Bill Rolen just sent this to me:

The relationship between white men and American Indians embraces a long history of contradictions, and a few enigmas. From the marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas onward, no strict taboo or hard stigma ever attached to marriages between the white settlers and the Indians who inhabited the Eastern seaboard. This is probably because these coastal Indians were more Caucasian in appearance than Asiatic. Certainly the English knew what a Chinese or a Hindu looked like, yet American Indians were never compared to these races in appearance. Is it conceivable that the Indian tribes located east of the Mississippi were, in fact, proto-European and not Mongoloid?

In his expedition down through Mississippi and Alabama, Hernando De Soto described the Chickasaw tribes he encountered there as “sunburned white men.” De Soto knew both the Chickasaw and the Aztec, but he never described them as the same race. The Chickasaws were a warlike tribe who eventually became the bane of the Spaniards and the French, but they were uncharacteristically amiable towards Anglo-Saxons. As white settlers gradually moved into the Tennessee Valley and downward into Georgia and Alabama, the Indian tribes in this region proved receptive to Christianity, which lowered the threshold for intermarriages. The Indians were not so happy to see negroes, who they regarded with superstitious angst. Superstitions or not, the Indians exhibited no abhorrence for slavery, and they eagerly bought negroes when they could afford them. The descendants of these Five Civilized Tribes would later ally themselves with the Confederacy. (SEE Donald Davidson’s The Tennessee for a thorough history of the white settlement of the Cumberland Valley and East Tennessee.)

About the time that settlers were trekking into East Tennessee and points south, Thomas Jefferson was dispatching Lewis and Clark to explore the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson gave Lewis one curious task-- to make detailed notes during the journey of any Indian tribe that spoke Welsh. Lewis might have pondered the irony of this situation, for he was a Welshman who spoke no Welsh. To his great amazement, Lewis did indeed discover a tribe of Indians who spoke Welsh: The Mandans. Lewis was much impressed with the Mandans, who he described as tall and handsome and possessing fine manners. They were also the most civilized and hospitable Indians Lewis encountered during the entire expedition.

So are American Indians more European than Asian? The Indians of all tribes could be quite cruel and savage, perhaps even cannibalistic. We know that Indians and alcohol don’t mix, and that intoxication revived old tribal instincts which tore asunder the fine knit of civilized life. White women were particularly vulnerable, and could be forced to endure the humiliating amusements of her brutish captors, as this old photograph so poignantly illustrates…