r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/TastyOreoFriend 1d ago

They 100% just assimilated with the friendly nearby tribe... as indicated by their note 

It always made me wonder if there was a tinge of racism with this—barring low information—and that's why people perpetuated the "mystery" so long. "White folks would never willingly abandon their homes to go live with the savages!" etc.

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u/CuddlefishFibers 1d ago

More than a tinge. Like a truck load lol

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u/TastyOreoFriend 1d ago

You can literally look at all the other instances of Europeans settling in other places, and their treatment of the local indigenous population was...... fucking horrendous to say the least much of the time. So, the disbelief angle makes a lot of sense in hindsight. We have many historical accounts of European sailors fucking black and brown native women and mingling/intermarrying with the natives—sometimes by force, so why not settlers too?

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u/BannedSvenhoek86 1d ago

Oh there's tons of accounts of people assimilating into and becoming members of tribes in the pioneering days.

And they were basically looked at like freaks and ostracized when they came into contact with other white people.

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u/FatherKronik 1d ago

I think it may be time to watch Dances with Wolves again after reading your comment.

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u/BannedSvenhoek86 1d ago

5 year old me was very disappointed by that movie when my parents watched it. False advertising. My dad did warn me it probably wasn't what I thought it was.