enlightened ones merely champion better treatment for Indians while stopping
short of suggesting that our society might still benefit from American Indian
ideas.
Even if no Natives remained among us, however, it would still be important
for us to understand the alternatives foregone, to remember the wars, and to
learn the unvarnished truths about white-Indian relations. Indian history is the
antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that
European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the
United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in
the world. We must not forget this—not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to
understand and to learn, that we might not wreak harm again. We must temper
our national pride with critical self-knowledge, suggests historian Christopher
Vecsey: “The study of our contact with Indians, the envisioning of our dark
American selves, can instill such a strengthening doubt.”^124 History through red
eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering
the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys.