Thanksgiving or Genocide. = The Politics of Conquest: Conquistadores and their Views

[L. Coyote]

Happy Thanksgiving my arse! Are we unwittingly celebrating the worst genocide in human history?

One aspect of conquest is the need for myth after the bloody facts and genocides.

We do not know how many Native Americans died in the conquests of the Americas;
estimates range widely and the number may be 60 million.
The views of the conquerors enabled the genocide.
Compare these quotes to current political rhetoric of war.

Conquistadores and their Views (mods: with permission) = http://jqjacobs.net/writing/intgrstd.html#views

QUOTATIONS:

1637 - Following the burning of the Pequots by the Puritans Cotton Mather expressed gratefulness to the Lord that they had
"sent 600 heathen souls to hell."

1644 - Order from General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay:
"noe Indian shall come att any towne or howse of the English uppon the Lords day, except to attend the public meetings; neither shall they come att any English howse uppon any other day in the week, but shall first knocke att the dore, and after leave given, yo come in..."

1782 - Brackenridge "... the animals vulgarly called indians."
Ben Franklin observed that rum should be regarded as the agent of Providence
"to extripate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth."

Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri:
"the whites should supplant the indian because Whites use the land according to the intentions of the Creator."

Contact population estimate for USA is 12 to 25 million.
1850 Native American population was 250,000.

Earlier conquests by Spain:

Pedro de Alvarado (in a letter to Cortes):
"...I knew them to have such a bad will towards service to His Majesty, and for the good and peace of this land, I burned them and ordered the city burned and leveled to the ground, because it is so dangerous and so strong that it seems more like a house of thieves than of people."

Bernal Diaz del Castillo: Most interest in conquest narratives is given to the Diaz account, "True History of the Conquest of New Spain." Diaz's kinsman Diego Velasquez had conquered Cuba so he set sail along with "some of us gentlemen and persons of quality." Diaz sailed to America with Pedro de Arias in 1514. He participated in two explorations of the Mayan Yucatan peninsula and then in 1519 sailed with conqueror Hernando Cortez to Mexico. Diaz began writing after 1550, but only completed his account in 1568 after being angered by an account he read, that of Lopez de Gamora. Fray Alonso de Ramon published a revised version of Diaz's first manuscript in 1632 in Spain. In this century the "true manuscript" of the "true history" has come to light, with two different versions of the "true history" emerging. One copy now belongs to the Guatemalan government, the other belongs to a Diaz descendant and came to light in Spain in 1932.

On arriving in Cuba: "On landing we went at once to pay our respects to the Governor, who was pleased at our coming, and promised to give us Indians as soon as there were any to spare."

On leaving Cuba in 1517: "In order that our voyage should proceed on right principles we wished to take with us a priest... We also chose for the office of overseer (in His Majesty's name) a soldier... so that if God willed that we should come on rich lands, or people who possessed gold or silver or pearls or any other kind of treasure, there should be a responsible person to guard the Royal Fifth."
"... and trusting the luck we steered towards the setting sun, knowing nothing of the depth of water, nor of the currents, nor of the winds which usually prevail in that latitude, so we ran great risk..."

On discovery of Yucatan: "When we had seen the gold and houses of masonry, we felt well content at having discovered such a country."

Regarding the second expedition from Cuba to Yucatan: "As the report had spread that the lands were very rich, the soldiers and settlers who possessed no Indians in Cuba were greedily eager to go to the new land..."

On returning to Cuba: "When the governor saw the gold we had brought .... amounted in all to twenty thousand dollars, he was well contented. Then the officers of the King took the Royal Fifth..."
"When Governor Diego Velasquez understood how rich were these newly discovered lands, he ordered another fleet, much larger than the former one be sent off, ..."

Of the expedition to Mexico: "As soon as Hernando Cortes had been appointed General he began to search for all sorts of arms, guns, powder, and crossbows, and every kind of warlike stores which he could get together, ..."
"... Then he ordered two standards and banners to be made, worked in gold with the royal arms and the cross on each side with a legend which said, 'Comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Cross with true faith, and through it we shall conquer.' "
"...Juan Sedeno passed for the richest soldier in the fleet, for he came in his own ship with the mare, and a negro and a store of cassava bread and salt pork, and at that time horses and negroes were worth their weight in gold,..."

Regarding the first battle fought under Cortes in the New World, against the people of Tabasco: "... we doctored the horses by searing their wounds with the fat from the body of a dead Indian which we cut up to get out the fat, and we went to look at the dead lying on the plain and there were more than eight hundred of them, the greater number killed by thrusts, the others by cannon, muskets and crossbows, and many were stretched on the ground half dead..... The battle lasted over an hour....we buried the two soldiers that had been killed....we seared the wounds of the others and of the horses with the fat of the Indian, and after posting sentinels and guards, we had supper and rested.
"...These were the first vassals to render submission to His Majesty in New Spain."

Regarding first contact with the Mexica-Aztecas: "It happened that one of the soldiers had a helmet half gilt but somewhat rusty...and (he) said that he wished to see it as it was like one that they possessed which had been left to them by their ancestors of the race from which they had sprung...that their prince Montezuma would like to see this helmet. So it was given to him, and Cortes said to them that as he wished to know whether the gold of this country was the same as that we find in our rivers, they could return the helmet filled with grains of gold..."
"...the chief brought back the helmet full of fine grains of gold, just as they are got out of the mines, and this was worth three thousand dollars. This gold in the helmet was worth more to us than if it had contained twenty thousand dollars, because it showed that there were good mines there."

Regarding the palace in which Montezuma quartered his Spanish guests: "There was a rumor and we had heard the story that Montezuma kept a treasure of his father Axayaca in that building, it was suspected that it might be in this chamber which had been closed up and cemented only a few days before. ... and the door was secretly opened. When it was opened Cortes and some of his Captains went in first, and they saw such a number of jewels and slabs of gold and chalchihuites and other riches, that they were quite carried away and did not know what to say about such wealth...I took it for certain that their could not be another such store of wealth in the whole world."

Bartolome de las Casas sailed to the "New World" in 1502. In 1514 he renounced his land and slaves in Cuba and began campaigning for Indian rights. In Spain in 1515 Cardinal Cisneros entitled him "Universal Protector of the Indians," a special prosecutor designation. He took vows in the Dominican Order in 1523 and conducted missionary work in Nicaragua. Due to the Nicaraguan Native population decimation he transferred to Guatemala in 1534. In 1537 he affected Christian proselytism in the unexplored Tuzulatlan (Vera Paz) region, thereby protecting the population from enslavement and the conquest of their lands in that Spanish law prohibited enslaving and disenfranchising Catholics. He returned to Spain in 1547 to defend Indian rights and seek abolition of slavery before the Spanish Court. In 1552 he published his Brevisima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias, painting the picture of the Spanish extermination of native populations. In 1583 the Relacion was translated to English. Referring to the conquest of the islands of Cuba and Hispanola de las Casas wrote:

"The Almighty seems to have inspired these people with a weakness and softness of Humour like that of Lambs: and the Spaniards who have given them so much trouble, and fallen upon them so fiercely, resemble savage Tigers, Wolves and Lions, when enraged with pressing hunger. They applied themselves forty years together wholly to the massacring the poor wretches that inhabited the islands; putting them to all kinds of unheard of torments and punishments.....insomuch that this island which before the arrival of the Europeans, contained about three million people, is now reduced to less than three hundred.....They laid wagers with one another, who should cleave a man down with his sword most dexterously at one blow; or who should take his head from his shoulders most cleverly; or who should run a man through after the most artificial manner: they tore away Children out of their Mothers arms, and dashed out their brains against the rocks..."

Translation from the Codice Franciscano of the Royal Decree relative to the General History of the things of New Spain:
"The King. - Mr. Martin Enriquez, our Viceroy, Governor and Captain General of New Spain, and President of our Royal Audience thereof. From some letters which you have written us we have understood that Brother Bernardino of Sahagun of the Order of Saint Francis has composed a Universal History of the most noted things of New Spain, which is a very copious computation of the rites, ceremonies and idolatries which the indians used in their infidelity, divided into twelve books and in the Mexican language; and though it is understood that the zeal of said Brother Bernardino has been good, and with the wish that his work bear fruit, it does not seem convenient that this book be printed or distributed in any form in those parts, for (some origins of consideration) several reasons; and so we command you that after you receive this our decree, with much diligence you procure those books and without there remaining original or some translation, you send them with good security on the first occasion to our Council of the Indies, for their review; and you are given notice to not consent that in any form some person write things which appertain to superstitions and the way of life which these indians had, in any language, because so agrees with service to God, our Lord, and (with) our (service)." Madrid, 22nd of April of 1577. Signed: "I the King"

[L. Coyote]

1. Conquest, Lament and Reconciliation in America

Conquest, Lament and Reconciliation in America
http://jqjacobs.net/writing/intgrstd.html#conquest (w/permission)

    Nothing but flowers and songs of sorrow are left in Mexico and Tlatelolco,
    where once we saw warriors and wise men.
    We know that it is true that we must perish, for we are mortal men.
    You, the giver of life, you have ordained it.
    We wander here and there in our desolate poverty.
    We are mortal men.
    We have seen bloodshed and pain where once we saw beauty and valor.
    We are crushed to the ground; we lie in ruins.
    There is nothing but grief and suffering in Mexico and Tlatelolco
    where once we saw beauty and valor.
    Have you grown weary of your servants?
    Are you angry with your servants, oh giver of life?

    Sixteenth century Nahuatl Poem 

Conquest is not without consequence. The present day conditions, views and issues of the surviving indigenous populations in the Americas have historical and cultural roots. Accurate assessment of causal factors of present day social problems and their effective mitigation can benefit from understanding historical and cultural contexts. This article presents a synopsis of the history of conquest of the aboriginal nations in the United States as prelude to discussion of consequential present day economic, social and health problems. Finally actions to reconcile historical injustice and concurrently allay continuing negative effects of the conquest are proposed.

Between 1778 and 1871 the United States forced from aboriginal occupants the cession of nearly a billion acres of land, much more than half the nation's total territory at that time. United States law rests fundamentally on the right of discovery, the presumption of the right to claim title of lands occupied by Indians. The conquering Europeans rationalized the genocide, enslavement, exploitation, dislocation and marginalization of aboriginal populations and the conduct of invasion, military aggression, dispossession and territorial expansion in the Americas by dehumanizing aboriginal cultures as savage, pagan, ignorant, unclothed, etc.

In the United States territorial conquest and imposition of sovereignty and governance was followed by a coercive assimilation policy combining military force, relocation, containment, dependency, proselytization and cultural regulation, including prohibition of traditional ceremonies and objects. Forced separation, institutionalization and language deprivation of indigenous children in European cultural tradition schools was also affected. In 1887 the Mission schools on reservations were ordered by the Indian commissioner to use English only. Children were castigated for using Native languages. Indigenous people went to jail or were otherwise persecuted for using traditional cultural objects.

Rick Hill (in Sacred Trust: Cultural Obligation of Museums to Native People, Museum, Volume VI No. 3 1988) described this prejudice;

"There was also an assumption that Indians would be better off not being Indians, so that all 'pagan' trappings should be removed to liberate the Indian people from their inferior culture. The religion of the Indian people was attacked, Their objects of religion were removed from the communities."

The conquering culture's view that the Native lifeways could be improved by replacing hunting and gathering with agriculture was incorporated in assimilation policy. The United States government attempted to convert Indian peoples from hunters to farmers. This rationale for territorial dispossession was combined with the tactic of exterminating the bison, the primary resource and an integral part of the lifeways of the Plains Indians and, like the Indians, an impediment to European homesteading. The Indian Citizenship Act was enacted in 1924. Not until 1970 did Indians achieved full voting rights throughout the United States.

While the consequences of past government policy are being recognized today and the issue of the impact of conquest is being addressed, past history remains to be reconciled. Legal concessions have not alleviated racist attitudes. Ethnic and racial identity connoting inferiority is a continuing problem in the United States. For generations Native peoples have endured the dominant culture's perception of the inferiority of their lifeways, traditions, language and cultural and spiritual values. This historical fact is not without present consequences. The conquest continues to have economic and social ramifications.

A legacy of native dispossession and disenfranchisement is economic dependency on government. In the United States poverty rates and unemployment rates are highest among Native Americans. Conquest devalues the conquered in obvious and explicit ways, but also in more subtle ways, affecting health and well-being. The values of the dominant culture and the concomitant condition of Native communities affect individual identity and lower personal esteem. Personal values affect decisions and low values can affect destructive behavior.

Native Americans have poorer health and higher mortality rates than average. Their alcoholism death rate in 1985 was 4.2 times greater than the national rate. Suicide rates are also higher, with more than twice as many involving alcohol. This issue is a public concern due to the government's treaty and legal obligation to provide health care to Native Americans. Ironically, the past government policy negatively impacts the health of Native Americans. Today reversing the negative social effects is in the government's best economic interests and justifies addressing the problem from a societal level.

Dr. George Appell supports the view that increased incidence of behavioral, psychological and physiological impairments may appear in populations that undergo change. Appell purports that a process of bereavement results from social change. Destruction of the past without proper valuation precludes normal development of the process of bereavement. Lament requires that the past be conceived of as a meaningful and an important experience on which to build the future. Appell states:

"The symptoms of social separation can be relieved and the disturbances of societal functions can be mitigated by providing a population with the means by which access to its cultural traditions can be maintained during the period of social change,"

Appell addresses the phenomena from the perspective of planning social change, not redressing conquest. With the viewpoint of a specific disaffected group, the Native Americans, the remedy of allowing access to cultural traditions seems like a mere decrement in assimilation policy. Redress of past injustice and disenfranchisement could be far more encompassing. Restoration of lands and resources, full employment, healthful housing and equal opportunity and status in society would be far more effectual in alleviating the social problems than "providing the means to access cultural traditions."

A wide variety of changes addressing the specific etiology of Native American "social separation syndrome" are needed, including changes in the attitudes of the dominant culture. Recognition of the health impact of disenfranchisement should logically lead to treatment of the cause, thereby alleviating the need to treat the patient. Lament should be followed by reconciliation for the benefit of the aboriginal descendents and all humanity.

[leftchick]

2. another quote ...

Decades later, the pain of Wounded Knee lingers

http://www.danielnpaul.com/WoundedKnee.html


Elderly men and women, unable to fight back, stood defiantly and sang their death songs before falling to the hail of bullets. The number of Lakota people murdered that day is still unknown. The mass grave at Wounded Knee holds the bodies of 150 men, women and children. Many other victims died of their wounds and of exposure over the next several days.

The Lakota people say that only 50 people out of the original 350 followers of Sitanka (Big Foot) survived the massacre.


<snip>

Two ironies still haunt me. Six days after the bloody massacre the editor of the Aberdeen (S.D.) Saturday Pioneer wrote in his editorial, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilizations, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

The author of that editorial was L. Frank Baum, who later went on to write that famous children's book, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." In calling for genocide against my grandmother and the rest of the Lakota people, he placed the final punctuation upon a day that will forever live in infamy amongst the Lakota.

[aquart]

3. So deed your possessions to the nearest tribe

and book passage to a more virtuous nation, where the land has NOT been fertilized by blood. The North Pole may be about right.

As for "the worst genocide in history," well, history has lasted a fair amount of time. And what went on BEFORE history...

You might want to remember, when it comes to the Spanish especially, they had native born help. Mass murder didn't arrive fresh and new with the Europeans.

So what ARE you doing to right all these terrible wrongs this Thanksgiving? I mean, anyone can talk.

[L. Coyote]

5. What's with the apologism? History repeats. Bush, "Saddam is evil. Must KILL."

In this time of renewed conquest, to avoid the mistakes of the past requires a sense of true history, not a fantasy holiday!

You cannot justify genocide by saying there was murder in the world before these 60 million died!

One thing I am doing is posting this info.
What are you doing, besides apologizing?

[L. Coyote]

4. Cultural Heritage Sites - Who owns the past and who should?

Holiday myth does not destroy the evidence of past civbilizations!

=================
Cultural Heritage Sites - Who owns the past and who should?
http://jqjacobs.net/writing/heritage.html (w/ permission)

Within the confines of the territory presently claimed by the United States of America a great variety of cultural heritage sites of prehistoric provenience exist, well known examples of which are large earthen mounds, pyramids, and geometric and representational earthworks. Native American, scientific and public interest in resources representing the cultural and historical heritage of the aboriginal inhabitants can conflict with rights traditionally allowed individual landowners under European law. In the case of landscape features or constructs, such as shrines, earthworks and rock inscriptions, United States law does not distinguish a public or a priori proprietary interest superseding legally sanctioned private ownership rights, providing no broad protection for cultural properties on lands sanctioned as private property. Consequently, within the United States, sites continue to be destroyed and conflicts continue, particularly where aboriginal populations survive and traditional use sites are not within areas defined as reservations by the United States.

The present situation is the product of a long history and distinct cultures and is best understood and discussed within that context. Five hundred years ago, more than 10,000 years after human settlement of the Americas began via land from Asia, Europeans discovered and eventually laid claim to all of the Americas. Initially Spain and Portugal were granted sovereignty by the Vatican pontiff. In the first areas discovered, the Caribbean islands, Spanish enslavement and destruction of the Native populations was complete. Bartolome de las Casas, a defender of Native rights and the first Bishop of Chiapas, penned the following history:

"They applied themselves forty years together wholly to the massacring the poor wretches that inhabited the islands; putting them to all kinds of unheard of torments and punishments.....insomuch that this island which before the arrival of the Europeans, contained about three million people, is now reduced to less than three hundred..."

European exploitation of the conquered islands employed an enslaved work force. To replace the island population slave capturing expeditions ranged from South America to the eastern seacoast of North America, dually ravaging communities by also transmitting European diseases. Garret Holm in Columbus: Symbol, Myth, Reality writes of " fifty different smallpox epidemics that broke out among the tribes between the years 1512 and 1838..."

Within fifty years of contact the Spanish had explored and conquered or claimed half the Americas. In turn other European monarchies established American land holding and political dominion claims in conflict with the Native populations. The history of relations between Indians and non-Indians in the United States has been a long saga of outsiders seizing Indian lands.

When European settlers established independent political states they also laid claim to American territory and pursued territorial expansion by military imposition. The fledgling United States established the capital of the Northwest Territory on the Ohio River at Marietta, where they superimposed a grid of streets and private lots on a prehistoric earthwork complex. Where a 680 feet graded way lined with parallel, twenty foot high earthen walls 150 feet apart connects the tributary Muskingum River to the Ohio's third terrace and the earthwork complex the first Anglo settlers constructed a stockade. They established the cemetery where the greatest number of officers of the revolutionary war are said to be buried around a 30 feet high truncated conical mound and an encircling moat and embankment. At Marietta very little remains of the immense rectangular earthen enclosures and pyramidal platform mounds, and nothing remains of the aboriginal population.

In the expansionist United States, military conflicts and territorial conquest continued unabated until the twentieth century. Again Garrett Holm writes, "...native population of North America was reduced from about 20 million to 300,000 by 1890." Estimates of the population of California Indians fell from about a quarter million or more at the time of United States conquest in 1848 to 15,000 a half century later. Throughout the Americas entire tribes and languages were extincted and the Native American land base is now reduced to nearly nothing. During four centuries of conquest cultures of high civilizations were extinguished, the monuments of two continents fell into ruin, and the history of a thousand nations and ten millennia fell into obscurity.

During the twentieth century paternalism and policies of assimilation and tribal termination replaced conquest. The United States went so far as to outlaw cultural practices and to disallow use of native languages in forced education institutions. Native population began to expand. In 1924 Indians become citizens of the United States and received full voting rights in 1970. Self-governing and sovereign political status of Indian tribes is the premise upon which Indian treaties were made. United States courts have interpreted treaties and executive orders in reserving lands for Indian tribes as "tribal homelands." Ratified Indian treaties are considered valid today and Indian tribal rights of self-government have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Conflicts continue where lands are dually claimed by surviving Indian nations and the United States government, where traditional cultural practices occur on lands claimed by the United States or held as private property, and where exploitative, tourist, recreational or public use interferes with traditional Native use. Present day conflicts are both territorial and cultural in nature. Native cultural views regarding specific monuments and mountains as sacred, inviolable natural places have recently conflicted with interests as diverse as increased non-Native site interest and visitation, scientific plans to construct an astrophysical facility, expansion plans for park facilities and recreational development plans like ski resorts. Traditional Native practices that are associated with specific places, particularly with high mountain areas and specific shrines and include meditative isolation in undisturbed nature can conflict with use by non-Natives.

The present cultural and legal landscape has been recently described by several authors ........

..................

[robcon]

6. Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year.

We celebrate togetherness, sharing, family and giving thanks.

All the attempts to twist the day into something else are humbug.

[Wilber_Stool]

7. And people wonder why

Chavez told the King of Spain to "shut up".

[Clanfear]

9. You have that reversed.

It was the King of Spain that told Chavez to shut up.

[happyslug]

8. Check your Quites, Cotton Mather was NOT born till 1661.

Thus could NOT have written anything in 1637. His Father, Increase Mather was NOT born till 1639, but Increase Mather did write a book about the the wars in 1676, this was King's Philip war 1674-1675. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip's_War

More on Cotton Mather:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/mather.htm

More on Increase Mather:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Increase_Mather

Increase Mather's book on the Indian Wars:
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/31/

King Philip's war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philips_War

[Clanfear]

10. Thanksgiving is a great holiday

It is a time for remembrance, reconciliation, and family.