Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
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41) [F]or knowledge is in some degree an increase of desires, and it is this superiority both in the number and magnitude of his desires, that distinguishes the man from the beast. Therefore the Indians, in not having more wants, were very unreasonable animals; and it was but just that they should make way for the Europeans, who had a thousand wants to their one, and, therefore, would turn the earth to more account, and by cultivating it, more truly fulfill the will of Heaven. (Washington Irving, History of New York. New York: 1809 [Book I, chap v]. )
42) Forasmuch as my Lord the King and Myself have ordered . . . that the Indians living on the island of Hispaniola be considered free and not subject to slavery . . . ; since I have now been informed that because of the excessive liberty allowed the said Indians, they run away from the Christians and withdraw from any intercourse and communication with them, . . . I order you, Our Governor, . . . to compel the Indians to have dealings with the Christian settlers on the said island, to work on their buildings, to mine and collect gold and other metals, and to work on their farms and crop fields; and you are to have each one paid for nine days' work the wages and rations you think he should have in accordance with the productivity of the land, the quality of the individual, and the nature of the job he does. (Queen Isabella's "Decree on Indian Labor," 1503. New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century. Vol. II. Eds. John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith. New York: Times Books, 1984. )
43) But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people's present condition; and so I think will the reader too, when he well considers the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in scripture as a mercy to the apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed no small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with them (as after will appear) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows then otherwise. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pigsah, to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. If it be said they had a ship to succor them, it is true; but what heard they daily from the master and company? But that with speed they should look out a place with their shallop, where they would be at some near distance; for the season was such as he would not stir from thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them where they would be, and he might go without danger; and that victuals consumed apace, but he must and would keep sufficient for themselves and their return. Yea, it was muttered by some, that if they got not a place in time, they would turn them and their goods ashore and leave them. Let it also be considered what weak hopes of supply and succor they left behind them, that might bear up their minds in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small. It is true, indeed, the affections and love of their brethren at Leyden was cordial and entire towards them, but they had little power to help them, or themselves; and how the case stood between them and the merchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and his grace? (William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1630 . )
44) Cut down to its "historical" skeleton, the Madoc story lacks this closure; it does not give a satisfactory explanation of the events, but simply terminates, as a medieval chronicle usually does. In this form, it would be absolutely useless to support the story of national expansion to which Hakluyt's volumes are dedicated. Only by filling the gaps in the historical record with editorial interpretations is the text endowed with the coherence and authority that qualify it as a founding text of British westward expansion. (Gesa Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492-1637. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1997: 27. )
45) The message [is] that you are all in mortal sin, that you live in it and will die in it, because of the cruelty and oppression with which you treat these innocent people. Tell me, by what right do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? By what authority did you make unprovoked war on these people, living in peace and quiet on their land, and with unheard-of savagery kill and consume so great a number of them? Why do you keep them worn-out and down-trodden, without feeding them or tending their illnesses, so that they die—or rather you kill them—by reason of the heavy labor you lay upon them, to get gold every day? What care do you take to have them taught to know their God and Maker, to be baptized, to hear Mass and keep their Sundays and their holy days? (As told by Bartolomé de Las Casas, Friar Antonio de Montesinos's sermon in Hispaniola, 1511. New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century. Vol. II. Eds. John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith. New York: Times Books, 1984. )
46) The whole of this earth was given to man, and all descendants of Adam have a right to share it equally. There is no right of primogeniture in the laws of nature and of nations. . . . that an agile, nimble runner, like an Indian called the Big Cat, at Fort Pitt, should have more than his neighbors, because he has traveled a great space, I can see no reason. (Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Indian Atrocities. Cincinnati, 1867: 62-72.)
47) At first sight, it is true, we may readily suppose that, since the affair is in the hands of men both learned and good, everything has been conducted with rectitude and justice. But when we hear subsequently of bloody massacres and of innocent individuals pillaged of their possessions and dominions, there are grounds for doubting the justice of what has been done. (Francisco de Vitoria. [1539] Political Writings. Ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. )
48) [I]nto this sheepfold [the New World], into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola, once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three millions), has now a population of barely two hundred persons. (Bartolome de Las Casas, Brevíssima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias [A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies], 1552 )
49) It is to be assuredly hoped, that they [Native Americans] will daily by little and little forsake their barbarous and savage living, and grow to such order and civility with us [English settlers], as there may be well expected from thence no lesse quantity and diversity of merchandize than is now had out of Dutchland, Italy, France or Spain. (Christopher Carleill, A Brief and Summary Discourse upon the Intended Voyage to the Furthermost Parts of America, 1583: David B. Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Vol. 2. London: Glasgow UP, 1940: 351. )
50) Savagism assumed meaning only in the sense that it inverted the civil condition. [...] as an ignoble or noble savage, his mode of life was clearly demarcated from the civility that Europeans believed characterized their own manner of living. Although the barrier between the civil and savage conditions seemed impenetrable, most commentators allowed for movement between the two. In one mood Europeans sought a return to original innocence. In another they were convinced that they had once been mired in savagism and had managed by dint of hard work and the blessings of Providence to reach the civil stage of life. Ignoble savagism conveyed the impression of childishness and immaturity, of stunted growth; civility assured European society that it had achieved adulthood. This assurance, however, did not obviate the possibility of a slide back into the savage state. The ignoble savage always loomed as an external threat to Europeans and as an internal danger because he represented primal urges that, although subdued, remained part of the human condition. In the eighteenth century this relationship between savagism and civility would be transformed into a formal theory of staged development. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it served as a way of categorizing disparate cultures explaining to Europeans how their own world had come to be and why it was different from the world inhabited by American Indians. (Bernard W. Sheehan, Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980: 3. )
