No Happy Thanksgiving

In 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations.

The Declaration of Independence, refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages"
George Washington, in 1783 compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."
Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "We shall destroy all of them."

Theodore Roosevelt defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway." He also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it.

Taken from here