White Invaders Injustices to the Indigenous People

      

        In some recent online videos about the history of the American West, the content creators quoted from diaries written by soldiers who served in the U.S. Cavalry during the mid to late 1800s. During this encroachment into Native territory, the soldiers constantly use the word "hostiles" to describe the Natives they encounter. They seem mystified. 

Now, what would make those people hostile? 

        It is bad enough U.S. history books are filled with derogatory references to Natives as - Indians, redskins, injuns, heathens, savages, pagans, and barbarians. Even our Declaration of Independence refers to them as "merciless indian savages." But to be baffled by their hostility? It never seems to occur to those troopers that the Natives are hostile precisely because those troopers are invading their land, taking their food, and killing their family members. If Natives regularly pushed their way into the various forts the US military had established along what was called the frontier and were taking off with all the goods they could carry, how would the troopers react? Would they be hostile toward people who did that to them? Why were the people who already lived on that land considered the invading culture? Why were they required to give up their land just because white intruders under their self-appointed Manifest Destiny decided they owned whatever they could see or grab? In the United States, white trespassers still occupy Native lands.

        "Where did they come from?"

            For example, here is the most likely scenario that happened along the coastal area of what became Virginia on May 13, 1607, when a Powhatan native came across the first English invaders. In basic sign language, this occurred:

Native: Who are you?

Immigrant: We're here to build a settlement named after our king, called Jamestown, on this land.

Native: Why?

Immigrant: Is this your land?

Native: Yes, we hunt and fish here. Who is your, uh, king to give you this permission?

Immigrant: We're here on his orders. See, here is the signature of King James.

Native: Is he with you?

Immigrant: No. But his name is on this piece of paper, making it legal.

Native: So, you're guided only by marks on a piece of what looks like thin skin of some sort. The man who made them is not with you. There seems to be just a small group of you with no females, and many are doing nothing...

Immigrant: Most of us are sick.

Native (looking around): Unaccompanied, seems to be a minor bunch who are in poor health. To do anything else would be inhumane...so, alright, you can stay here for a while. We'll send over some food. The water in that river is no good...too salty. There is a spring not far that way with good water. The trees provide plenty of cover for protection - and for heat and cooking. We'll check up on you.

Immigrant: We can never repay you.

And they never did. As a matter of fact, they took it away from the natives.

         The same scenario played out on November 11, 1620 (per the Julian Calendar), near what became Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. There, the circumstances were even more problematic and dire for the Pilgrims. (They had put the 'grim' in their religious identification due to their own intolerance for other viewpoints, which is why they were now seeking a new homeland.) Winds had blown them off course, so they did not get to where they were attempting to reach in the "New World." Now, it was almost winter, and they had used up most of their supplies to get to this uncharted place. The Wampanoags were the only reason the Pilgrims survived the first winter. The Pilgrims had tried to pray their food, safety, care, and well-being into existence. But, whatever they were praying to took no note of them. The Natives took pity on the strange invaders and extended to them far more "Christianity" and Christian character than the Pilgrims ever reciprocated.

        "Our king and our church said we own you people now...and your land, too!"

        Meanwhile, down in the territory being vandalized by the ever-so-compassionate conquistadors of Spain, St. Augustine had been established in 1565 as a Catholic mission. It was a foothold for the Spanish conquest of the territory. To really get things off on the wrong foot, since 1513, there had been lots of barbaric treatment of - and violent contact with - the local natives, like the Timucuans and the Calusas, as the conquistadors fought their way into this new land. This would foment an even more hostile living environment that would be the future of interaction between the two cultures in what became Florida.

    The conquistadors had the noxious habit of enslaving any person who fell into their hands because the church ruled that they could. The people they met were heathens. They were not to be afforded God's mercy and treated as equals. They were sub-humans in the eyes of the church because they didn't worship the same god, they spoke a weird language, and they had different customs. How dare they?

     The Spaniards abused them in every way they could: they used them as targets, to ride on like animals, and forced at swordpoint to mine metals or ores out of the ground, or plant and farm crops. The Natives were not malleable at all and resisted every effort of the Spaniards to subjugate them. All that was left was to kill the indigenous men and rape their women. That would spread their "friendly-to-whites-only" diseases throughout the local population, and then they'd just wait for nature to take its course. The same callous attitude was displayed toward the indigenous by the English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese as well.

    Naturally, they couldn't have known that the diseases they carried, that they were immune to from centuries of living in Europe, these people had no defenses against. Even a simple cold was lethal to many of the indigenous. But the invaders didn't know, nor did they care. They assumed the Indigenous land was theirs for the taking, so if the inhabitants got the sniffles and died, then the white invaders could justify it by saying, "It was an act of God and was meant to be!" 

        That is what made the butchery, cruelty, and hostility so disturbing: the cold-blooded treatment of all Natives by these invaders based solely on their holy book, the Bible, which they all claimed guided them. Since these indigenous people were different in enough ways, the invaders asserted that their God's attitude was "do whatever you want to them." Such Christian compassion and charity!

        Enslavement was condoned. Barbarity was approved of. Seizing land without verifying if anyone lived there first was seen as a noble thing to do for their king and god. It spread their gospel...while spilling blood everywhere it was carried and preached. It didn't matter that the natives couldn't understand a word of what the Spaniards were babbling at them. The church leaders had told them all should hear the word of God. That meant the monks and priests with them read it out of their books - because of course God would intercede and make the natives understand Latin in their own language - so they had to stay and be quiet, then profess to grasp and accept whatever was shouted at them. When that failed over and over and over, the church ordered them slaughtered. Better no heathens at all, especially those who heard the word and rejected it. This scenario was played out everywhere these European Christian-influenced invaders set foot...the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India, Singapore, China, Hawaii...etc. In a little over 100 years, North, Central, and South America became the testing ground for all the appalling and criminal actions these invaders could think up in dealing with a new race of people. If it was the wrong thing to do, these invaders did it.

        The Tainos couldn't understand why the Columbus crew needed so much material draped over them.

        

        When Columbus and his followers stumbled upon the Caribbean Islands and the Americas, he and the Spanish hooligans who came after him instituted a bloody legacy reputedly established much earlier by the Vikings. In those Norse legends, Leif Ericssen and Eric the Red fought men called skraelings in their encounters far to the west of their Northern European homelands. Not to be outdone, the conquistadors came up with a variety of ways to terrorize anyone they encountered that would humble whatever violence the Vikings unleashed.

The British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese enhanced that blood-thirsty reputation when they got to the New World. In many cases, they were almost giddy about their barbaric treatment whenever they came in contact with the indigenous people.

    And then, on top of all that, the hypocritical Americans insisted on calling the native people they encountered while pushing westward into their lands...savages!

       And yet some people don't think any reparations are owed to the indigenous people, to those who are descendants of the African Slave Trade, and to the descendants of the Asian 'Coolie' Trade. How in the hell can any person look at the information that is currently available - information that white people recorded without any embarrassment - and not think these abused people are due SOMETHING for all they have suffered and been subjected to at the hands of our Caucasian ancestors? To deny them that is a strikingly undiluted example of white privilege.

        The people who endured the barbarism of that white privilege deserve justice. It is long, long overdue.

Why celebrate Columbus Day?

                                           Left to right, Niña, Santa Maria (Columbus' ship) and the Pinta

             In the early morning hours of October 12, 1492 a lookout named Rodrigo de Triana shouted what every sailor aboard the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria had been hoping to hear for 33 days since leaving the Canary Islands far to the east. The three ships had sailed from Spain on August 3^rd and the men were now on the verge of mutiny. Except for that quick stop for provisions in the Canary’s; after over two months of seeing nothing but the broad expanse of water in front of them, the men wanted to return home, any shortcut to Asia be damned.

“Land, land,” Rodrigo shouted from the crow’s nest of the Pinta. The soft white moon-lit sand of one of the southeasterly islands of the Bahamas beckoned. No one knows exactly which one it was; most often Samana Cay or Watling Island are chosen as possibilities. Rodrigo was also quite excited because Spain’s king Ferdinand and queen Isabella had offered a pension of 10,000 maravedis (around $1,300) for life to the first man who sighted land. At the time, seamen made about 12,000 maravedis in a good year so it was a sizable amount for any of them. Rodrigo was most likely smacking his lips in anticipation of the reward. But rather than compensate the lookout as promised by Spain’s rulers, Christopher Columbus, leader of the expedition, claimed he saw lights on the horizon a few hours previously and kept the reward for himself. It is not recorded if anyone questioned him about how he could see those distant lights, yet they were missed by all the other sailors, and why he never mentioning the sighting to anyone until after Rodrigo’s detecting the shoreline. This glimpse of Columbus tells us a lot about the man who would be crowned Admiral of the Ocean, and provides insight into his dishonesty and cunning.

                            The arrival of Columbus' ships as seen from the Taino's vantage

The natives he was about to meet would have been better off wiping out the ship’s crews as they came ashore. Those who lived on the island swam out to meet the newcomers as their boats neared the beach. The Taínos, as they were dubbed by the Spaniards, were part of a larger group of island natives called Arawaks, and were described as “naïve and free with their possessions” offering to share all they had with Columbus and his crewmen. They also discover the Taínos women were very free with sex as well. Because of small gold ornaments they wore in their ears and noses, several were taken prisoner and ordered by Columbus to lead him to the gold’s source. Columbus’ true reason for his voyage was revealed. It was not for discovery; it was for human and mineral plunder.

          Columbus claims the new land for God and Spain completely ignoring the desires of the natives who live there (seen in unauthentic dress in the background).

We now know that Columbus was not the first European to detect the American continents and nearby islands. Vikings had beaten him to it by around 500 years and there is evidence that other cultures and seafaring men may have stumbled upon the New World in the decades and centuries prior to Columbus’ voyage. Certainly what Columbus’ visit did was set in motion the annihilation of millions of natives who had flourished throughout the Americas. And Columbus’ justification? This is from his diary: "It was the Lord who put it into my mind, (I could feel His hand upon me), the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures.......

I am a most noteworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous Presence.

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.
It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah* had prophesied......(probably Isaiah 40:22.
In this scripture passage the prophet Isaiah made reference to "the circle of the earth.) No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Savior, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy service. The working out of all things has been assigned to each person by our Lord, but it all happens according to His sovereign will, even though He gives advice. Oh, what a gracious Lord, who desires that people should perform for Him those things for which He holds Himself responsible! Day and night, moment by moment, everyone should express their most devoted gratitude to Him."

Yes, god through the bible told Columbus to go west. And once there, god and the bible were the justification for all sorts of heinous acts committed by the Spaniards in service to Columbus. Since the natives had no recognizable religion, they were considered fair game for anything. A young priest named Bartolome de las Casas recorded what happened to the natives in their interactions with Columbus’ crew of one of his later voyages. The Spaniards “grew more conceited every day and refused to walk, so they rode on the backs of the Indians, or were carried in hammocks by the Indians running in relays. They thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and cutting slices off of them to test the sharpness of their blades.” In another passage he wrote about how “two of these so called Christians met two Indian boys each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.”

                                           The Natives were slaughtered for no reason at all by their Spanish overlords.

                Natives by the thousands were rounded up and forced at sword point to dig for gold in mines while the women were put to work cultivating fields of crops for the Spaniards. Most died within six to eight months. This kind of treatment set the stage for the English, Portuguese, Dutch and French invaders whose treatment of the natives they met was just as harsh as the Spanish. In most every case, they claimed God wanted them to kill all the Native Americans found over here. The land was deeded to Christians and would soon be theirs. One English governor put it succinctly when he wrote “Sickness [in the Indians] was the physical manifestation of the will of God.” In less than 300 years, the American continent’s original inhabitants had been reduced by almost 90%.

                If Christopher Columbus should be remembered for anything, it is not for his guidance, compassion, and honesty, since he deliberately misled his own men with a phony ship’s log so the men didn't know how far they’d traveled on that first voyage. Plus, he had vastly underestimated the circumference of the earth figuring it was about one fourth its actual size. He contemptuously kept the reward for discovering land from the man who actually had sighted it, and his mission turned out to be to claim any land for Spain through God, plundering the new land for riches and capturing the natives as slaves, or just out and out killing them in the name of Christ. He should be remembered for what his actions, grounded in the belief that God has ordained it, unleashed on an unsuspecting population. Genocide.

                Nothing says a religion is true more than death and destruction meted out by its believers.