> Groups of humans have denigrated others and felt better than outsiders since the dawn of History.
Well yes they have. That doesn't answer my question about the need or motivation for doing this.
> We still do it today to different societies
That's true, but disagrees with the original comment's claim: "They are simply projections of modern sensibilities to the period of European settlement."
> Humans have a inclination too think that their in group is superior to others
Yes, that's the dictionary definition of racism. The result of which is often justification to oppress the "inferior" group.
Apache had plenty of knowledge of agriculture. They lived in an agricultural world and interacted with people who were agriculturalists, and even practiced herding (a form of agriculture).
Moreover, it's wise to consider the context of gory incidents described in popular culture. This all took place against a backdrop of devastating war that captured the imagination of 19th century popular media. This is one of the periods of colonization where we can clearly point to genocide in the sense that total eradication was unambiguously a political goal and you could get money by bringing a native scalp/head into a government office.
Despite that, as someone who's worked with primary sources from this period and region, I'll caution you that particularly lurid descriptions of atrocities are often both exaggerated and cherry-picked.
As an aside, the Apache in particular were very well organized as far as first nations go and at the height of their power had thousands of warriors with fairly modern light weaponry. We have sources from the Mexican American war about Mexican commanders refusing to head off American troops because they were more worried about native forces than the Americans. That's also why article XI of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was such an important point for the negotiations.
Agriculture is an incredibly broad word that includes both crop and animal based production. Feel free to check the dictionary of your choice (webster, oed, etc), an academic definitions paper like [1], or even the relevant wiki page. You're defining cultivation instead.
And not to belabor the point, but the Navajo and the Apache also engaged in crop cultivation. It was simply less important for them in the 19th century, so it's not what I mentioned first.
All you've done here is to repeat lies and propaganda popularized back then.
You would need to explain why so many parts of the US Constitution are based on Iroquois Confederacy law if Native Americans are so barbaric. And you'd need to explain why the Iroquois Confederacy is still in operation today - one of the oldest participatory democracies on earth. Having been founded in 1142, it makes European countries look far far behind in terms of civilization.
Read about what Europeans did to the native populations. Significantly more brutal, especially early on. Entire tribes were wiped out. Considering how everything turned out, I'd say the Europeans fit the definition of savages much more.
