This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Coyote_Havoc on 2025-11-27 19:31:15+00:00.

They thought we were savages. They didn't know how right they were.

Near hairless bipedal lifeforms that had just started to unlock the secrets of fusion, still threatening other factions of their own race with fission weapons while using pathetic land and air based machines in war, trade and transportation.

Their praise for our attempts to travel beyond our world were backhanded.

"How nice, you put a cloth on your nearest orbiting body."

"You sent robots to your nearest planets to study them? How clever of you."

"You must be so proud of that probe you sent beyond your star system."

They offered us trade, technology far more advanced than we had ever imagined, and just like the Lenape before, we sold our world for their baubles and trinkets. Like the Wampanoag before, some fought back against their rampant and agressive colonization of our world. Like the Cherokee before, we were forced into exile, onto reservations in Oklahoma.

The irony was bitter. Some called it karma, divine retribution for how we had treated those we had colonised. There inlay the problem. It wasn't just Americans that were forced into exile, it was every human packed into an area just under 70,000 square miles. Attrition at its most heinous, we were being exterminated through cramped and squalid conditions as well as starvation.

After all, we were just savages.

When the war came they pressed what remained into service, what better way to annihilate a problematic species then to have them fight your wars. We fought, we were not given a choice in the matter, and we pulled back the veil to give them a glimpse of how Savage we were. Canadian war crimes, Chinese deception strategy, fanatical Philippine resistance, Vietnamese guerilla tactics, German ruthlessness, the very best examples of the worst humanity had to offer.

Our languages had never been studied by our oppressors, and we used them to great effect relaying information and intent that was little more than garbled gibberish to anyone else listening. We scavenged refuse and waste to create weapons and ammunition that struck fear in the hearts of our oppressors and their enemies alike. Worst of all was our propaganda, rumors of the human savages and their atrocities, using the dead to shield our advance, heads of their commanders decorating long poles, deadly accuracy and unbelievable range by humans who could disappear at will.

Our oppressors enemy, horrified at our brutality, sued for peace. Our oppressors, equally disturbed by our ferocity, permitted us some limited freedoms in the hopes that we wouldn't turn on them.

That was their greatest mistake.

Humanity was allowed to roam our world freely once again and even roam the empire to fulfill our oppressors needs, permitted to take up occupations we had been deemed to primitive to understand before. We were allowed our religions, our languages, our old ways of life. We were limited to labor roles, things that the more common people of their race had been relegated to. Still not worthy to self-govern.

Still too primitive.

Still too backward.

Still too savage.

We learned from our oppressors, their most basic occupations first, things we had known before like food processing, mechanical engineering, coding, jobs that were now seen as unacceptable for their race to do. Let the humans do the labors while we enjoy the product of their labor.

Humanity had a word for that which our oppressors hadn't bothered to learn. A word refering to the Slavic people, "Sclavus" in midieval Latin or "Sklabos" in Byzantium Greek.

Slave.

It burned in our hearts and minds. We who had forced a peace against their enemies. We who had suffered so much indignity at their hands. We whom our only home had been stolen from us.

They believed us to be savages, it was time for them to learn how savage humanity could be.

It started with their food supply, across their empire mysterious accidents began to occur. One incident in particular involved wooden shoes, an inside joke for humanity, an indication of how primitive we still were to the oppressors. Other malfunctions followed, their transport vessels would begin a jump laden with cargo and fail to materialize at their expected arrival. Communications systems would cut out for seconds and even hours. Power generation would cut out for a moment and had to be rerouted due to damaged equipment, even naval vessels on long range patrols would fail to check in, and were assumed lost when nothing turned up.

The oppressors learned too late that our primitive incompetence was in fact sabotage and rebellion. They had grown to complacent and too comfortable with how things were. They had forgotten how to grow and process their food, they had forgotten how to maintain their equipment and vehicles, they had forgotten much of what it had taken to get to where they were.

They had forgotten how savage humanity could be.

We traded their necessities to them to gain their trust. We traded their convenience to gain power. We traded their comfort for their reliance on us.

Then we started to take.

Earth first, it wasn't like they had anything to lose from it. Then our star system, after all there were asteroids to mine and planets that could be terraformed for agriculture. Then we took the next closets systems, we had the best of intentions to produce for our masters. Then we expanded again, and they tried to resist, fighting against their own technology and their own weapons. We adapted further, introducing new weapons, new strategies and tactics which made them recoil in horror. By the time the treaty was signed, they were limited to their cradle world and the systems adjacent to it.

We didn't annihilate them, we didn't isolate them either. We still trade with them, and relations have improved over the centuries. We have advanced together as equals and faced various enemies as brothers in arms. From the outside, it would appear as if both of us had always treated each other with respect and dignity.

But when humanity is threatened, we ask our former oppressors to speak on our mutual history. Always the same way, in the same method as our shared history began.

"We thought they were savages. We didn't know how right we were."