Racism and genocide may have sparked the first school shooting

The first recorded shooting on a school property was in the 1700'sⁱ when Lenape tribesmen were blamed for the killing of the schoolmaster in Pennsylvania and supposedly scalped him. Several children were also killed during this incident.

There is never an excuse for harming a child.

However, if you stop and read the true history of the Lenape, you will have doubts that the incident happened in the way the European colonists claimed. Supposed eyewitness testimony further claimed, two of the Lenape who attacked were elderly gray-haired men, this is highly unlikely since beyond a certain age, elderly did not ride out into battles and skirmishes.

The Lenape were a peaceful hunter-gatherer tribe. The bloodlines were traced through the mother of each family and children were cherished members of the tribe. At first, Europeans were greeted peacefully, welcomed among the Lenape. There was friendship, trade and shared resources. But as with most colonizers, peace and trade wasn't enough, they wanted it all. As Europeans encroached more on Lenape territory, the Lenape were felled by European diseases and one bloody massacre after another. Tens of thousands of new invaders, calling themselves colonists, sent the Lenape into starvation, destroyed land and resources, and the Dutch and English, not the Lenape, instituted Bounty Scalping as proof for the monetary reward for every indigenous person killed.

The “colonists” came in, as they still do, pretended to be friendly and then ravaged the people and resources until the native population could not survive. Humiliated by multiple defeats, the Lenape had no choice but to sign a treaty in hopes of ending the genocide. Threatened with further violence and murder, they were forced to convert to Christianity and agree to a treaty the Europeans had no right to demand, establish or enforce, otherwise, the Lenape would have to leave their rightful homes. The European colonizers had many times over, proven to be untrustworthy and dishonorable. And as feared, these invaders did not keep their promises but instead continued slaughtering innocent indigenous people.

Whether there is any truth to the attack on Enoch Brown and the school children will never be known because history is written by the winner. It is impossible to right the wrongs of the past, but lies against indigenous people are still propagated to this day by government and venerated American institutions, leading to profiling, stereotyping, and racially motivated attacks. Sadly, the indigenous people of this land are so few in number that extinction is all but guaranteed as genocide is still committed against many tribes by the United States and Canadian governments.^iiiiiiv

And sadly, this same societal establishment that brutalizes indigenous people of all lands they interact with has done nothing of purpose to stop school shootings or halt the violence committed against children. Only truth can end violence.

Mental Health, Psychology, Racism,

iHistory of School Shootings in the United States | K12 Academics

ii10 Atrocities Committed Against Native Americans In Recent History - Listverse

iiiThe Pope’s Non-Apology to Indigenous Canadians Furthers a History of Abuse - YES! Magazine (yesmagazine.org)

ivHow Canada committed genocide against Indigenous Peoples, explained by the lawyer central to the determination (theconversation.com)