Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
171-180 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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171) Deified in some scholarly circles and vilified in others for its promulgation of the "Black Legend" of the barbarous Spanish conquistador, Las Casas's prolific body of work has been widely translated and discussed, due largely to its humanistic appeal, which is, indeed, more than considerable given its era and circumstances. However, seldom critiqued is the Eurocentric, Christian-centered superiority that manifests itself in Las Casas's main praise of Native Americans as docile and submissive, ripe for conversion. Arguing throughout his many treatises for a kinder, gentler conversion, Las Casas never once questions the Christianizing mission itself, thus paradoxically maintaining the very Eurocentrism that promotes forcible conquest. (Anne DeLong, Lehigh University )
172) The two races could be friends, but also they could be deadly enemies. Each, even if unwillingly, was a monstrous menace to the other. And the only safe thing to do with a menace is to destroy it. (Murray Leinster, "First Contact." [1945] The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Ed. Robert Silverberg. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970: 250-78. )
173) The title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force. The conqueror prescribes its limits. Humanity, however, acting on public opinion, has established, as a general rule, that the conquered shall not be wantonly oppressed, and that their condition shall remain as eligible as is compatible with the objects of the conquest. Most usually, they are incorporated with the victorious nation, and become subjects or citizens of the government with which they are connected. The new and old members of the society mingle with each other, the distinction between them is gradually lost, and they make one people. When this incorporation is practicable, humanity demands, and a wise policy requires, that the rights of the conquered to property should remain unimpaired . . . . (John Marshall, Johnson v. M'Intosh, 1823 )
174) If, he said, by the admission of the godly throughout Protestantism, the vast majority of people even of England and Scotland, remain unconverted, then they too are as "heathen" as the Narragansetts. Then, if Europe is in fact Christian in name only, and not in reality, why bring the simple children of the wilderness into this conspiracy of civilized hypocrisy? (Roger Williams, "Christenings Make Not Christians." The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. Vol. VII. Ed. John Russell Bartlett. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1963: 27. )
175) Nothing is more to be endeavoured with the inland people than familiarity. For so may you [European settlers] best discover all the natural commodities of their country, and also all their wants, all their strengths, all their [Native American's] weaknesses, and with whom they are in war [...] which known, you may work great effects of greatest consequence. (Richard Hakluyt the elder, Notes on Colonization, 1578, reprinted in David B. Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Vol. 1. London: Glasgow UP, 1940: 182. )
176) I like a Plantation in a pure soil; that is where People are not displanted to the end, to Plant others. For else it is rather an Extirpation than a Plantation. (Sir Francis Bacon, "Of Plantation," qtd. in Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, & France c. 1500 - c. 1800. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995: 79. )
177) The Jeffersonian vision of the destiny of the Americas had no place for Indians as Indians. (Anthony F.C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans. Belknap Press of the Harvard UP, 1999: 11. )
178) The treaties made with this nation purport to secure to it certain rights. These are not gratuitous obligations assumed on the part of the United States. They are obligations founded upon a consideration paid by the Indians by cession of part of their territory. And if they, as a nation, are competent to make a treaty or contract, it would seem to me to be a strange inconsistency to deny to them the right and the power to enforce such a contract. (Justice Smith Thompson's Dissent to The Cherokee Nation vs. The State of Georgia, 1831 )
179) Simply put, customs and legal rules promulgated by colonial and later American courts and legislatures promoted not simply expropriation (right or wrong), but efficient expropriation. The thesis of this article is that the colonists established rules to minimize the costs associated with dispossessing the natives. If it had been cheaper to be more brutal, then Europeans would have been more brutal. (Eric Kades, "The Dark Side of Efficiency: Johnson v. M'Intosh and the Expropriation of American Indian Lands." U. of PA Law Review 148.1065 [April 2000]: 1065-1190. Lexis-Nexis. 23 Sep. 03. )
180) Barlow's picture of the land [Roanoke] and the people remains attractive, even though the reader is aware of its propaganda intent (at least in the edition by Hakluyt). (H.C. Porter, The Inconstant Savage. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1979: 225. )
