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.

A Slave to Religion

While researching the subject of gender equality, I decided to read a few online articles to see how fellow bloggers approached the subject. I happened upon a blogger named Larry who uses the nom de plume BiblicalGenderRoles. He looks at the subject from a biblical standpoint in a post called “How to help women learn their place”. There was very little in the way of “help” in his writing. It should have been titled “How to put women in their place”.Needless to say he’s against gender equality in any way, shape, or form. Women are to be silent unless spoken to, modest, meek, submissive, dependent, and for all intents and purposes confined to the home with children. At first I thought it was an attempt at black humor, or that he was a “poe”. But the more I read, the more it became clear he was dead serious. He meant every word about women barely even having second-class status because that’s what his God wanted. But the part I found most amazing in his article was his defense of slavery, even stating that it should be permissible today by claiming “in modern terms – God would not consider it immoral for us to bring back slaves from Muslim nations that we conquer.[i.e. Iraq and/or Afghanistan.]

Grammatical and spelling errors left intact, in his February 23, 2016 post at 4:55 PM he wrote: “Absolutely I think people owning other people (under the right circumstances – not because they kidnapped them) is OK if the country you are in had laws that allowed it. If I thought one person owning another person was immoral than [sic] I would have to throw out my Bible because it says it is moral under the right circumstances. Now I realize for that reason and also the reason that the Bible clearly rejects social and gender equality as we define it today that many people have in fact thrown their Bibles out and rejected Christianity completely.” Gee, I wonder why? 

After writing about a passage regarding slavery in Exodus, BiblicalGenderRoles writes this gem: “So it’s pretty clear in Moses’ Law that God not only allowed slavery, he regulated it. Slaves from pagan nations were automatically regarded as permanent property, and could actually be left as an inheritance to the children of their Hebrew slave owners. Male Hebrews (countryman) could not [be] kept as permanent slaves, but had to be treated rather as hired hands and they had to be freed after six years of service. Female Hebrew slaves could be kept indefinitely, but they could not be sold to foreign people. If a man bought a woman and gave her to his son he had [to] treat her with the full rights of a daughter, and his son had to give her the full rights of a wife.” Keep in mind, women had few if any rights at the time, so giving them the “full rights” of a daughter or wife meant little. BiblicalGenderRoles even acknowledges that Hebrew female slaves could be kept indefinitely. They just could not be sold to foreign people. Being sold to other Hebrews though was perfectly acceptable. Women were on the same level as a man’s livestock. I like how he whitewashes the idea of slaves from pagan nations who were “automatically regarded as permanent property.” And then he wonders why people have “thrown their bibles out.”

Astoundingly he follows it with this explanation of how slaves were to be treated, taken directly from Exodus 21:20-21: “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property…If a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth.” Notice God’s imprecise time-keeping “a day or two” and only mentions destroying an eye or knocking a tooth out. Anything else apparently is fair game. But BiblicalGenderRoles clears the air for us by stating, on no evidence whatsoever, that the slaves of that time were not allowed to be physically abused or murdered. How is striking them with a rod or anything else in a manner that they might not be able to get up for a day or two, but manage to survive, not considered physical abuse? Would BiblicalGenderRoles like to be owned by someone and be beaten bad enough so that they would not be able to move around for a day or two? And to put a little icing on the pro-slavery cake, BiblicalGenderRoles then quotes from Colossians 4:1: “Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven.” BiblicalGenderRoles gloats over scripture that claims we are the slaves of God. Nice to know, isn’t it? Poor slaves don’t get a break here or in the next life. They just trade one tyrant for another.

But BiblicalGenderRoles isn’t done gloating yet…he offers his best defense of slavery by making this pitch aimed at low-income parents needing a ray of financial hope: “In Biblical times it was not uncommon for a father to have to sell one or more his children as slaves to a wealthier family. This served two purposes – it would ensure that his children would be feed [sic] and cared for and often times it would help to pull his own family out of poverty because of the money he would receive in return.” So from this passage, he surmises that the family’s economic well-being outweighs their own offspring. The kids are simply commodities to be bartered away in order to obtain better groceries. ..to hell with any maternal or paternal bond the children may have. This lays bare just how stupid, cruel, and family-unfriendly Christianity is, and how it lacks any morality at all. This is the standard BiblicalGenderRoles wants to reintroduce in the United States because he claims it will make us a better nation to practice biblical slavery. What this proves is that his god is a moral thug, and BiblicalGenderRoles is an even bigger moral thug for defending it.

Any wonder why people view Christianity so negatively when its most ardent defenders justify the indefensible. 

Here is the link if you want to read BiblicalGenderRoles entire post on gender inequality and pro-slavery: http://biblicalgenderroles.com/2016/02/21/how-to-help-women-learn-their-place/

Keep a barf bag handy.