Book Creation Blog # 2

[1] [The parable of the tribes by Andrew Schmookler]

[1]

[1]

[1] Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism Seven Stories Press, Revised Edition, 2008, Kindle Edition.

[1] Patel, Raj. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet . University of California Press. Kindle Edition, 2017.

[1]

[1] Jack D. Forbes, Op. Cit.

[1] Dispelling Wetiko

[1]

[1]

Forbes, Jack D.. Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism (p. 22). Seven Stories Press. Kindle Edition.

Wetiko and racism have converged in the underbelly of American history politics from our colonial and national inception to the present. America's educational mainstream has imbued most of us with the positive aspects of American ideals such as freedom, the development of communities, entrepreneurship, and individual opportunity. But if we are to socially and politically create an inclusive future of freedom and prosperity for all, indwelling healthy ecosystems, we must also become familiar with the wetiko/racist underbelly of our history.

>

Chapter 2: Colonial America’s Violent Eviction of Native Americans from Their Homelands;

Culture Clash and Wetiko

The chasmic clash of Native American and Colonial cultures was destined to lead to conflict. Although tribes varied in many respects, they shared beliefs in the sacredness of land and in sacred power that connected all things. Because everything in the universe is interrelated, and because ‘the people’ are at the centre of it, their rituals not only regulated their own relationship with the sacred and with other living beings but also ensured that the whole natural order is properly maintained. Presciently, this sense of responsibility for the balance of Life anticipates contemporary scientific knowledge that the balance of planetary climate systems and ecosystems have become contingent upon human behaviors. Geoscientists describe this insight as awareness that we are in the Era of the Anthropocene, when human beings are a primary causal factor in the health of all ecosystems.[1] The cataclysmic surge in climate warming, extreme weather events, acidification of the ocean and extinctions are a consequence of denying these relationships and responsibilities.

Native American cultures’ common aspirations toward balance included norms for intertribal relationships. Tensions between groups were generally mitigated through exchanges and kinship ties that fostered mutual obligations, alignment of interests and mutual benefits. Shared cultural awareness of sacred power connecting all things and aspirations toward balance enabled diverse tribal societies to live in harmony with the land and in minimal conflict with one another for thousands of years.

Why were Native Americans targeted with aggressive and even tortuous responses from Europeans, even before they presented resistance to invasions? Wetiko, that is, greed for their resources and their slave labor, is part of the answer. But wetiko alone does not seem sufficient to account for the tortures that were imposed.

Another part of the answer, embedded in cultural conflict that functioned in addition to wetiko, has been presented and corroborated at length, by social psychologists, Sheldon and Solomon in their book, The Worm at the Core.[1]As one of their case histories and stories, they describe how Dutch and English settlers, arriving in the lower Hudson Valley in the 17th century were intrigued by the Natives, then, dehumanized and tortured them.

The Lenapes, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years, were happy, peaceful, welcoming, and eager to trade furs for blankets and tools. Moreover, according to firsthand accounts by Dutch settlers, the Lenapes were “well-fashioned people, strong and sound of body, well fed, without blemish. Some have lived 100 years. Also, there are among them no simpletons, lunatics, or madmen as among us.” At the same time, the Europeans found the Lenapes very unsettling. They lived in communal long houses big enough for a dozen families. They relocated seasonally. They traced their kinship through their mothers, and women had considerable power in communal affairs. They divided themselves into clans identified by animals such as wolves, turtles, or turkeys. They refrained from hunting excessively because their religion stressed that all life was interrelated and interdependent. They weren’t interested in enriching themselves beyond what was necessary to survive. Eventually, the settlers felt that something had to be done to dispose of these “most barbarous” wilden (savages). So, the Dutch and the English proceeded to exterminate the Lenapes and other Native American tribes. They had a good time doing it, too. In 1644, the director of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, “laughed right heartily” as soldiers tortured and butchered Lenapes in their villages. The soldiers took one captive, “threw him down, and stuck his private parts, which they had cut off, into his mouth while he was still alive, and after that placed him on a millstone and beat his head off,” while Dutch women amused themselves by kicking the victims’ heads around like soccer balls.

Chimps can be aggressively tribal or territorial. Only humans, however, hate and kill other humans with righteous exuberance for symbolic affronts; such as, worshipping different gods or having different lifestyles that threaten the validity of our own.

How Divergent Religious Beliefs can Lead to Degradation and Lethal Conflict

In addition to wetiko and racism, extreme dehumanization with atrocities can be caused by divergent religious beliefs when the latter are linked to the mitigation of the fear of death. Belief in one’s religion, ideology, or lifestyle, as having a permanency that extends beyond the transience of personal life, implicitly provides a bulwark that mitigates the universal conscious or unconscious fear of death. “Foreigners,” so-called racial groups or strangers who are thriving despite living within a divergent identity framework can invalidate a trusted belief system and evoke the latent but ever present human fear of dying and death. Discrimination, dehumanization and torture are attempts to control and/or banish this threat by asserting supremacy that in this instance is associated with not only being right but also with an implicit death-defying assurance of eternal life for oneself and/or the cause for which one is living.[1]

Unlike Native American spirituality, many followers of Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions have endeavored to create divisions between people and nature, people and animals, and people with other belief systems. Implicitly, this distancing and dominion over nature was an attempt to be part of an eternal life not “soiled” by temporal carnality; and distancing from other belief systems has been an endeavor to assure that their pathway to eternal life was the correct one. Native American practices; on the other hand, incorporated identification with Mother Earth, other peoples, brother and sister animals, and plant people, as part of an inclusiveness with All Beings, overcoming much of the threat of strangers. Native American spirituality weaves together the Spiritual Universe with Nature rather than conceiving of them as separate.

Europeans’ way of life, what they believed in and most everything they were striving for, was challenged by the Native American worldview and lifestyle. Because their cultural conceptions of reality were keeping a lid on mortal dread, acknowledging the legitimacy of Native American beliefs would have unleashed the very terror that the European beliefs were serving to quell.

Cultural Conflict Infected European and Native American Relationships.

Disruption of tribal cultures began with European fur trading and the differing customs regarding trade; namely, wetiko profiteering, vs. balancing the mutuality of benefits. Competitive leveraging among European traders, including guns, alcohol and tobacco, fostered hostility and violence between tribal groups as well as toward competing factions. Trade, in itself did not have to be a negative happening. Europeans valued the furs that they lacked and Native Americans’ life, indeed survival, was made easier with utensils, and metal tools. Rather, it was the greed and power plays that entered into trade that made it a disastrous happening.

Conflict Was Intensified by Disease

The devastating impacts of European diseases on Native Americans lacking immunities are unfathomable. When epidemics struck, communities might lose 75 per cent or more of their members within just a few weeks. The suffering was excruciating. Governor Bradford of Plymouth, writing in the 1630s, gave a vivid account of the ‘plague’:

... they [the Indians] fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold. And then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep.

The survivors, inevitably, were shocked, grief-stricken and bewildered. Tribal relationships could be altered almost instantly through the elimination of whole lineages that held communities together and structured the relationships between Native American nations. Military defenses were depleted, leaving them vulnerable to colonial forces.[1] Adding to complexity, British, French, and Dutch colonial regimes were engaged in hostilities with one another, vying for land, and fur trade. Tribes were subsequently forced into bolstering their weakened defenses through seeking alliances in this shifting landscape.

Perhaps most devastatingly of all, European disease undermined many Native Americans’ confidence in themselves and their view of the world. The failure of the shamans to contain and cure smallpox and bubonic plague was the failure of an entire system of belief: the rituals, ceremonies, checks and balances were no longer working, and the whole universe seemed to be spinning terrifyingly out of control. This reaction was echoed again and again as the same catastrophe befell other Native peoples.

On the European side, the desecrating power of the epidemics often reinforced beliefs in their cultural and religious supremacy, their manifest destiny as chosen people to take over Native lands.[1]

How the Invasion of European Culture Affected the Health of Ecosystems

Write this section ---

European Racism and Christian Supremacism Fostered the Dehumanization and Genocide of Native Americans

^

European Racism Flourished Before the Settlers Brought It to America

Racist thought was embedded in Europe long before settlers reached America. Popular theorizing began with the emulation of Aristotle who had justified Creek superiority with a “climate theory,” saying that extreme hot or cold climates produced intellectually, physically, and morally inferior people who were ugly (dark) and lacked the capacity for freedom and self-government. Aristotle labeled Africans “burnt faces”– the original meaning in Greek of “Ethiopian.” All of this was in the interest of normalizing Greek slaveholding practices and Greece’s rule over the western Mediterranean. Humanity was divided into the masters and slaves, Greeks and barbarians.

Early Christian, European theologians – whom Puritans studied alongside Aristotle, advocated St. Paul’s three-tiered hierarchy of slave relations – heavenly Master (top), earth master (middle), and enslaved (bottom). Slaves were to obey in everything those that are your earthly masters in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. In a crucial caveat in Galatians 3:28, St. Paul equalized the souls of masters and slaves as all one in Christ Jesus, thus permitting slavery in the body and equality in the soul. While Aristotle had rivals who advocated equality rather than hierarchy; and, while there were early Christian theologians who advocated equality of all, e.g. Augustine, these egalitarians are not the ones who put their influence into European colonialism. The moral justification of colonialism required White superiority.

Late 16th century literature and playwrights integrated racism into their plots. Shakespeare’s first Black character, for example, was the evil, oversexed Aaron in Titus Andronicus . Next up was the dark Moor , Othello, whose trusted ensign, Iago, remarked “for that I do suspect the lusty (dark) Moor has stepped into my seat.” Talking to Othello’s father-in-law, Iago labels Othello as “an old black ram … tupping your white ewe.” Othello confesses the murder of his innocent wife to her maidservant who then calls Othello “the blacker devil,” and he commits suicide. (Lamenting his blackness?)

Racist thoughts justified the expanding profitability of European slave trade and were carried to America with the first settlers. Since the enslavement of dark Africans had already been normalized as appropriate and even “holy,” Indians were readily dehumanized as “Negroes of the land.”

The climate theory, which for centuries had explained the racist division between superior Whites and inferior Blacks begin to fall apart as European explorers discovered that the Inuit of the far north were darker than peoples to the south. Racist theorizing, however, did not miss a beat. The Biblical story of the curse of Ham and his descendents that did not depend upon climate now came to the forefront to explain why darker people were inferior and suitable for enslavement. As told in Genesis 9, Ham came upon his father, Noah, when the latter was drunk and naked, shamefully gazing upon him. When Noah learned of this, he cursed Ham’s son Canaan and all of his descendents, saying:

“Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall be he to his brothers.”

All of the peoples of the earth were said to be descended from (darkened) Canaan and his (unblemished) brothers, Japheth and Shem. A British historian, Pory, in 1600, suggested that Africans were “descended from Ham, the accursed son of Noah.”[1]

Biblical Influences Helped Shape Both Racist and Anti-Racist Behaviors in the Unfolding Relationship between Europeans and Native Americans

The Pilgrims construed a self-serving religious meaning to the epidemics:

“Thus farre hath the good hand of God favoured our beginnings ... ‘In sweeping away great multitudes of the Natives ..., a little more before we went thither, that He might make room for us there.[1]

The Pilgrims understanding of the events that resulted in the dispossessing of Native Americans from their lands, were informed by their interpretation of the Bible. The passages that they chose to live by, as conquerors, supported their beliefs in themselves as chosen by God to take over the new lands that were before them. The Scripture passages upon which they focused, reinforced their implicit sense of supremacy, laying the foundation for traditions of White Supremacism and Christian Supremacism, which continue in the United States for centuries, even while undergoing some name changes along the way including “manifest destiny,” “jingoism” and “American exceptionalism.”.

Biblical passages were taken at face value without regard to the entire biblical context, even though others who were also taking inspiration from the Bible did so with divergent scriptural emphases and interpretations. The Biblical influence that informed both racist behavior and antiracist behavior is discussed in detail when it becomes relevant because it continues to be a factor in the ongoing United States struggle to form an inclusive and just society.

The Pilgrims saw themselves as the New Israel. Accordingly, they identified with the people who listened to the following passages attributed to Moses, while encamped on the plains of Moab, (east of the Dead Sea) poised to invade the Promised Land that was home to the Canaanites, cursed descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham. Perhaps it was to justify this invasion, that Biblical writers described Noah’s curse as puzzlingly falling upon his grandson Canaan rather than his son Ham, who had actually unashamedly viewed his father’s nakedness?

(Collated from Deuteronomy):

I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land that I swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.

The Lord your God will give them over to you, and throw them into great panic, until they are destroyed. He will hand their kings over to you and you shall blot out their name from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you, until you have destroyed them.

Know then today that the Lord your God is the one who crosses over before you as a devouring fire; he will defeat them and subdue them before you, so that you may dispossess and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

When you have dispossessed them and live in their land, take care that you are not snared into imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you: do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, “How did these nations worship their gods? But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.

The Pilgrim leaders took such scriptural passages as a Divine moral mandate that sanctified amoral atrocities against Native Americans. Even as the Pilgrims identified wiping out Native Americans with Israelites destroying Canaanites, so later in the colonial era, the churches of enslavers would identify Blacks with the Canaanites who allegedly deserved servitude because of Canaan’s father, Ham, shamefully viewing his father’s nakedness. This convoluted argument was used in the United States to justify seeing people of color as destined to be servants or slaves and subject to degradation or, if necessary, destruction.

More than fifty of the first Colonial settlements were built on the remains of Indian communities, a pattern that was to be repeated as the frontier moved west. Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem, Boston, Providence, New Amsterdam, Philadelphia - all grew upon sites previously occupied by Indian communities. The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, an occupation of a land made waste by the diseases, violence and demoralization introduced by Europeans.[1]

The Pilgrim Puritans of Plymouth Colony are an egregious example of how the wetiko-racist infection can be inadvertently carried, in their case worsened by Christian Supremacism and exclusivism.

Internally, the Pilgrims sense of Biblical covenant created strong and caring community bonds in which they were committed to giving all they had to one another, and to supporting one another in difficult times. Their Biblical sense of being a New Israel, of establishing the Biblical City on a Hill (Matthew 5:14) that would be an example of sacred living for all others to follow, gave them a compelling vision that sustained them through harsh conditions and setbacks.[1]

The Puritans sense that God was speaking to them, revealing how to love one another and be an example for the world was unfortunately matched with strong convictions that God was not speaking to others outside of the boundaries of their communities and beliefs. In fact, they even felt that they would be contaminated if they associated too closely with people outside their belief-boundaries. This is why in Europe they became known as Separatists and why they prohibited informal friendships with Native Americans.

These strong in-group/out-group boundaries, not only placed limitations upon themselves, but ultimately permitted the dehumanization and racist genocide of Native American villages and later on the persecution of so-called “witches.”

Although the Puritans were inherently no more aggressive than other human beings, their strong needs to see themselves as righteous, fostered the projection of their violent impulses onto others; consequently, atrocities were always blamed on the savagery or evil, which they “saw” in their victims.

Other Christian groups such as in Rhode Island, founded on the principle of tolerance and in Pennsylvania, founded with a heavy influence of Quaker traditions of loving outreach toward others developed communities where antiracist norms were fostered, where Native Americans and both free Blacks and runaway slaves could find sanctuary.

The Conquering and Expanded Occupation of Native American Lands

Puritans arrived in New England with Imperial charters, wetiko imbued missions to return profits from anticipated fur trading and land deals. As their colonies expanded, conflicts of land-use with Native Americans were intensified by differing conceptions of land occupation – an obligation to “living land” as a giver of bounty vs land as owned property with private privileges. When treaties were made, each side took away their own cultural understanding from the documents.

Tensions grew as settlements extended further into Native Homeland in the Cape Cod area and into regions that were to become Canada, New England and New York. The century was marked by numerous Indian wars. Weakened by diseases and disruptions of traditional tribal alliances, colonial forces generally overwhelmed Native defenses of their homelands. Racism and Christian Supremacist zeal added horrendous atrocities to these battles.

The Pequot Village Massacre

Capt. Mason, e.g., described the attack of his soldiers in 1637 on a Pequot village at dawn.

“Most of the enemy were still in a dead, and indeed their last sleep.” His men broke in, wildly firing and hacking at the terrified Pequots -- mostly old men, women and children with few weapons – until: the captain said, “we must burn them, and immediately brought out a Firebrand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire ... such a dreadful Terror did the ALMIGHTY let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished. ... And thus in little more than one Hour’s space was their impregnable Fort with themselves utterly Destroyed, to the Number of Six or Seven Hundred ... There were only Seven taken Captive & about Seven escaped. Thus was God seen in the Mount, Crushing his proud Enemies and the Enemies of his People . .. burning them up in the Fire of his Wrath, and dunging the Ground with their Flesh: It was the LORD’s Doings, and it is marvellous in our Eyes! [1]

Even Indian allies of the colonial forces were aghast at the total destruction (genocide), which was outside of their understanding of war. Apparently, some of the colonists must have also raised questions because Capt. Underwood felt the need to offer a justification. Going to the Bible, he referred such critics to “David’s War.”

“When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man ... the Scripture declareth that women and children must perish with their parents…we had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.

Capt. Underwood, if pressed, could have proliferated his Biblical justifications, including using the words attributed to Moses, quoted previously regarding the total destruction of Canaanite villages.“… as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them.”

(If it had not been counter to their implicit self-purpose, Capt. Mason and Capt. Underwood, could have alternatively found Biblical warnings and prophetic judgment against such annihilation and stealing of land. Later in this book, when we take a deep dive into Native American spirituality, we will be noting such scriptural references.)

The so-called Biblical justifications that informed New England settlers, were sufficient to make this massacre into a precedent for many massacres of Native American villages that would follow during the coming centuries.

King Philip’s War

The most extensive of New England colonial Indian wars was King Philip’s (Metacom’s English nickname) War from 1675 to 1678, whose fatalities included ~3000 Native Americans and ~600 settlers, along with numerous towns destroyed.[1] In the most gruesome battle, according to one source, two thousand Narragansett men, women and children perished in a single incident, most of them burnt to death.

Increase Mather, a Puritan minister involved in the administration of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and subsequently the administration of Harvard and infamously the Salem witch trials, gleefully reported,

… when the survivors ‘came to see the ashes of their friends, mingled with the ashes of their fort ... where the English had been doing a good day’s work, they Howl’d, they Roar’d, they Stamp’d, they tore their hair; ... and were the pictures of so many Devils in Desperation.’

Metacom’s wife and child were captured –

‘It must have been as bitter as death to him...’ wrote Mather, ‘for the Indians are marvellously fond and affectionate toward their children’ - and ‘King Philip’ himself was finally killed. His head was placed on a spike above the entrance to Plymouth, and his family and hundreds of other Indians -including many who had surrendered under promise of protection -were sold into slavery in Bermuda.

Illustrative Character of Puritan Leader, Increase Mather --Understanding His Approval of Atrocities

Given Increase Mather’s achievements, his comments about Native American genocidal events, his lack of empathy, are surprising and instructive regarding his failure to overcome wetiko and racism. He provides a window into how otherwise outstanding people can carry the wetiko and racist cultural viruses. Mather’s evidence of personal strengths included:

Increase Mather’s Strengths

· He was an intellectually proficient scholar, graduating from Harvard College at 17 years old. He then studied at Trinity College in Duplin for an MA. He was granted Harvard’s first honorary doctorate degree in 1692.

· He was religiously devoted to Christianity, serving churches was a priority, even when it meant resigning his presidency from Harvard because of time conflicts.

· Mather was politically astute. When the Massachusetts Bay colony had a “dictator” appointed, who outlawed town meetings, Mather eluded spies to successfully go to the King of England with a petition and published flyers at home to build support for democratic reforms.

· Organizationally, Mather was an achiever, first becoming the acting president of Harvard, and steadily advancing until he became president, serving from 1692 to 1701. A believer in community, he enacted requirements that students attend classes regularly, live and eat on campus and that seniors not haze other students.

· He was a successful author, probing contemporary events, including King Philip’s War and witchcraft trials.

Given these many strengths, how was Increase Mather so vulnerable to the embodiment of wetiko and racism?

· Clue #1 Christian Supremacy and exclusivism – it is one thing to be devoted to the love, mercy and compassion exhibited in Christian Gospels; he did this in his nurturing of community, both in serving churches and as a president of Harvard University. However, his devotion to compassion for others, closed out those who were of different persuasions. At Harvard he reimplemented the studies of Greek and Hebrew while replacing classical Roman authors with Biblical and Christian authors in ethics classes.

· Clue #2 Impermeable in-group/out-group boundaries – following in the Puritan, Separatist tradition, he fostered communities that were loving and supportive to one another, but kept strangers at a distance. Social “walls” constrain empathy and invite misunderstandings of the “other.”

· Clue #3 Passion for righteousness rather than self-awareness – we humans have evolved as a mix of love and generosity, on the one hand, and selfishness with readiness to do violence on the other hand. A passion for righteousness without equal probing of negativity that we carry within us, leads to the projection of our own shadow selves onto others. When there are strong religious or racial boundaries, negativity and evil are projected onto other social groups; thus, Native Americans could readily be seen as embodying devils, as could suspected witches.

· Clue #4 Land imperialism – he harbored a greed driven desire (wetiko) for Puritan settlers to expand their landholdings through dominating and overcoming Native American inhabitants.

When strong leaders, such as Increase Mather, succumb to wetiko and racism, the damage is compounded because of their influence on others. Since we all have similar potentials, a strong leader tips the balance for many as to whether we have an inclusive, caring society or an exclusive, destructive society.

In summary, the character of Increase Mather teaches us that neither intellectual achievement nor religious devotion, if combined with ideologies of supremacy and exclusivism, are pathways to overcoming wetiko and racism. The ideology of Christian Supremacy has its equivalents in ideologies of nationalistic supremacy and White Supremacy. The challenges noted above are not simply clues as to how Increase Mather’s legacy was besmirched, but rather challenges recurrent throughout the life of the United States.

Chapter 2: Colonial America’s Violent Eviction of Native Americans from Their Homelands

Culture Clash and Wetiko

The chasmic clash of Native American and Colonial cultures was destined to lead to conflict. Although tribes varied in many respects, they shared beliefs in the sacredness of land and in sacred power that connected all things. Because everything in the universe is interrelated, and because ‘the people’ are at the centre of it, their rituals not only regulated their own relationship with the sacred and with other living beings but also ensured that the whole natural order is properly maintained. Presciently, this sense of responsibility for the balance of Life anticipates contemporary scientific knowledge that the balance of planetary climate systems and ecosystems have become contingent upon human behaviors. Geoscientists describe this insight as awareness that we are in the Era of the Anthropocene, when human beings are a primary causal factor in the health of all ecosystems.[1] The cataclysmic surge in climate warming, extreme weather events, acidification of the ocean and extinctions are a consequence of denying these relationships and responsibilities.

Native American cultures’ common aspirations toward balance included norms for intertribal relationships. Tensions between groups were generally mitigated through exchanges and kinship ties that fostered mutual obligations, alignment of interests and mutual benefits. Shared cultural awareness of sacred power connecting all things and aspirations toward balance enabled diverse tribal societies to live in harmony with the land and in minimal conflict with one another for thousands of years.

Why were Native Americans targeted with aggressive and even tortuous responses from Europeans, even before they presented resistance to invasions? Wetiko, that is, greed for their resources and their slave labor, is part of the answer. But wetiko alone does not seem sufficient to account for the tortures that were imposed.

Another part of the answer, embedded in cultural conflict that functioned in addition to wetiko, has been presented and corroborated at length, by social psychologists, Sheldon and Solomon in their book, The Worm at the Core.[1]As one of their case histories and stories, they describe how Dutch and English settlers, arriving in the lower Hudson Valley in the 17th century were intrigued by the Natives, then, dehumanized and tortured them.

The Lenapes, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years, were happy, peaceful, welcoming, and eager to trade furs for blankets and tools. Moreover, according to firsthand accounts by Dutch settlers, the Lenapes were “well-fashioned people, strong and sound of body, well fed, without blemish. Some have lived 100 years. Also, there are among them no simpletons, lunatics, or madmen as among us.” At the same time, the Europeans found the Lenapes very unsettling. They lived in communal long houses big enough for a dozen families. They relocated seasonally. They traced their kinship through their mothers, and women had considerable power in communal affairs. They divided themselves into clans identified by animals such as wolves, turtles, or turkeys. They refrained from hunting excessively because their religion stressed that all life was interrelated and interdependent. They weren’t interested in enriching themselves beyond what was necessary to survive. Eventually, the settlers felt that something had to be done to dispose of these “most barbarous” wilden (savages). So, the Dutch and the English proceeded to exterminate the Lenapes and other Native American tribes. They had a good time doing it, too. In 1644, the director of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, “laughed right heartily” as soldiers tortured and butchered Lenapes in their villages. The soldiers took one captive, “threw him down, and stuck his private parts, which they had cut off, into his mouth while he was still alive, and after that placed him on a millstone and beat his head off,” while Dutch women amused themselves by kicking the victims’ heads around like soccer balls.

Chimps can be aggressively tribal or territorial. Only humans, however, hate and kill other humans with righteous exuberance for symbolic affronts; such as, worshipping different gods or having different lifestyles that threaten the validity of our own.

How Divergent Religious Beliefs Potentially Lead to Degradation and Lethal Conflict

In addition to wetiko and racism, extreme dehumanization with atrocities can be caused by divergent religious beliefs when the latter are linked to the mitigation of the fear of death. Belief in one’s religion, ideology, or lifestyle, as having a permanency that extends beyond the transience of personal life, implicitly provides a bulwark that mitigates the universal conscious or unconscious fear of death. “Foreigners,” so-called racial groups or strangers who are thriving despite living within a divergent identity framework can invalidate a trusted belief system and evoke the latent but ever present human fear of dying and death. Discrimination, dehumanization and torture are attempts to control and/or banish this threat by asserting supremacy that in this instance is associated with not only being right but also with an implicit death defying assurance of eternal life for oneself and/or the cause for which one is living.[1]

Unlike Native American spirituality, many followers of Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions have endeavored to create divisions between people and nature, people and animals, and people with other belief systems. Implicitly, this distancing and dominion over nature was an attempt to be part of an eternal life not “soiled” by temporal carnality; and distancing from other belief systems has been an endeavor to assure that their pathway to eternal life was the correct one. Native American practices; on the other hand, incorporated identification with Mother Earth, other peoples, brother and sister animals, and plant people, as part of an inclusiveness with All Beings, overcoming much of the threat of strangers. Native American spirituality weaves together the Spiritual Universe with Nature rather than conceiving of them as separate.

Europeans’ way of life, what they believed in and most everything they were striving for, was challenged by the Native American worldview and lifestyle. Because their cultural conceptions of reality were keeping a lid on mortal dread, acknowledging the legitimacy of Native American beliefs would have unleashed the very terror that the European beliefs were serving to quell.

Cultural Conflict Infected European and Native American Relationships.

Disruption of tribal cultures began with European fur trading and the differing customs regarding trade; namely, wetiko profiteering, vs. balancing the mutuality of benefits. Competitive leveraging among European traders, including guns, alcohol and tobacco, fostered hostility and violence between tribal groups as well as toward competing factions. Trade, in itself did not have to be a negative happening. Europeans valued the furs that they lacked and Native Americans’ life, indeed survival, was made easier with utensils, and metal tools. Rather, it was the greed and power plays that entered into trade that made it a disastrous happening.

Conflict Was Intensified by Disease

The devastating impacts of European diseases on Native Americans lacking immunities are unfathomable. When epidemics struck, communities might lose 75 per cent or more of their members within just a few weeks. The suffering was excruciating. Governor Bradford of Plymouth, writing in the 1630s, gave a vivid account of the ‘plague’:

... they [the Indians] fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold. And then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep.

The survivors, inevitably, were shocked, grief-stricken and bewildered. Tribal relationships could be altered almost instantly through the elimination of whole lineages that held communities together and structured the relationships between Native American nations. Military defenses were depleted, leaving them vulnerable to colonial forces.[1] Adding to complexity, British, French, and Dutch colonial regimes were engaged in hostilities with one another, vying for land, and fur trade. Tribes were subsequently forced into bolstering their weakened defenses through seeking alliances in this shifting landscape.

Perhaps most devastatingly of all, European disease undermined many Native Americans’ confidence in themselves and their view of the world. The failure of the shamans to contain and cure smallpox and bubonic plague was the failure of an entire system of belief: the rituals, ceremonies, checks and balances were no longer working, and the whole universe seemed to be spinning terrifyingly out of control. This reaction was echoed again and again as the same catastrophe befell other Native peoples.

On the European side, the desecrating power of the epidemics often reinforced beliefs in their cultural and religious supremacy, their manifest destiny as chosen people to take over Native lands.[1]

How the Invasion of European Culture Affected the Health of Ecosystems

Write this section ---

European Racism and Christian Supremacism Fostered the Dehumanization and Genocide of Native Americans

^

European Racism Flourished Before the Settlers Brought It to America

Racist thought was embedded in Europe long before settlers reached America. Popular theorizing began with the emulation of Aristotle who had justified Creek superiority with a “climate theory,” saying that extreme hot or cold climates produced intellectually, physically, and morally inferior people who were ugly (dark) and lacked the capacity for freedom and self-government. Aristotle labeled Africans “burnt faces”– the original meaning in Greek of “Ethiopian.” All of this was in the interest of normalizing Greek slaveholding practices and Greece’s rule over the western Mediterranean. Humanity was divided into the masters and slaves, Greeks and barbarians.

Early Christian, European theologians – whom Puritans studied alongside Aristotle, advocated St. Paul’s three-tiered hierarchy of slave relations – heavenly Master (top), earth master (middle), and enslaved (bottom). Slaves were to obey in everything those that are your earthly masters in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. In a crucial caveat in Galatians 3:28, St. Paul equalized the souls of masters and slaves as all one in Christ Jesus, thus permitting slavery in the body and equality in the soul. While Aristotle had rivals who advocated equality rather than hierarchy; and, while there were early Christian theologians who advocated equality of all, e.g. Augustine, these egalitarians are not the ones who put their influence into European colonialism. The moral justification of colonialism required White superiority.

Late 16th century literature and playwrights integrated racism into their plots. Shakespeare’s first Black character, for example, was the evil, oversexed Aaron in Titus Andronicus . Next up was the dark Moor , Othello, whose trusted ensign, Iago, remarked “for that I do suspect the lusty (dark) Moor has stepped into my seat.” Talking to Othello’s father-in-law, Iago labels Othello as “an old black ram … tupping your white ewe.” Othello confesses the murder of his innocent wife to her maidservant who then calls Othello “the blacker devil,” and he commits suicide. (Lamenting his blackness?)

Racist thoughts justified the expanding profitability of European slave trade and were carried to America with the first settlers. Since the enslavement of dark Africans had already been normalized as appropriate and even “holy,” Indians were readily dehumanized as “Negroes of the land.”

The climate theory, which for centuries had explained the racist division between superior Whites and inferior Blacks begin to fall apart as European explorers discovered that the Inuit of the far north were darker than peoples to the south. Racist theorizing, however, did not miss a beat. The Biblical story of the curse of Ham and his descendents that did not depend upon climate now came to the forefront to explain why darker people were inferior and suitable for enslavement. As told in Genesis 9, Ham came upon his father, Noah, when the latter was drunk and naked, shamefully gazing upon him. When Noah learned of this, he cursed Ham’s son Canaan and all of his descendents, saying:

“Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall be he to his brothers.”

All of the peoples of the earth were said to be descended from (darkened) Canaan and his (unblemished) brothers, Japheth and Shem. A British historian, Pory, in 1600, suggested that Africans were “descended from Ham, the accursed son of Noah.”[1]

Biblical Influences Helped Shape Both Racist and Anti-Racist Behaviors in the Unfolding Relationship between Europeans and Native Americans

The Pilgrims construed a self-serving religious meaning to the epidemics:

“Thus farre hath the good hand of God favoured our beginnings ... ‘In sweeping away great multitudes of the Natives ..., a little more before we went thither, that He might make room for us there.[1]

The Pilgrims understanding of the events that resulted in the dispossessing of Native Americans from their lands, were informed by their interpretation of the Bible. The passages that they chose to live by, as conquerors, supported their beliefs in themselves as chosen by God to take over the new lands that were before them. The Scripture passages upon which they focused, reinforced their implicit sense of supremacy, laying the foundation for traditions of White Supremacism and Christian Supremacism, which continue in the United States for centuries, even while undergoing some name changes along the way including “manifest destiny,” “jingoism” and “American exceptionalism.”.

Biblical passages were taken at face value without regard to the entire biblical context, even though others who were also taking inspiration from the Bible did so with divergent scriptural emphases and interpretations. The Biblical influence that informed both racist behavior and antiracist behavior is discussed in detail when it becomes relevant because it continues to be a factor in the ongoing United States struggle to form an inclusive and just society.

The Pilgrims saw themselves as the New Israel. Accordingly, they identified with the people who listened to the following passages attributed to Moses, while encamped on the plains of Moab, (east of the Dead Sea) poised to invade the Promised Land that was home to the Canaanites, cursed descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham. Perhaps it was to justify this invasion, that Biblical writers described Noah’s curse as puzzlingly falling upon his grandson Canaan rather than his son Ham, who had actually unashamedly viewed his father’s nakedness?

(Collated from Deuteronomy):

I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land that I swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.

The Lord your God will give them over to you, and throw them into great panic, until they are destroyed. He will hand their kings over to you and you shall blot out their name from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you, until you have destroyed them.

Know then today that the Lord your God is the one who crosses over before you as a devouring fire; he will defeat them and subdue them before you, so that you may dispossess and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

When you have dispossessed them and live in their land, take care that you are not snared into imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you: do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, “How did these nations worship their gods? But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.

The Pilgrim leaders took such scriptural passages as a Divine moral mandate that sanctified amoral atrocities against Native Americans. Even as the Pilgrims identified wiping out Native Americans with Israelites destroying Canaanites, so later in the colonial era, the churches of enslavers would identify Blacks with the Canaanites who allegedly deserved servitude because of Canaan’s father, Ham, shamefully viewing his father’s nakedness. This convoluted argument was used in the United States to justify seeing people of color as destined to be servants or slaves and subject to degradation or, if necessary, destruction.

More than fifty of the first Colonial settlements were built on the remains of Indian communities, a pattern that was to be repeated as the frontier moved west. Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem, Boston, Providence, New Amsterdam, Philadelphia - all grew upon sites previously occupied by Indian communities. The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, an occupation of a land made waste by the diseases, violence and demoralization introduced by Europeans .[1]

The Pilgrim Puritans of Plymouth Colony are an egregious example of how the wetiko-racist infection can be inadvertently carried, in their case worsened by Christian Supremacism and exclusivism.

Internally, the Pilgrims sense of Biblical covenant created strong and caring community bonds in which they were committed to giving all they had to one another, and to supporting one another in difficult times. Their Biblical sense of being a New Israel, of establishing the Biblical City on a Hill (Matthew 5:14) that would be an example of sacred living for all others to follow, gave them a compelling vision that sustained them through harsh conditions and setbacks.[1]

The Puritans sense that God was speaking to them, revealing how to love one another and be an example for the world was unfortunately matched with strong convictions that God was not speaking to others outside of the boundaries of their communities and beliefs. In fact, they even felt that they would be contaminated if they associated too closely with people outside their belief-boundaries. This is why in Europe they became known as Separatists and why they prohibited informal friendships with Native Americans.

These strong in-group/out-group boundaries, not only placed limitations upon themselves, but ultimately permitted the dehumanization and racist genocide of Native American villages and later on the persecution of so-called “witches.”

Although the Puritans were inherently no more aggressive than other human beings, their strong needs to see themselves as righteous, fostered the projection of their violent impulses onto others; consequently, atrocities were always blamed on the savagery or evil, which they “saw” in their victims.

Other Christian groups such as in Rhode Island, founded on the principle of tolerance and in Pennsylvania, founded with a heavy influence of Quaker traditions of loving outreach toward others developed communities where antiracist norms were fostered, where Native Americans and both free Blacks and runaway slaves could find sanctuary.

The Conquering and Expanded Occupation of Native American Lands

Puritans arrived in New England with Imperial charters, wetiko imbued missions to return profits from anticipated fur trading and land deals. As their colonies expanded, conflicts of land-use with Native Americans were intensified by differing conceptions of land occupation – an obligation to “living land” as a giver of bounty vs land as owned property with private privileges. When treaties were made, each side took away their own cultural understanding from the documents.

Tensions grew as settlements extended further into Native Homeland in the Cape Cod area and into regions that were to become Canada, New England and New York. The century was marked by numerous Indian wars. Weakened by diseases and disruptions of traditional tribal alliances, colonial forces generally overwhelmed Native defenses of their homelands. Racism and Christian Supremacist zeal added horrendous atrocities to these battles.

The Pequot Village Massacre

Capt. Mason, e.g., described the attack of his soldiers in 1637 on a Pequot village at dawn.

“Most of the enemy were still in a dead, and indeed their last sleep.” His men broke in, wildly firing and hacking at the terrified Pequots -- mostly old men, women and children with few weapons – until: the captain said, “we must burn them, and immediately brought out a Firebrand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire ... such a dreadful Terror did the ALMIGHTY let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished. ... And thus in little more than one Hour’s space was their impregnable Fort with themselves utterly Destroyed, to the Number of Six or Seven Hundred ... There were only Seven taken Captive & about Seven escaped. Thus was God seen in the Mount, Crushing his proud Enemies and the Enemies of his People . .. burning them up in the Fire of his Wrath, and dunging the Ground with their Flesh: It was the LORD’s Doings, and it is marvellous in our Eyes! [1]

Even Indian allies of the colonial forces were aghast at the total destruction (genocide), which was outside of their understanding of war. Apparently, some of the colonists must have also raised questions because Capt. Underwood felt the need to offer a justification. Going to the Bible, he referred such critics to “David’s War.”

“When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man ... the Scripture declareth that women and children must perish with their parents…we had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.

Capt. Underwood, if pressed, could have proliferated his Biblical justifications, including using the words attributed to Moses, quoted previously regarding the total destruction of Canaanite villages.“… as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them.”

(If it had not been counter to their implicit self-purpose, Capt. Mason and Capt. Underwood, could have alternatively found Biblical warnings and prophetic judgment against such annihilation and stealing of land. Later in this book, when we take a deep dive into Native American spirituality, we will be noting such scriptural references.)

The so-called Biblical justifications that informed New England settlers, were sufficient to make this massacre into a precedent for many massacres of Native American villages that would follow during the coming centuries.

King Philip’s War

The most extensive of New England colonial Indian wars was King Philip’s (Metacom’s English nickname) War from 1675 to 1678, whose fatalities included ~3000 Native Americans and ~600 settlers, along with numerous towns destroyed.[1] In the most gruesome battle, according to one source, two thousand Narragansett men, women and children perished in a single incident, most of them burnt to death.

Increase Mather, a Puritan minister involved in the administration of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and subsequently the administration of Harvard and infamously the Salem witch trials, gleefully reported,

… when the survivors ‘came to see the ashes of their friends, mingled with the ashes of their fort ... where the English had been doing a good day’s work, they Howl’d, they Roar’d, they Stamp’d, they tore their hair; ... and were the pictures of so many Devils in Desperation.’

Metacom’s wife and child were captured –

‘It must have been as bitter as death to him...’ wrote Mather, ‘for the Indians are marvellously fond and affectionate toward their children’ - and ‘King Philip’ himself was finally killed. His head was placed on a spike above the entrance to Plymouth, and his family and hundreds of other Indians -including many who had surrendered under promise of protection -were sold into slavery in Bermuda.

Illustrative Character of Puritan Leader, Increase Mather --Understanding His Approval of Atrocities

Given Increase Mather’s achievements, his comments about Native American genocidal events, his lack of empathy, are surprising and instructive regarding his failure to overcome wetiko and racism. He provides a window into how otherwise outstanding people can carry the wetiko and racist cultural viruses. Mather’s evidence of personal strengths included:

Increase Mather’s Strengths

· He was an intellectually proficient scholar, graduating from Harvard College at 17 years old. He then studied at Trinity College in Duplin for an MA. He was granted Harvard’s first honorary doctorate degree in 1692.

· He was religiously devoted to Christianity, serving churches was a priority, even when it meant resigning his presidency from Harvard because of time conflicts.

· Mather was politically astute. When the Massachusetts Bay colony had a “dictator” appointed, who outlawed town meetings, Mather eluded spies to successfully go to the King of England with a petition and published flyers at home to build support for democratic reforms.

· Organizationally, Mather was an achiever, first becoming the acting president of Harvard, and steadily advancing until he became president, serving from 1692 to 1701. A believer in community, he enacted requirements that students attend classes regularly, live and eat on campus and that seniors not haze other students.

· He was a successful author, probing contemporary events, including King Philip’s War and witchcraft trials.

Given these many strengths, how was Increase Mather so vulnerable to the embodiment of wetiko and racism?

· Clue #1 Christian Supremacy and exclusivism – it is one thing to be devoted to the love, mercy and compassion exhibited in Christian Gospels; he did this in his nurturing of community, both in serving churches and as a president of Harvard University. However, his devotion to compassion for others, closed out those who were of different persuasions. At Harvard he reimplemented the studies of Greek and Hebrew while replacing classical Roman authors with Biblical and Christian authors in ethics classes.

· Clue #2 Impermeable in-group/out-group boundaries – following in the Puritan, Separatist tradition, he fostered communities that were loving and supportive to one another, but kept strangers at a distance. Social “walls” constrain empathy and invite misunderstandings of the “other.”

· Clue #3 Passion for righteousness rather than self-awareness – we humans have evolved as a mix of love and generosity, on the one hand, and selfishness with readiness to do violence on the other hand. A passion for righteousness without equal probing of negativity that we carry within us, leads to the projection of our own shadow selves onto others. When there are strong religious or racial boundaries, negativity and evil are projected onto other social groups; thus, Native Americans could readily be seen as embodying devils, as could suspected witches.

· Clue #4 Land imperialism – he harbored a greed driven desire (wetiko) for Puritan settlers to expand their landholdings through dominating and overcoming Native American inhabitants.

When strong leaders, such as Increase Mather, succumb to wetiko and racism, the damage is compounded because of their influence on others. Since we all have similar potentials, a strong leader tips the balance for many as to whether we have an inclusive, caring society or an exclusive, destructive society.

In summary, the character of Increase Mather teaches us that neither intellectual achievement nor religious devotion, if combined with ideologies of supremacy and exclusivism, are pathways to overcoming wetiko and racism. The ideology of Christian Supremacy has its equivalents in ideologies of nationalistic supremacy and White Supremacy. The challenges noted above are not simply clues as to how Increase Mather’s legacy was besmirched, but rather challenges recurrent throughout the life of the United States.

Book Blog #2

Chapter 2: Colonial America’s Violent Eviction of Native Americans from Their Homelands

Culture Clash and Wetiko

The chasmic clash of Native American and Colonial cultures was destined to lead to conflict. Although tribes varied in many respects, they shared beliefs in the sacredness of land and in sacred power that connected all things. Because everything in the universe is interrelated, and because ‘the people’ are at the centre of it, their rituals not only regulated their own relationship with the sacred and with other living beings but also ensured that the whole natural order is properly maintained. Presciently, this sense of responsibility for the balance of Life anticipates contemporary scientific knowledge that the balance of planetary climate systems and ecosystems have become contingent upon human behaviors. Geoscientists describe this insight as awareness that we are in the Era of the Anthropocene, when human beings are a primary causal factor in the health of all ecosystems.[1] The cataclysmic surge in climate warming, extreme weather events, acidification of the ocean and extinctions are a consequence of denying these relationships and responsibilities.

Native American cultures’ common aspirations toward balance included norms for intertribal relationships. Tensions between groups were generally mitigated through exchanges and kinship ties that fostered mutual obligations, alignment of interests and mutual benefits. Shared cultural awareness of sacred power connecting all things and aspirations toward balance enabled diverse tribal societies to live in harmony with the land and in minimal conflict with one another for thousands of years.

Why were Native Americans targeted with aggressive and even tortuous responses from Europeans, even before they presented resistance to invasions? Wetiko, that is, greed for their resources and their slave labor, is part of the answer. But wetiko alone does not seem sufficient to account for the tortures that were imposed.

Another part of the answer, embedded in cultural conflict that functioned in addition to wetiko, has been presented and corroborated at length, by social psychologists, Sheldon and Solomon in their book, The Worm at the Core.[1]As one of their case histories and stories, they describe how Dutch and English settlers, arriving in the lower Hudson Valley in the 17th century were intrigued by the Natives, then, dehumanized and tortured them.

The Lenapes, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years, were happy, peaceful, welcoming, and eager to trade furs for blankets and tools. Moreover, according to firsthand accounts by Dutch settlers, the Lenapes were “well-fashioned people, strong and sound of body, well fed, without blemish. Some have lived 100 years. Also, there are among them no simpletons, lunatics, or madmen as among us.” At the same time, the Europeans found the Lenapes very unsettling. They lived in communal long houses big enough for a dozen families. They relocated seasonally. They traced their kinship through their mothers, and women had considerable power in communal affairs. They divided themselves into clans identified by animals such as wolves, turtles, or turkeys. They refrained from hunting excessively because their religion stressed that all life was interrelated and interdependent. They weren’t interested in enriching themselves beyond what was necessary to survive. Eventually, the settlers felt that something had to be done to dispose of these “most barbarous” wilden (savages). So, the Dutch and the English proceeded to exterminate the Lenapes and other Native American tribes. They had a good time doing it, too. In 1644, the director of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, “laughed right heartily” as soldiers tortured and butchered Lenapes in their villages. The soldiers took one captive, “threw him down, and stuck his private parts, which they had cut off, into his mouth while he was still alive, and after that placed him on a millstone and beat his head off,” while Dutch women amused themselves by kicking the victims’ heads around like soccer balls.

Chimps can be aggressively tribal or territorial. Only humans, however, hate and kill other humans with righteous exuberance for symbolic affronts; such as, worshipping different gods or having different lifestyles that threaten the validity of our own.

How Divergent Religious Beliefs Potentially Lead to Degradation and Lethal Conflict

In addition to wetiko and racism, extreme dehumanization with atrocities can be caused by divergent religious beliefs when the latter are linked to the mitigation of the fear of death. Belief in one’s religion, ideology, or lifestyle, as having a permanency that extends beyond the transience of personal life, implicitly provides a bulwark that mitigates the universal conscious or unconscious fear of death. “Foreigners,” so-called racial groups or strangers who are thriving despite living within a divergent identity framework can invalidate a trusted belief system and evoke the latent but ever present human fear of dying and death. Discrimination, dehumanization and torture are attempts to control and/or banish this threat by asserting supremacy that in this instance is associated with not only being right but also with an implicit death defying assurance of eternal life for oneself and/or the cause for which one is living.[1]

Unlike Native American spirituality, many followers of Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions have endeavored to create divisions between people and nature, people and animals, and people with other belief systems. Implicitly, this distancing and dominion over nature was an attempt to be part of an eternal life not “soiled” by temporal carnality; and distancing from other belief systems has been an endeavor to assure that their pathway to eternal life was the correct one. Native American practices; on the other hand, incorporated identification with Mother Earth, other peoples, brother and sister animals, and plant people, as part of an inclusiveness with All Beings, overcoming much of the threat of strangers. Native American spirituality weaves together the Spiritual Universe with Nature rather than conceiving of them as separate.

Europeans’ way of life, what they believed in and most everything they were striving for, was challenged by the Native American worldview and lifestyle. Because their cultural conceptions of reality were keeping a lid on mortal dread, acknowledging the legitimacy of Native American beliefs would have unleashed the very terror that the European beliefs were serving to quell.

Cultural Conflict Infected European and Native American Relationships.

Disruption of tribal cultures began with European fur trading and the differing customs regarding trade; namely, wetiko profiteering, vs. balancing the mutuality of benefits. Competitive leveraging among European traders, including guns, alcohol and tobacco, fostered hostility and violence between tribal groups as well as toward competing factions. Trade, in itself did not have to be a negative happening. Europeans valued the furs that they lacked and Native Americans’ life, indeed survival, was made easier with utensils, and metal tools. Rather, it was the greed and power plays that entered into trade that made it a disastrous happening.

Conflict Was Intensified by Disease

The devastating impacts of European diseases on Native Americans lacking immunities are unfathomable. When epidemics struck, communities might lose 75 per cent or more of their members within just a few weeks. The suffering was excruciating. Governor Bradford of Plymouth, writing in the 1630s, gave a vivid account of the ‘plague’:

... they [the Indians] fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold. And then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep.

The survivors, inevitably, were shocked, grief-stricken and bewildered. Tribal relationships could be altered almost instantly through the elimination of whole lineages that held communities together and structured the relationships between Native American nations. Military defenses were depleted, leaving them vulnerable to colonial forces.[1] Adding to complexity, British, French, and Dutch colonial regimes were engaged in hostilities with one another, vying for land, and fur trade. Tribes were subsequently forced into bolstering their weakened defenses through seeking alliances in this shifting landscape.

Perhaps most devastatingly of all, European disease undermined many Native Americans’ confidence in themselves and their view of the world. The failure of the shamans to contain and cure smallpox and bubonic plague was the failure of an entire system of belief: the rituals, ceremonies, checks and balances were no longer working, and the whole universe seemed to be spinning terrifyingly out of control. This reaction was echoed again and again as the same catastrophe befell other Native peoples.

On the European side, the desecrating power of the epidemics often reinforced beliefs in their cultural and religious supremacy, their manifest destiny as chosen people to take over Native lands.[1]

How the Invasion of European Culture Affected the Health of Ecosystems

Write this section ---

European Racism and Christian Supremacism Fostered the Dehumanization and Genocide of Native Americans

^

European Racism Flourished Before the Settlers Brought It to America

Racist thought was embedded in Europe long before settlers reached America. Popular theorizing began with the emulation of Aristotle who had justified Creek superiority with a “climate theory,” saying that extreme hot or cold climates produced intellectually, physically, and morally inferior people who were ugly (dark) and lacked the capacity for freedom and self-government. Aristotle labeled Africans “burnt faces”– the original meaning in Greek of “Ethiopian.” All of this was in the interest of normalizing Greek slaveholding practices and Greece’s rule over the western Mediterranean. Humanity was divided into the masters and slaves, Greeks and barbarians.

Early Christian, European theologians – whom Puritans studied alongside Aristotle, advocated St. Paul’s three-tiered hierarchy of slave relations – heavenly Master (top), earth master (middle), and enslaved (bottom). Slaves were to obey in everything those that are your earthly masters in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. In a crucial caveat in Galatians 3:28, St. Paul equalized the souls of masters and slaves as all one in Christ Jesus, thus permitting slavery in the body and equality in the soul. While Aristotle had rivals who advocated equality rather than hierarchy; and, while there were early Christian theologians who advocated equality of all, e.g. Augustine, these egalitarians are not the ones who put their influence into European colonialism. The moral justification of colonialism required White superiority.

Late 16th century literature and playwrights integrated racism into their plots. Shakespeare’s first Black character, for example, was the evil, oversexed Aaron in Titus Andronicus . Next up was the dark Moor , Othello, whose trusted ensign, Iago, remarked “for that I do suspect the lusty (dark) Moor has stepped into my seat.” Talking to Othello’s father-in-law, Iago labels Othello as “an old black ram … tupping your white ewe.” Othello confesses the murder of his innocent wife to her maidservant who then calls Othello “the blacker devil,” and he commits suicide. (Lamenting his blackness?)

Racist thoughts justified the expanding profitability of European slave trade and were carried to America with the first settlers. Since the enslavement of dark Africans had already been normalized as appropriate and even “holy,” Indians were readily dehumanized as “Negroes of the land.”

The climate theory, which for centuries had explained the racist division between superior Whites and inferior Blacks begin to fall apart as European explorers discovered that the Inuit of the far north were darker than peoples to the south. Racist theorizing, however, did not miss a beat. The Biblical story of the curse of Ham and his descendents that did not depend upon climate now came to the forefront to explain why darker people were inferior and suitable for enslavement. As told in Genesis 9, Ham came upon his father, Noah, when the latter was drunk and naked, shamefully gazing upon him. When Noah learned of this, he cursed Ham’s son Canaan and all of his descendents, saying:

“Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall be he to his brothers.”

All of the peoples of the earth were said to be descended from (darkened) Canaan and his (unblemished) brothers, Japheth and Shem. A British historian, Pory, in 1600, suggested that Africans were “descended from Ham, the accursed son of Noah.”[1]

Biblical Influences Helped Shape Both Racist and Anti-Racist Behaviors in the Unfolding Relationship between Europeans and Native Americans

The Pilgrims construed a self-serving religious meaning to the epidemics:

“Thus farre hath the good hand of God favoured our beginnings ... ‘In sweeping away great multitudes of the Natives ..., a little more before we went thither, that He might make room for us there.[1]

The Pilgrims understanding of the events that resulted in the dispossessing of Native Americans from their lands, were informed by their interpretation of the Bible. The passages that they chose to live by, as conquerors, supported their beliefs in themselves as chosen by God to take over the new lands that were before them. The Scripture passages upon which they focused, reinforced their implicit sense of supremacy, laying the foundation for traditions of White Supremacism and Christian Supremacism, which continue in the United States for centuries, even while undergoing some name changes along the way including “manifest destiny,” “jingoism” and “American exceptionalism.”.

Biblical passages were taken at face value without regard to the entire biblical context, even though others who were also taking inspiration from the Bible did so with divergent scriptural emphases and interpretations. The Biblical influence that informed both racist behavior and antiracist behavior is discussed in detail when it becomes relevant because it continues to be a factor in the ongoing United States struggle to form an inclusive and just society.

The Pilgrims saw themselves as the New Israel. Accordingly, they identified with the people who listened to the following passages attributed to Moses, while encamped on the plains of Moab, (east of the Dead Sea) poised to invade the Promised Land that was home to the Canaanites, cursed descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham. Perhaps it was to justify this invasion, that Biblical writers described Noah’s curse as puzzlingly falling upon his grandson Canaan rather than his son Ham, who had actually unashamedly viewed his father’s nakedness?

(Collated from Deuteronomy):

I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land that I swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.

The Lord your God will give them over to you, and throw them into great panic, until they are destroyed. He will hand their kings over to you and you shall blot out their name from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you, until you have destroyed them.

Know then today that the Lord your God is the one who crosses over before you as a devouring fire; he will defeat them and subdue them before you, so that you may dispossess and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

When you have dispossessed them and live in their land, take care that you are not snared into imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you: do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, “How did these nations worship their gods? But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.

The Pilgrim leaders took such scriptural passages as a Divine moral mandate that sanctified amoral atrocities against Native Americans. Even as the Pilgrims identified wiping out Native Americans with Israelites destroying Canaanites, so later in the colonial era, the churches of enslavers would identify Blacks with the Canaanites who allegedly deserved servitude because of Canaan’s father, Ham, shamefully viewing his father’s nakedness. This convoluted argument was used in the United States to justify seeing people of color as destined to be servants or slaves and subject to degradation or, if necessary, destruction.

More than fifty of the first Colonial settlements were built on the remains of Indian communities, a pattern that was to be repeated as the frontier moved west. Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem, Boston, Providence, New Amsterdam, Philadelphia - all grew upon sites previously occupied by Indian communities. The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, an occupation of a land made waste by the diseases, violence and demoralization introduced by Europeans .[1]

The Pilgrim Puritans of Plymouth Colony are an egregious example of how the wetiko-racist infection can be inadvertently carried, in their case worsened by Christian Supremacism and exclusivism.

Internally, the Pilgrims sense of Biblical covenant created strong and caring community bonds in which they were committed to giving all they had to one another, and to supporting one another in difficult times. Their Biblical sense of being a New Israel, of establishing the Biblical City on a Hill (Matthew 5:14) that would be an example of sacred living for all others to follow, gave them a compelling vision that sustained them through harsh conditions and setbacks.[1]

The Puritans sense that God was speaking to them, revealing how to love one another and be an example for the world was unfortunately matched with strong convictions that God was not speaking to others outside of the boundaries of their communities and beliefs. In fact, they even felt that they would be contaminated if they associated too closely with people outside their belief-boundaries. This is why in Europe they became known as Separatists and why they prohibited informal friendships with Native Americans.

These strong in-group/out-group boundaries, not only placed limitations upon themselves, but ultimately permitted the dehumanization and racist genocide of Native American villages and later on the persecution of so-called “witches.”

Although the Puritans were inherently no more aggressive than other human beings, their strong needs to see themselves as righteous, fostered the projection of their violent impulses onto others; consequently, atrocities were always blamed on the savagery or evil, which they “saw” in their victims.

Other Christian groups such as in Rhode Island, founded on the principle of tolerance and in Pennsylvania, founded with a heavy influence of Quaker traditions of loving outreach toward others developed communities where antiracist norms were fostered, where Native Americans and both free Blacks and runaway slaves could find sanctuary.

The Conquering and Expanded Occupation of Native American Lands

Puritans arrived in New England with Imperial charters, wetiko imbued missions to return profits from anticipated fur trading and land deals. As their colonies expanded, conflicts of land-use with Native Americans were intensified by differing conceptions of land occupation – an obligation to “living land” as a giver of bounty vs land as owned property with private privileges. When treaties were made, each side took away their own cultural understanding from the documents.

Tensions grew as settlements extended further into Native Homeland in the Cape Cod area and into regions that were to become Canada, New England and New York. The century was marked by numerous Indian wars. Weakened by diseases and disruptions of traditional tribal alliances, colonial forces generally overwhelmed Native defenses of their homelands. Racism and Christian Supremacist zeal added horrendous atrocities to these battles.

The Pequot Village Massacre

Capt. Mason, e.g., described the attack of his soldiers in 1637 on a Pequot village at dawn.

“Most of the enemy were still in a dead, and indeed their last sleep.” His men broke in, wildly firing and hacking at the terrified Pequots -- mostly old men, women and children with few weapons – until: the captain said, “we must burn them, and immediately brought out a Firebrand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire ... such a dreadful Terror did the ALMIGHTY let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished. ... And thus in little more than one Hour’s space was their impregnable Fort with themselves utterly Destroyed, to the Number of Six or Seven Hundred ... There were only Seven taken Captive & about Seven escaped. Thus was God seen in the Mount, Crushing his proud Enemies and the Enemies of his People . .. burning them up in the Fire of his Wrath, and dunging the Ground with their Flesh: It was the LORD’s Doings, and it is marvellous in our Eyes! [1]

Even Indian allies of the colonial forces were aghast at the total destruction (genocide), which was outside of their understanding of war. Apparently, some of the colonists must have also raised questions because Capt. Underwood felt the need to offer a justification. Going to the Bible, he referred such critics to “David’s War.”

“When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man ... the Scripture declareth that women and children must perish with their parents…we had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.

Capt. Underwood, if pressed, could have proliferated his Biblical justifications, including using the words attributed to Moses, quoted previously regarding the total destruction of Canaanite villages.“… as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them.”

(If it had not been counter to their implicit self-purpose, Capt. Mason and Capt. Underwood, could have alternatively found Biblical warnings and prophetic judgment against such annihilation and stealing of land. Later in this book, when we take a deep dive into Native American spirituality, we will be noting such scriptural references.)

The so-called Biblical justifications that informed New England settlers, were sufficient to make this massacre into a precedent for many massacres of Native American villages that would follow during the coming centuries.

King Philip’s War

The most extensive of New England colonial Indian wars was King Philip’s (Metacom’s English nickname) War from 1675 to 1678, whose fatalities included ~3000 Native Americans and ~600 settlers, along with numerous towns destroyed.[1] In the most gruesome battle, according to one source, two thousand Narragansett men, women and children perished in a single incident, most of them burnt to death.

Increase Mather, a Puritan minister involved in the administration of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and subsequently the administration of Harvard and infamously the Salem witch trials, gleefully reported,

… when the survivors ‘came to see the ashes of their friends, mingled with the ashes of their fort ... where the English had been doing a good day’s work, they Howl’d, they Roar’d, they Stamp’d, they tore their hair; ... and were the pictures of so many Devils in Desperation.’

Metacom’s wife and child were captured –

‘It must have been as bitter as death to him...’ wrote Mather, ‘for the Indians are marvellously fond and affectionate toward their children’ - and ‘King Philip’ himself was finally killed. His head was placed on a spike above the entrance to Plymouth, and his family and hundreds of other Indians -including many who had surrendered under promise of protection -were sold into slavery in Bermuda.

Illustrative Character of Puritan Leader, Increase Mather --Understanding His Approval of Atrocities

Given Increase Mather’s achievements, his comments about Native American genocidal events, his lack of empathy, are surprising and instructive regarding his failure to overcome wetiko and racism. He provides a window into how otherwise outstanding people can carry the wetiko and racist cultural viruses. Mather’s evidence of personal strengths included:

Increase Mather’s Strengths

· He was an intellectually proficient scholar, graduating from Harvard College at 17 years old. He then studied at Trinity College in Duplin for an MA. He was granted Harvard’s first honorary doctorate degree in 1692.

· He was religiously devoted to Christianity, serving churches was a priority, even when it meant resigning his presidency from Harvard because of time conflicts.

· Mather was politically astute. When the Massachusetts Bay colony had a “dictator” appointed, who outlawed town meetings, Mather eluded spies to successfully go to the King of England with a petition and published flyers at home to build support for democratic reforms.

· Organizationally, Mather was an achiever, first becoming the acting president of Harvard, and steadily advancing until he became president, serving from 1692 to 1701. A believer in community, he enacted requirements that students attend classes regularly, live and eat on campus and that seniors not haze other students.

· He was a successful author, probing contemporary events, including King Philip’s War and witchcraft trials.

Given these many strengths, how was Increase Mather so vulnerable to the embodiment of wetiko and racism?

· Clue #1 Christian Supremacy and exclusivism – it is one thing to be devoted to the love, mercy and compassion exhibited in Christian Gospels; he did this in his nurturing of community, both in serving churches and as a president of Harvard University. However, his devotion to compassion for others, closed out those who were of different persuasions. At Harvard he reimplemented the studies of Greek and Hebrew while replacing classical Roman authors with Biblical and Christian authors in ethics classes.

· Clue #2 Impermeable in-group/out-group boundaries – following in the Puritan, Separatist tradition, he fostered communities that were loving and supportive to one another, but kept strangers at a distance. Social “walls” constrain empathy and invite misunderstandings of the “other.”

· Clue #3 Passion for righteousness rather than self-awareness – we humans have evolved as a mix of love and generosity, on the one hand, and selfishness with readiness to do violence on the other hand. A passion for righteousness without equal probing of negativity that we carry within us, leads to the projection of our own shadow selves onto others. When there are strong religious or racial boundaries, negativity and evil are projected onto other social groups; thus, Native Americans could readily be seen as embodying devils, as could suspected witches.

· Clue #4 Land imperialism – he harbored a greed driven desire (wetiko) for Puritan settlers to expand their landholdings through dominating and overcoming Native American inhabitants.

When strong leaders, such as Increase Mather, succumb to wetiko and racism, the damage is compounded because of their influence on others. Since we all have similar potentials, a strong leader tips the balance for many as to whether we have an inclusive, caring society or an exclusive, destructive society.

In summary, the character of Increase Mather teaches us that neither intellectual achievement nor religious devotion, if combined with ideologies of supremacy and exclusivism, are pathways to overcoming wetiko and racism. The ideology of Christian Supremacy has its equivalents in ideologies of nationalistic supremacy and White Supremacy. The challenges noted above are not simply clues as to how Increase Mather’s legacy was besmirched, but rather challenges recurrent throughout the life of the United States.

[1] Kendi, Ibram X.. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (p. 26). PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition.