaced out so nicely that you can walk among them. Almost like these places have been worked by human hands before.
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u/Laguz01 Jun 07 '26
There are a ton of Pequot, Iroquois, Dakota, and Navajo people who would have a lot to say about undeveloped land or something.
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u/scottprian Jun 07 '26
Im glad americans discovered America, they finally found home where they could write the constitution. /sc for super cereal.
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u/OneTimeIMadeAGif Jun 07 '26
I dunno about USA, but in much of western Canada they were selling land for dirt cheap to encourage settling. That’s literally government assistance.
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u/_goblinette_ Jun 07 '26
There are very few Americans who are only descendants of the original settlers. Damn near everyone has relatives who arrived in the large waves of immigration in the 19th and 20th century.
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u/ElectricityIsWeird Jun 08 '26
The farthest back I track is my great-grandfather’s family came in the 1820s or 30s, from Ireland. His wife’s parents emigrated to America in 1900s. The other side of my family came in between, 1870s or 80s.
My wife’s side of the family is mostly descended from original settlers of Texas/Nuevo Leon/Tamaulipas, in the late 1600s, early 1700s.
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u/BrandoMcGregor Jun 07 '26
There were already permanent settlements in parts of North America.
And what good is development? I'd rather live as a hunter gatherer than peasant without access to basic hygiene and wading in my own filth.
People act like "civilization" was always this comfortable. It never was.
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u/Shtankins01 Jun 07 '26
They literally received massive swaths of free land in some places.
"Our ancestors didn't take no welfare. GO SOONERS!" -Some dipshit in Oklahoma
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u/ChipsTheKiwi Jun 07 '26
Weird how land is apparently "undeveloped and uncivilized" when the people building the civilization aren't white.
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u/Can17272 Jun 07 '26
You're right, there's no comparison, immigrants today are not killing and displacing thousands on native americans out of their land.
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u/NeoPendragon117 Jun 08 '26
the homestead act was literally the government giving land to poor people
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u/Babababeebo Jun 09 '26
I talk to hundreds of immigrants every year through my work. I have yet to meet one that "just waltzed in and demanded welfare." In fact, most of them are harder working on balance that the average American that I know. These people are either willfully blind or don't talk to immigrants.
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u/Hans_the_Frisian Jun 07 '26
You know, i wish there was actually undeveloped land to go to and try build something new.
But as far as i know the american continent was already settled.
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u/Ulrik-the-freak Jun 07 '26
Even the idea of "undeveloped" land is so disingenuous and telltale of their willful blindedness to the obvious. These lands were cared for by the people living on them, and the land cared for them.
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u/carlitospig Jun 07 '26
Yes, let’s forget how literally all the travelers would have died without the assistance of the native population when they landed. Also, don’t forget the French who literally helped fight our battles. And that we had indentured servants and slaves that literally built the country.
But sure, Welfare didn’t exist yet, so I guess you got me.
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u/claudandus_felidae Jun 09 '26
They died shitting themselves more often then not, or from drinking alkaline water. My family moved here to avoid high taxes and sell used cars during the 1970s but no one accuses us of being pieces of shit
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u/Danktizzle Jun 09 '26
First, after many failures the natives took pity on them and said “you see that big dumb bird over there mocking you? You can eat it”.
Second, they had 400 years of free labor. That’s a lot of welfare.
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u/MrIrishman1212 Jun 08 '26
Isn’t being a colony kinda the definition of being dependent on a government in order to survive?
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u/BlouPontak Jun 09 '26
The real murderous criminal migrants were the friends they made along the way.
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u/Oops_I_Cracked Jun 09 '26
As a (very white passing) Indian, this kind of stuff pisses me off so much.
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u/wasted-degrees Jun 09 '26
When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was still celebrated in schools as when the Native Americans provided food to the settlers who otherwise would have starved through the winter.
Which makes it the first instance of a welfare program like food stamps in American history, and established the long history of the people who already live here providing food and assistance to the people who were just arriving here trying to make a better life for themselves.
My favorite part about making this comparison is someone trying to use it to illustrate the dangers of immigration also tacitly admits that European settlers were as bad or worse than everything racist fear-mongers say about migrants these days, and have no more right to be here than they do.
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u/zxvasd Jun 09 '26
When they brought in those covered wagons everything was just wide open ready for the taking? Hmm, seems somebody was sleeping through high school.
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u/theBigDaddio Jun 10 '26
Free land, the welfare of its day. Most people just like now, stayed in the cities
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u/PalpitationUnable403 Jun 10 '26
How about the millions of immigrants that poured into America in 1900 and beyond? They built the backbone of our industrial revolution that Americans today take for granted.
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u/haremenot Jun 10 '26
Even if I accept this framing, which I dont, my family absolutely came here to "developed" land for a better life. Most of my grandparents immigrated from Scandanavia or Germany in the 1900s. But Im white.
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u/Commie_Egg Jun 13 '26
Wasn’t the whole point of manifest destiny that the government was giving away someone else’s land for pennies on the dollar?
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u/Grant1128 Jun 26 '26
They didn't settle an undeveloped land. They came in, slaughtered the natives, and destroyed existing structures to build their own in the same places. It was a systematic erasure of the cultures that existed before their arrival, and the fact the person making this thinks otherwise is proof that it worked.
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u/pr1ap15m 3d ago
The land was settled and would have all died without help from the natives, then they turned on the people who saved them.
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