Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)

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51) Whoever shall attempt to trace the claims of the European Nations to the Countrys in America from the principles of Justice, or reconcile the invasions made on the native Indians to the natural rights of mankind will find that he is pursueing a Chimera, which exists only in his own imagination, against the evidence of indisputable facts. ( (Thomas Jefferson, 1773-74, qtd. in 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: 26.)

52) Our hands which before were tied with gentlenesse and faire usage, are now set at liberty by the treacherous violence of the Sausages [Savages]. . . . So that we, who hitherto have had possession of no more ground then [sic] their waste, and our purchase at a valuable consideration to their owne contentment, gained; may now by right of Warre, and law of Nations, invade the Country, and destroy them who sought to destroy us. . . . Now their cleared grounds in all their villages (which are situate in the fruitfullest places of the land) shall be inhabited by us, whereas heretofore the grubbing of woods was the greatest labour. (Edward Waterhouse, 1622, qtd. in 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: 21. )

53) [T]he settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages. (Theodore Roosevelt, 1896, qtd. in 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: 23. )

54) Under the vision of the encomienda, coerced labor created the ideal conditions for Christianization and civilization of the Indian.  No longer were Christian princes required to suppress discussion of worldly profit when expressing concerns respecting the heavenly salvation of barbarous peoples.  The Indians' enslavement for the benefit of a worldly Christian kingdom complemented the goal of the Indian's attainment of a heavenly kingdom. The encomienda thus embodied the ironic thesis that in administering the pope's Petrine responsibility to save the Indians, the Spanish Crown had to enslave them. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest.  New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 84. )

55) How can anyone say that these people [the Native Americans] are incapable, when they constructed such impressive buildings, made such subtle creations, were silversmiths, painters, merchants, able in presiding, in speaking, in the exercise of courtesy, in fiestas, marriages, solemn occasions, receptions of distinguished personages; able to express sorrow, and appreciation, when the occasion requires it and, finally, very ready to be educated in the ethical, political, and economic aspects of life?  What cannot we say concerning the people of this land?  They sing plainsong and contrapuntally to organ accompaniment, they compose music and teach others how to enjoy religious music, they preach to the people the sermons we teach them; they confess freely and earnestly in a pure and simple manner. (from a letter written by the Franciscan provincial Jacobo de Testera to Carlos V dated 6 May 1538, qtd. in Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1974: 14.)

56) Both Richard Hakluyt, lawyer, and Richard Hakluyt, preacher, had written treatises, still unpublished in 1584, on the need to cooperate with the Indians for economic ends, but the younger Richard was concerned...that every effort be made to induce them to become good members of the Church of England.  To him and to many of the clergy (who thought about the matter at all), it was vitally important that the English church should not be at a disadvantage before the Roman church in engaging in missionary activity, as the Catholic propagandists had continually poked fun at them for their failure to carry their Protestantism outside of England. (David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606.  Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985: 211.)

57) Perhaps it is Roger Williams's persistence which separates him from other thinkers and leaders of seventeenth-century New England.  More noteworthy, though, is the way in which we can qualify him as unique compared to his contemporaries.  Not only does Williams participate in and contribute to the same issues in which other Puritans were engaged; but he pursues these widely accepted ideas and activities—i.e., conversion of the Indians, labeling them "heathens," confiscating their land without due compensation—with a diligent and realistic mindset.  In other words, not only did Williams think over such matters related to religion and politics, but he thought through the consequences of present-day actions, reaching conclusions which many of his contemporaries chose not to accept, namely natural conversion of the Indians in due time. (Kristina Fennelly, Lehigh University)

58) The Indians we speak of, and all other peoples who later come to the knowledge of Christians, outside the faith though they be, are not to be deprived of their liberty or the right to their property.  They are to have, to hold, to enjoy both liberty and dominion, freely, lawfully.  They must not be enslaved.  Should anything different be done, it is void, invalid, of no force, no worth.  And those Indians and other peoples are to be invited into the faith of Christ by the preaching of God's word and the example of a good life. (Pius III, from "Sublimus Deus," qtd. in Francis Patrick Sullivan, trans. & ed., Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566): A Reader.  Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1995:  6.)

59) However extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear, if the principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained; if a country has been acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of the community originates in it, it becomes the law of the land and cannot be questioned. (John Marshall, 1823, qtd. in 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: 27. )

60) No prior consideration of Indian rights to their own territory is contained in the basic documents of the English colonizing project – either in the grants to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Ralegh, or even in Ralegh's subgrant to the City of Ralegh [business] associates in 1587.  Englishmen were to be thrust into land that was assumed to be virtually empty and where there was plenty of room for them, without necessarily disturbing the inhabitants unduly, but with no recognition whatever given to their indigenous rights of occupation.  By implication, therefore, Peckham's view that, if English intrusion was resisted, the Indians must be forced to give way before the settlers was assumed to be the basic one. (David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606.  Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985: 211. )