Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
221-230 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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221) Power, in its most brutal mass-mobilized form as will to empire, was of course far more determinate in the establishment of Western hegemony in the New World than were any laws or theoretical formulations on the legal rights and status of American Indians. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 7. )
222) Granganimeo, who had been so friendly with Barlowe, had died but he had passed on to Ensenore, another aged weroance, his theory of the nature of the Englishmen. They were men who had died but had been allowed to return for a short period to earth. They had supernatural instruments, such as guns and ships, at their disposal, but most alarming and significant was their capacity to spread disease from a distance. They would use these powers if opposed violently. Continued friendship, or a show of it, was essential, but in due course the strange white men would soon disappear and return to their status as dead persons and everything would be as it had been. (David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985: 218. )
223) They [the royal administrators] gave out, that now their charter was gone, all their lands were the kings, that themselves did represent the king, and that therefore men that would have any legal title to their lands must take patents of them, on such terms as they should see meet to impose. . . . I then said, I did not understand that the lands of New-England were the king's, but the king's subjects, who had for more than sixty years had the possession and use of them by a twofold right warranted by the word of God. 1. By a right of just occupation from the grand charter in Genesis 1st and 9th chapters, whereby God gave the earth to the sons of Adam and Noah, to be subdued and replenished. 2. By a right of purchase from the Indians, who were native inhabitants, and had possession of the land before the English came hither, and that having lived here sixty years, I did certainly know that from the beginning of these plantations our fathers entered upon the land, partly as a wilderness and Vacuum Domicilium, and partly by consent of the Indians. (Edward Rawson, The Revolution in New-England Justified, 1691. )
224) And therefore in the year 1628, [Christ] stirs up his servants as the heralds of a king to make this proclamation for volunteers, as followeth: "Oh yes! oh yes! oh yes! All you the people of Christ that are here oppressed, imprisoned, and scurrilously derided, gather yourselves together, your wives and little ones, and answer to your several names as you shall be shipped for his service, in the western world, and more especially for planting the united colonies of New England, where you are to attend the service of the King of Kings." (Edward Johnson, The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in the Wilderness, 1654. )
225) There is little doubt that [Ralph] Lane's actions inflicted long-term damage to the relations between the colonists and the inhabitants. This would make it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to establish further colonies on Roanoke Island or in the surrounding area unless, indeed, the Indians were subjected to severe coercion or even wiped out. (David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985: 121. )
226) A man may, by this helpe [a dictionary], converse with thousands of Natives all over the Countrey: and by such converse it may please the Father of Mercies to spread civilitie, (and in his own most holy season) Christianitie; for one Candle will light ten thousand, and it may please God to blesse a little Leaven to season the mightie Lump of those Peoples and Territories. (Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America, 1643.) (hear commentary by Kristina Fennelly)
227) These Indians being strangers to arts and sciences, and being unacquainted with the inventions that are common to civilized people, are ravished with admiration at the first view of any such sight. They took the first ship they saw for a walking island, the mast to be a tree, the sail white clouds, and the discharging of ordnance for lightning and thunder. (William Wood, New England's Prospect, 1635. )
228) Pope Innocent's letters to the Great Khan of the Mongols [in 1244] signify [how] the "West" has sought to impose its vision of truth on non-Western peoples since the Middle Ages. In seeking the conquest of the earth, the Western colonizing nations of Europe and the derivative settler-colonized states produced by their colonial expansion have been sustained by a central idea: the West's religion, civilization, and knowledge are superior to the religions, civilizations, and knowledge of non-Western peoples. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 6. )
229) The conduct of leaders in the New World was curiously like the conduct of leaders in the Old; and if Machiavelli had known as much about the performance of Europeans in America as he knew about the performance of Italian rulers, he could have drawn his illustrations quite as richly from the one case as he did from the other. (Howard Mumford Jones, qtd. in Juan E. Tazón, "The Evolution of a Stereotype: The Indian in English Renaissance Promotional Literature." Beyond Pug's Tour: National and Ethnic Stereotyping in Theory and Literary Practice. Ed. C.C. Barfoot. Rodopi, 1997: 126. )
230) I shall shutt upp this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithfull servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israell, Deut. 30. Beloued there is now sett before us life and good, Death and evill, in that wee are commanded this day to loue the Lord our God, and to loue one another, to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commandements and his Ordinance and his lawes, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that wee may liue and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whither wee goe to possesse it. But if our heartes shall turne away, soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worshipp and serue other Gods, our pleasure and proffitts, and serue them; it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good land whither wee passe over this vast sea to possesse it. (John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," 1630. )
