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* Section 8 * Who were the more violent ? the Europeans or the Native Americans? |
Sections of the "American Holocaust" :
Intro,
1,
2
3
4
5
6,
7,
[ 8 ]
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* Section 8 * Who were the more violent ? the Europeans or the Native Americans? |
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Sections of the "American Holocaust" :
Intro,
1,
2
3
4
5
6,
7,
[ 8 ]
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The Violence of the Civilized "Christians" : (Based on the theology laid out in the previous section . . .] Once integrated into Christian thinking, the monstrous races came to be associated with the lineage of Cain; that is, they were actual creatures whose strangeness was part of their deserved suffering because of their progenitor's sin. Whether Greeks, Romans, or medieval Christians, moreover, the Europeans of all eras considered themselves to be 'chosen' people, the inhabitants of the center and most civil domain of human life. The further removed from that center anything in nature was, the further it was removed from God, from virtue, and from the highest essence of humanity. Thus, the fact that the monstrous races were said to live on the distant extremes of the earthly realm was one crucial element in their radical otherness, and also in their being defined as fundamentally unvirtuous and base. So great was their alienation from the world of God's-or the gods'-most favored people, in fact, that well into late antiquity they commonly were denied the label of 'men.' |
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The "savages" way of viewing and fighting War:
This probably is seen most dramatically in the comparative Indian and European attitudes toward warfare. We already have observed one consequence of the differing rituals that were conventional to Europe and the Americas in Montezuma's welcoming Cortés into Tenochtitlán in part because Cortés claimed he was on a mission of peace; and one inviolable code of Meso--American warfare was that it was announced, with its causes enumerated, in advance. Cortés's declared intentions of peace, therefore, were supposed by Montezuma to be his true intentions. A similar attitude held among Indians in much of what is now the United States. Thus, as a seventeenth-century Lenape Indian explained in a discussion with a British colonist:
"We are minded to live at peace: If we intend at any time to make war upon you, we will let you know of it, and the reasons why we make war with you; and if you make us satisfaction for the injury done us, for which the war is intended, then we will not make war on you. And if you intend at any time to make war on us, we would have you let us know of it, and the reasons for which you make war on us, and then if we do not make satisfaction for the injury done unto you, then you may make war on us, otherwise you ought not to do it." {p. 109}
The following are examples of what defenders of Columbus say about Native Americans. The web site below paints a glorious picture of Columbus, and a gruesome picture of the Native population of America. His sources, however, with one exception, are many decades old. And his claim of unanimity for his views proves either ignorance or dishonesty on his part. CatholicEducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0024.html
"In all their writings on the Aztecs, the Inquisition-loving Spanish -- like most Western writers who have followed them -- expressed indignant horror at their enemies' religious rituals involving human sacrifice. And indeed, the Aztec toll in that regard was great. Perhaps as many as 20,000 enemy warriors, captured in battle, were sacrificed each year during the peak of the Aztecs' brief reign as the lords of central Mexico. (Yet, what one conquistador said of the reports of Inca human sacrifice may hold true here as well: 'These and other things are the testimony we Spaniards raise against these Indians,' wrote Pedro de Cieza de Leon in 1553, 'endeavoring by these things we tell of them to hide our own shortcomings and justify the ill treatment they have suffered at our hands. . . } I am not saying that they did not make sacrifices . . . but it was not as it was told.' " Las Casas claimed the same was true of the reports from Mexico -- 'the estimate of brigands,' he claimed, 'who wish to find an apology for their own atrocities,' -- and modern scholars have begun to support the view that the magnitude of sacrifice was indeed greatly exaggerated by the New World's conquerors, just as it was, for the same reasons, by Western conquerors in other lands.' Even if the annual figure of 20,000 were correct, however, in the siege of Tenochtitlán the invading Spaniards killed twice that many people in a single day -- including (unlike Aztec sacrifice) enormous numbers of innocent women, children, and the aged. And they did it day after day after day, capping off the enterprise, once Tenochtitlán had been razed, by strip-searching their victims, before killing them, for any treasure they may have concealed. . . Lastly, they burned the precious books salvaged by surviving Aztec priests, and then fed the priests to Spanish dogs of war. { p. 79--80 } Even if it were true that Native Americans killed many fellow Native Americans, that didn't prevent the population from growing to huge numbers, almost all of whom died following the "discovery" of the Americas by the benevolent Christians who came that the Native Americans might be "saved". home1.gte.net/res0k62m/columbus.htm by Eduardo H. Galeano (Civilization of the American Indian, Vol 186), by Russell Thornton An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Alexander Brown In a lengthy article at http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html, "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?" Guenter Lewy questions the numbers of Native American lives that were taken, and tries to downplay the use of the terms holocaust and genocide, on the grounds of the intentions of those responsible for those deaths, arguing one might say for a verdict of "manslaughter" over "first degree murder". I have not read the paperback by John Eidsmoe, Columbus & Cortez: Conquerors for Christ and judging by the review below, by one of the most prolific of Amazon Customer reviewers, I don't shouldn't. "Worse than I could have imagined, December 4, 2005 Reviewer: Steven Mason (California) - "This book argues that just because the European conquerors did 'bad' things, that doesn't mean they weren't good Christians. The author never gets specific about the atrocities committed by the conquering Christians (enslavement, rape, torture, murder); he only vaguely, infrequently, and euphemistically refers to them as 'sins' and 'errors,' and he rationalizes that Columbus and other conquerors were simply normal for the time period in which they lived. Here is a short summary from the first section of the author's perspective on Columbus: 1) Columbus was not obsessed with gold; he just had a natural and healthy desire for wealth. Besides, Columbus needed capital to finance his voyages, so his need for gold can be compared to a modern academic needing a research grant. 2) Columbus didn't steal land from Native Americans because they didn't have any real (i.e. European) concept of ownership. 3) Columbus made slaves of free people, but that was okay because slavery was widespread in the world, and besides, Christians could enslave other people as long as they weren't Christians. 4) It is true that Columbus forced Christianity and western culture on Native Americans, but as a result, millions of people are in heaven. Need I say more?" Ray Dubuque takes on Columbus "hero worship" in one of the most Italian American communities in the country, his very own East Haven, Conn. See New Haven Register article on Columbus Day celebrations. He wants to replace them with "Native American Appreciation Day". Here is a link to a newspaper article about Ray Dubuque's efforts to correct the teaching of one school district (his own) about Columbus: New Haven Register article. Birthrates before and after implimentation of legislation introduced by then Republican Congressman George W. H. Bush, designed to reduce the number of children born to poor groups, including provisions to sterilize young Native American women without their knowledge and/or consent:
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| Sections of the "American Holocaust" :
Intro,
1,
2
3
4
5
6,
7,
[ 8 ]
|
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