Freethought & Rationalism Archive

gstafleu · 11-09-2006, 05:00 AM

I'm not quite sure if this thread belongs here, but having said that there is a BC&H link, so bear with me.

I'm reading A History of the End of the World, by Jonathan Kirsch (a book about Revelations), and I tripped over a sentence. He says that the Puritans saw the "New World" as the site of the New Jerusalem, "even though it was occupied by native-dwelling tribes whom they saw as minions of the Devil."

I had never run into that minions of the Devil bit before, which maybe just shows the state of my knowledge. Is that accurate, did the Puritans indeed see the natives that way?

Gerard Stafleu

Toto · 11-09-2006, 12:28 PM

Johathan Kirsch is a lawyer specializing in copyright, and also a literary critic for the Los Angeles Times.

I think he is generally correct, although a historian would probably put some more nuance on that statement. After the Puritans landed in New England, the local native Americans were hit with a lot of disease, and the Puritans saw this as God preparing the land for them by removing the natives.

Kirsch may be referring to the general context of the Salem witch trials, incljuding The Scarlet Letter: from here

Quote:

Some in the community are suspicious of his connection with Dr. Forman, a man accused of witchcraft in England, and also suspect that among the Indians he may have picked up what is described as 'their skill in the black art.' This refers to the Puritans' early beliefs that God had prepared a way for them in the wilderness and that the native Indians were minions of the devil.

However, according to this essay Satan’s Minions and The Chosen People: Changing Puritan Conceptions of the Indian in the Era of King Philip’s War, the Puritans had tried to make the Indians their dependents, and when the Indians objected, had turned on them and decided at that point that they were in league with the devil:

Quote:

The Puritans of New England had faced a great deal of factionalism since their arrival in the New World. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Puritan elite were decrying a generational rift and decline in church membership. To maintain stability, they attempted to control their surroundings. This not only meant the colonists, but also the Indian and their land. They attempted to make the Indians part of their community, with themselves as the dominant father figure. The Puritans incessant wish to maintain control and dominance over their Indian neighbors produced increasing Indian animosity, culminating in a brutal and destructive war. The destructiveness of the war provided Puritan leaders with an answer to the factionalism plaguing their society. They ascended the Pulpit and proclaimed that God had left New England and then, by removing himself, he eliminated the protection granted to the “chosen people” from Indians who had now become the tool of Satan. The colonists responded with a renewed religious spirit, but more importantly they became increasingly hostile toward their Indian neighbors. The consequences of this development would prove catastrophic for the native peoples surrounding New England. No longer did the Indian hold a filial role within Puritan society, they became the Other, treated like a foreign entity and marked for displacement.

mountainman · 11-09-2006, 01:56 PM

According to Dr Charles Eastman (1911), from his introduction ...

Quote:

The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar. They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible symbol and professed a particular form of their hydra-headed faith.

and then from the first chapter of his book "The Soul of the Indian"

Quote:

The Paradox of "Christian Civilization"

There was undoubtedly much in primitive Christianity to appeal to this man, and Jesus' hard sayings to the rich and about the rich would have been entirely comprehensible to him. Yet the religion that is preached in our churches and practiced by our congregations, with its element of display and self-aggrandizement, its active proselytism, and its open contempt of all religions but its own, was for a long time extremely repellent. To his simple mind, the professionalism of the pulpit, the paid exhorter, the moneyed church, was an unspiritual and unedifying, and it was not until his spirit was broken and his moral and physical constitution undermined by trade, conquest, and strong drink, that Christian missionaries obtained any real hold upon him. Strange as it may seem, it is true that the proud pagan in his secret soul despised the good men who came to convert and to enlighten him!

Nor were its publicity and its Phariseeism the only elements in the alien religion that offended the red man. To him, it appeared shocking and almost incredible that there were among this people who claimed superiority many irreligious, who did not even pretend to profess the national. Not only did they not profess it, but they stooped so low as to insult their God with profane and sacrilegious speech! In our own tongue His name was not spoken aloud, even with utmost reverence, much less lightly or irreverently.

More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduct. They spoke much of spiritual things, while seeking only the material. They bought and sold everything, labor, personal independence, the love of woman, and even the ministrations of their holy faith! The lust for money, power, and conquest so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race did not escape moral condemnation at the hands of his untutored judge, nor did he fail to contrast this conspicuous trait of the dominant race with the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus.

He might in time come to recognize that the drunkards and licentious among white men, with whom he too frequently came in contact, were condemned by the white man's religion as well, and must not be held to discredit it. But it was not so easy to overlook or to excuse national bad faith. When distinguished emissaries from the Father at Washington, some of them ministers of the gospel and even bishops, came to the Indian nations, and pledged to them in solemn treaty the national honor, with prayer and mention of their God; and when such treaties, so made, were promptly and shamelessly broken, is it strange that the action should arouse not only anger, but contempt? The historians of the white race admit that the Indian was never the first to repudiate his oath.

It is my personal belief, after thirty-five years' experience of it, that there is no such thing as "Christian Civilization." I believe that Christianity and modern civilization are opposed and irreconcilable, and that the spirit of Christianity and of our ancient religion is essentially the same.

Dr Charles Alexander Eastman, 1911
born Ohiyesa of the Santee Sioux, in 1858

Pete Brown

hatsoff · 11-09-2006, 02:30 PM

John Cotton, grandfather of Cotton Mather, seems to have written in a letter to Increase Mather, that Indians were "children of the Devil, full of all subtlety and malice." However, this quotation comes only through online blogs and/or message boards such as this, so I can't be sure if the quotation is accurate in context, content or ascription.

Certainly there does seem to be a great deal of anti-Indian sentiment among the various settlers and explorers. Bartolome de las Casas, in his A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, wrote that he witnessed his Spanish peers commit horrible acts of violence in the name of Christianity. Consider:
They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby.

The question is, however, just how widespread were these beliefs? As far as I know, that is left to speculation of historians.

11-09-2006, 05:00 AM	#1
gstafleu Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: London, Ontario, Canada Posts: 1,719	Were American Natives seen as Minions of the Devil? I'm not quite sure if this thread belongs here, but having said that there is a BC&H link, so bear with me. I'm reading A History of the End of the World, by Jonathan Kirsch (a book about Revelations), and I tripped over a sentence. He says that the Puritans saw the "New World" as the site of the New Jerusalem, "even though it was occupied by native-dwelling tribes whom they saw as minions of the Devil." I had never run into that minions of the Devil bit before, which maybe just shows the state of my knowledge. Is that accurate, did the Puritans indeed see the natives that way? Gerard Stafleu

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11-09-2006, 02:30 PM	#4
hatsoff Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Rockford, IL Posts: 740	John Cotton, grandfather of Cotton Mather, seems to have written in a letter to Increase Mather, that Indians were "children of the Devil, full of all subtlety and malice." However, this quotation comes only through online blogs and/or message boards such as this, so I can't be sure if the quotation is accurate in context, content or ascription. Certainly there does seem to be a great deal of anti-Indian sentiment among the various settlers and explorers. Bartolome de las Casas, in his A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, wrote that he witnessed his Spanish peers commit horrible acts of violence in the name of Christianity. Consider: They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. The question is, however, just how widespread were these beliefs? As far as I know, that is left to speculation of historians.

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