When the white man first encountered the Indians, they found the natives lived a peaceful life where the men hunted and fished all the time, the women did all the work and no one paid any taxes. The white men then set out to improve on the situation by civilizing these savages and teaching them how they should live. Within a few years, the Indians were either at war, enslaved, drunk or dead from smallpox.

The Indians, as Columbus called the people he found in the Caribbean, were not from India at all. He called them that because he thought he had landed in the East Indies off the coast of India. At any rate, the name stuck, and since then, so far as most people are concerned, they are called Indians. Some politically correct do-gooders have come up with the name “Native Americans” when speaking about Indians. Indians are no more or no less “native American” than I am. All our ancestors all came here from someplace else. My grandfather was born here in Dayton. My father was born in Nevada, and I was born in Nevada. We all are native Americans. A more suitable name for the Indians living here would have been “American Indians.” What would have been wrong with that?