User:WaitingforGodot/indians

European Arrival and encounter with the "Savage"

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After the Renaissance, Europeans anointed themselves the religion and "advanced culture" that was destined to bring order from chaos, like their own Christian God. When the Europeans arrived in the "New World" the Native inhabitantss were strange to them. Initial opinions ranged regarding the "indians". For example, Spanish scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda was sympathetic to the Native Americans, but Spanish priest Bartolome de Las Casas argued whether the Natives were even human.

Three major reasons were offered for why Indians are not human:

1. They were incapable of embracing reason
2. Their passions and brutality made them slightly better than animals;
3. They could not master the “Arts of civil Life & Humanity.”

Advantages of Europeans (in their eyes):

1. Christianity
2. labor and farming
3. technology
4. education
5. Military might and power
6. sheer numbers

Difference in farming

Western farming had biblical aspects, since God directly commanded man to hold dominion over the earth, and to till the earth in Genesis 3.

Most Native American tribes, however did not hold any version of a dominion over the land. The crops they grew were patched naturally, by planting seeds directly into the ground, small hoes cutting only enough space to place the seed. They did not “ enrich[ed] the soil with refuse, dung, or ay other thing, nor do they plough or dig it as we do in England.” Neverthless, their corn reached great heights and “yield is so great that little labor is needed in comparison with what is necessary in England.” In the eyes of many Europeans, this was such a waste. There were vast amounts of land available for farming, but it was untouchable while the Natives inhabited it. Religion came as a strong driving force to convince people to take the land and wipe out the Natives by force. James Knowles argued in 1834 that it was God's plan for America for New Englanders to wipe out the Native Americans, because they would not “obey the great law of God” which “obliged them to become civilized, and to adopt those modes of life which would enable their territory to support the greatest possible number of inhabitants.” Knowles concluded the Americans could achieve this “by saving from ruin the helpless descendants of the savage.”

Christopher Columbus did not have a jolly interaction with the local Native Americans. What is often unknown to most people is the violence, slavery and slave trade, and the religious persecution endorsed by Columbus unto the Natives. Columbus and his men kidnapped, raped, stole, and forced the Natives Americans to search for gold. With tools such as firearms and disease, Columbus brought the population killed four million people on San Salvador in four years. The genocide did not stop after this first four million people; they were only the beginning.

While several Europeans and Christians reported several good relations with the Native locals, such as the Catholics and Anglicans who inhabited Maryland, the vast negative opinion and view of the Native Americans took a larger and stronger hold from both secular and religious groups. Even the famous John Smith had many bad things to comment about the Native Americans. While Smith describes their characteristics (brown, strong, agile, cleanly shaven, etc) he nevertheless calls them all “savage.” They decorated themselves with barbaric ornaments and tattoos. Their methods of building and living greatly differed from European traditions. But what interested Smith the most about the Natives was their form of government and religion. He commented “there is yet in Virginia no place discovered to bee so Savage in which the Savages have not religion...But their chiefe God they worship is the Divell [Devil].”

Interestingly, some colonists deeply enjoyed the Native way of life and fully embraced it. On of the reasons why colonists, who either ran away or refused to be free from capture, was because the Native Americans enjoyed a “most perfect freedom, the ease of living, [and] the absence of those cares and corroding solicitudes which to often prevail us all.” Stories from the Puritans living amongst the Natives did not portray them in a positive light. For instance, the letter of Mary Rowlandson, 1676, is a great example the portrays the key differences the Puritans had with the Native Americans than the other settlers. Rowlandson is taken prisoner amongst the local Natives and introduced into a hellish world for many weeks. She proclaims her faith got her through the struggle until she was ransomed. She reported the following in her book Soveraignty and Goodness of God (1682), “I may say, that as none knows what it is to fight and pursue such an enemy as this, but they that have fought and pursued them: so none can imagine what it is to be captivated, and enslaved to such atheisticall, proud, wild, cruel, barbarous, brutish (in one word) diabolical creatures as these, the worst of the heathen.”