Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
251-260 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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251) [T]here is no crime so horrible, whether it be idolatry or sodomy or some other kind, as to demand that the gospel be preached for the first time in any other way than that established by Christ, that is, in a spirit of brotherly love, offering forgiveness of sins and exhorting men to repentance. For to do otherwise would be to upset the way established by Christ. Therefore it is not the Church's business to begin the first preaching of the faith with the punishment of idolatry or any other serious crime. (Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians. Trans. & Ed. Stafford Poole. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1974: 96. )
252) Therefore, if we should call to calculation by this precept the evils and goods that this war imports to the barbarians, beyond a doubt the evils would be immediately erased by the number and consequence of the goods. (Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Apology for the Book On the Just Causes of War. Trans. and ed. Lewis D. Epstein. Bowdoin College: 1973: 39. )
253) I would think a man a fool and unjust, who would exclude me from drinking the waters of the Mississippi river, because he had seen it first. He would be equally so who would exclude me from settling in the country west of the Ohio, because in chasing a buffalo he had been first over it. What use do these ring, streaked, spotted and speckled cattle make of the soil? Do they till it? Revelation said to man, "Thou shalt till the land." This alone is human life. It is favorable to population, to science, to the information of the human mind in the worship of God. . . . before you can make an Indian a christian you must teach him agriculture and reduce him to a civilized life. To live by tilling is more humano, by hunting is more bestiarum. (Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Indian Atrocities. Cincinnati, 1867: 62-72. )
254) In addition, infidels subject to Christians are more easily influenced to follow our customs and religion. Therefore preaching and argument alone must not be used against pagans or heretics as in the primitive Church when none of the princes had believed, but expedient and allowable force must be employed in the manner we explained if the opportunity is available. This is the most expedient means of converting the nations to faith in Christ as in every age the very situation and examples have taught, which examples have the force of demonstration. (Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Apology for the Book On the Just Causes of War. Trans. and ed. Lewis D. Epstein. Bowdoin College: 1973: 25. )
255) The purpose of this website is not to continually reiterate the evils of imperialism -- it is the hope that by discussing the ways in which the Native Americans were subjugated, we can allow them their rightful places in the history of this nation. (Mehnaz Choudhury, Lehigh University )
256) May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice, and looked on their adversity, etc. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because he is good, and his mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness, and his wonderful works before the sons of men. (William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation. )
257) The diminishing of their forces by seas is done either by open hostility, or by some colorable means, as by giving of license under letters patent to discover and inhabit some strange place, with a special provision for their safety whom policy requireth to have most annoyed by which means the doing of the contrary shall be imputed to the executors' fault; your highness' letter patents being a manifest show that it was not your Majesty's pleasure so to have it. (Humphrey Gilbert's "Discourses" on how to annoy Spain: David B. Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Vol. 1. London: Glasgow UP, 1940: 171. )
258) The phenomenon of "no peace beyond the line," as it was known, was not allowed to break the peace that might exist on the European side of the line. (Wilcomb E. Washburn, "The Moral and Legal Justifications for Dispossessing the Indians." Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History. Ed. James Morton Smith. New York: Norton, 1972: 19. )
259) Any seventeenth-century New England Puritan worth his theological salt could trace in Hayes's 1583 narrative the emergence of themes that their own preachers constantly declaimed as the Puritans' errand into the wilderness: the colonization of America was the elect's obligation in fulfillment of the covenant of grace with God. Hayes expressly declared that those who pursued the task of American colonization with motives "derived from a virtuous and heroical mind, preferring chiefly the honor of God" and "compassion of poor infidels captived by the devil, could confidently repose in the preordinance of God, that in this last age of the world (or likely never) the time is complete of receiving also these Gentiles into his mercy, and that God will raise him an instrument to effect the same." In Hayes's appropriated Puritan-inspired discourse of conquest, the English will to empire fulfilled in the New World wilderness was regarded as a predestined event. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 165. )
260) On Monday, being the fifth of August, the General [Humphrey Gilbert] caused his tent to be set upon the side of a hill, in the view of all the fleet of Englishmen and strangers, which were in number between thirty and fourt-five, then being accompanied with all his captains, masters, gentlemen and other soldiers, he caused all the masters, and principal officers of the ships, as well Englishmen as Spaniards, Portingals, and of other nations to repair unto his tent: and then and there, in the presence of them all, he did cause his commission, under the great seal of England to be openly and solemnly read unto them, whereby were granted unto him, his heirs and assigns, by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, many great and large royalties, liberties, and privileges. The effect whereof being signified unto the strangers by an interpretor, he took possession of the said land in the right of the Crown of England by digging of a turf and recieving the same with an Hazell wand, delivered unto him, after the manner of the law and custom of England. (Sir George Peckham, A True Reporte of the Late Discoveries, 1583, reprinted in David B. Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Vol. 2. London: Glasgow UP, 1940: 444-45.) (hear commentary by Robert W. Atkinson)
