(via the Sun and the Caribbean)
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I want to share this particular ‘rabbit-hole’ with you because it made me very sad
and ashamed of the European, white, men, from whom I’m genetically descended.
SALADIN (aka: William Stewart Ross)
In 1882, in the town of Stockport, a meeting took place to inaugurate the (Stockport) Secular Society, chaired by the Marquis of Queensbury. I know this because I had recently read the address given at that meeting by William Stewart Ross; published by W. Stewart & Co., under the pen-name of SALADIN. An article about Witchcraft in Christian Countries would be a very good reference document to put on this blog. Is it already available on the ‘net? Yes, but…
But that got me thinking about some other, very useful, writings that I have, that also deserve to be out there in the public domain. Obscure dissertations by PhD students from the ’60s and ’70s, such as: Richard Hooker and the Christian Commonwealth; The Political Philosophy of Christopher St. German; The Systematic Theology of Richard Hooker; ‘Respublica Anglicana’: The Political Thought of Richard Hooker; and, Custom, Reason and Legislation in the Thought of Sir Edward Coke. What was the Reformation reforming? What were the Protest-ants protesting about? What was at the ideological heart of the English Revolution? What Great Conspiracy had these heretics uncovered? What is clear from these dissertations, is that free-thinkers, such as Richard Hooker, Christopher St. German and Sir Edward Coke, were challenging the El-ites of their day: the law makers of their day – the Church.
It seems to me that the persecution, by the Roman Imperialists, of free-thinkers, protest-ants, witches and anyone who questioned the authority of the Religious (and by default, Legal) El-ite, drove, first the Celts and then the Anglo-Saxons, further North and West of the Island of the Angles (England) from the earliest days of our Common Era, with a vast migration taking place from the 16th century onwards. What had driven these persecuted groups to go beyond Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland and head for a completely New World across a perilously vast expanse of water, the Atlantic Ocean?
Which reminded me of a trivia question posed by drkstrong in one of his videos about the Sun… What language did the Native Americans speak when Columbus first set foot on their soil? And the answer has intrigued me ever since… Answer: English. Had those early, English-speaking, asylum-seekers made it to North America long before Columbus?
Well, it seems Columbus was not the first to discover the Americas:
Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer regarded as the first European to land in North America (excluding Greenland), nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. (wikipedia)
The true story of Columbus’ discovery of the Americas is as shocking as it is sad. When Columbus landed in the Caribbean, he was greeted by the Arawak people. A beautiful people who
“do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance… They would make fine servants… With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Indian Country Today Media Network)
“they are artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as no one would believe but him who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts.” (Understanding Prejudice)
Columbus wrote:
Saturday, 13 October 1492: … They brought us sticks of the cotton thread and parrots and other little things which it would be tedious to list, and exchanged everything for whatever we offered them. I kept my eyes open and tried to find out if there was any gold, and I saw that some of them had a little piece hanging from a hole in their nose. I gathered from their signs that if one goes south, or around the south side of the island, there is a king with great jars full of it, enormous amounts. I tried to persuade them to go there, But I saw that the idea was not to their liking…
Sunday, 14 October 1492: … These people have little knowledge of fighting, as Your Majesties will see from the seven I have had captured to take away with us so as to teach them our language and return them, unless Your Majesties’ orders are that they all be taken to Spain or held captive on the island itself, for with fifty men one could keep the whole population in subjection and make them do whatever one wanted. (wikipedia)
Bartoleme de Las Casas wrote in 1542 (pub. 1552)
“They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure heavy labor and soon die of no matter what malady. The sons of nobles among us, brought up in the enjoyments of life’s refinements, are no more delicate than are these Indians, even those among them who are of the lowest rank of laborers. They are also poor people, for they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy…
“Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.” (A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies extract from A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies)
Columbus and his two brothers proved to be ‘Christian’ tyrants and dictators:
“Bobadilla, who ruled as governor from 1500 until his death in a storm in 1502, had also been tasked by the Court with investigating the accusations of brutality made against Columbus. Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away in the explorations of his Third voyage, Bobadilla was immediately met with complaints about all three Columbus brothers: Christopher, Bartolomé, and Diego. A recently discovered report by de Bobadilla alleges that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola. The 48-page report, found in 2006 in the state archive in the Spanish city of Valladolid, contains testimonies from 23 people, including both enemies and supporters of Columbus, about Columbus and his brothers’ treatment of colonial subjects during his seven-year rule.” (wikipedia)
Christina Rose writes:
“Mothers drowned their babies from sheer desperation, husbands died in the mines, women died at work, children died from lack of milk… my eyes have seen acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write,” de Las Casas wrote.
“According to his writings as read in Howard Zinn’s book, The People’s History of the United States, over 3 million people perished at the hands of Columbus from 1494 to 1508. By 1515 there were only 50,000 left. By 1550, there were 500.” (Indian Country Today Media Network)
By 1739 there were still remnants of this great society on some of the islands. The missionary Heinrich Beutel wrote about the Lucayan villagers he encountered:
“The Indians kept themselves cleaner than the Europeans. Believing that sweat weakens the body, they bathed frequently throughout the day. In their houses—thatched shelters without walls—they sat on clean sand, and they treated one another very politely. Young people called their parents and others of that age “honoured ones.” Older people called all young men “handsome ones” and it took them a while to learn the European titles for women, girls and children, and how to use them. Even though the Arawaks did not have an exact word for humility, they well knew the attitude. One should not look another person in the face while speaking “like a dog,” they believed. Rather, one should rise so that others might sit and count it a privilege to give. Arawak hospitality always involved eating and drinking together and even drank of fermented cassava, held frequent love feasts, and fought at their festivals.” (wikipedia)
The account given in Understanding Prejudice is quite tame compared to that of other writers; I wonder why?
“UnderstandingPrejudice.org was established in 2002 with funding from the National Science Foundation (Grant Number 9950517) and McGraw-Hill Higher Education. The purpose of the site is to offer educational resources and information on prejudice, discrimination, multiculturalism, and diversity, with the ultimate goal of reducing the level of intolerance and bias in contemporary society. (Understanding Prejudice)
And who is the National Science Foundation?
“The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” With an annual budget of about $7.0 billion (FY 2012), we are the funding source for approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. (www.nsf.gov)
But… I was no nearer to answering my question about how the native Americans knew English. Perhaps I need to go back to source: drkstrong’s trivia question.
My memory had deceived me: it wasn’t Columbus that was greeted by a native speaking English, but the Pilgrim Fathers, who had arrived in North America when European colonisation of the continent was well under way (1620: about 130 years after Columbus) and who originated in East Retford, Nottinghamshire.
But the Brownists weren’t the only group to want to escape the clutches of Popish rule. There were others from England, known as the English Dissenters from the Adamists to the Socinians.
Were these any better in their morals and in preserving individual freedoms? Not according to our speaker at the Stockport Inauguration mentioned at the top of this post.
“When, as devout Pilgrim Fathers, we set foot on the shores of America we began, with true Christian charity, to torture and burn each other for witchcraft, till the very Red Indians regarded with horror and bewilderment our helpless sufferers at the stake, and thanked the Great Spirit that they were not followers of the white man’s terrible God. They were cruel and merciless, but not so cruel and merciless as we. They had their tomahawk, their war-paint, and their neck-lace of human teeth, and, with a hardihood almost superhuman and a heroism that has never been surpassed among mortals, their attack was savage and their reprisals merciless. But they were man to man, warrior to warrior. It was not they, but the cowardly and pious Christian witch-finder, that bound feeble and shrinking women to the stake, that thrust innumerable pins into her flesh, and beheld with holy triumph or pious stoicism the suffering of the aged and the helpless.” (Witchcraft and Christianity)
There is no excuse for what avaricious European, white, men have done to Mother Earth.
It is time for their offspring to make amends on their behalf.
IMAGINE
THIS REVOLUTION
GOING DOWN IN HISTORY AS
THE SILENT EVOLUTION
The Great Con5piracy 