What could have happened?

"I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me…. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk….He is now a prisoner to the white men….He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceitful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do not steal."

This is the surrender speech made by Chief Black Hawk of the Sac and Fox Indians of Illinois after his defeat in the Black Hawk War and his people's subsequent removal by white troops. per the policy of President Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, 1832.

Why does the emotion in this passage strike such a stark contrast with the greed of white men in rampantly taking land for themselves across the North American continent throughout the early history of America? Why is it so obvious who was right and who was wrong? Why is these injustices never thought of? Why have we not done more to repent and express remorse for these egregious acts? What have we been doing these last one hundred seventy-six years to make up for our mistakes?

This past week the new Prime Minister of Australia, Kevid Rudd, made a public apology to the Aboriginal people of the continent for all the criminal acts and assimilation policies dealt upon them by the government during most of the 20th century (forcibly relocating "Stolen Generation" Aboriginal children to white families up until the 1970s!). Has any U.S. president done anything like this?

Another question: Could we have lived in harmony? If white men had been more respectful and peace-loving and sharing, could there have been enough to go around for everyone, Indian and white and black alike? I’d like to find out. Is such a utopia possible? Logistically, I wonder if whites could have settled next to Indians and worked together to create a new, peaceful society. Would there have been enough land and food to ensure happiness? Let’s try to erase history. Let’s go back and fix it. Let’s look for the perfect world.