No doubt there would have been people at the time who saw that atrocity for what it was, just as there were many who saw slavery for the vile system it was ; but were over-ruled or ignored for a long time.
Who did the over-ruling and ignoring though?
Not governments alone. It is very uncomfortable but important to recognise that generally, those in power are people of their own times, so on the whole reflect prevailing social attitudes. In the 19C those included notions of racial, cultural and religious superiority and rightness. We in 2023 can see those as delusions and very cruel ones at that; but only with the benefit of several generations' collective experiences and hindsight, and at heart are we any better?
The last several decades have seen a string of rather spurious apologies, supposed atonements, something called "decolonising", and the like. These are all well and good in principle though often sink into rather patronising self-abasement, because although they show we now recognise the past wrongs; I think they still fail to show a basic weakness.
That is to fail too often to learn from and act on history, rather than simply learning history. We at least in Europe and the USA see the wrong; but do we see them as somehow remote, having no prescience?
Perhaps it depends on time elapsed since, as well as social attitudes. That buffalo slaughter and its callous rationale were 19C events, but by people who imagined some sort of God-given rights. The horrors of the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao ignored God but are still modern enough, and heavily enough recorded, to have made an impression on our late-20C to early 21C generations who can understand both their rationales and their irrationality. Beyond the 2050s though, will they simply be just more history-book chapters? Seen as horrors, yes, but otherwise too far back for more than platitudinous abstraction and sage head-nodding?
Although the US Army now longer slaughters wildlife and indigenous people in the land its British and European ancestors had seized from its real residents, around the world we see all too many equally vile acts under assumed rationales. So if there is an SW in 150 years' time, will it have users discussing (or merely childishly swearing about) the wrongs of our early 21C as if somehow remote and unconnected with whatever are the wrongs of their times?
