Massacres and godlessness

Religious folks assert that the recent massacres in the US are the direct result of our late 20^th and early 21^st century godlessness.  Given the history of massacres in this country, however, perhaps we ought to extend the period of godlessness all the way to the beginnings of the nation.  Native Americans know perfectly well that the 18^th and 19^th centuries are not exempt from massacres.  Let's forget Lord Jeffrey Amherst's 18^th century eagerness to eradicate an entire tribe of Native Americans during Pontiac's Rebellion.  Instead, consider the Camp Grant Massacre in 1871 Arizona, where 144 Apaches who were under the protection of the US Army were slaughtered.  During the various "Indian Wars," massacres of Native Americans were so common as to be unremarkable.  In peace as in wars, Native Americans were a favorite target for massacres.  But then, so were immigrants.  Witness the Bloody Monday massacre of 1855 in Louisville, Kentucky, when members of the Know-Nothing Party attacked Irish Catholic immigrants, and killed more than twenty of them.  Some of the massacres of "aliens" were disguised as anti-labor/anti-socialist massacres, as in the Lattimer Massacre in1897 Pennsylvania, but the coincidence of southern or eastern European workers trying to organize and a WASP power class denying them the opportunity is just too obvious.  African Americans also were targets, as in the Colfax Massacre of 1874, in Colfax, Louisiana, when more than 100 people were killed.  But massacres in the US really know no ethnic or racial boundary.  The worst school massacre in US history?  Not Columbine.  Not Virginia Tech.  No—the Bath School Massacre, in Bath, Michigan, which occurred in 1927.  Thirty-eight elementary school kids, along with six adults, died when the school board treasurer objected to a property tax levy.

So if massacres are a sign of godlessness, then America has been godless since its beginning.