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How the white man acquired America with a little help from their God.
The Night the World Changed.
At 2 am on October 12, 1492 Christopher Columbus and his small fleet of ships, found land after 35 days at sea and having traveled 4,500 miles. The next morning Columbus took possession of this New World, by claiming the land in the name of his God and the Spanish monarchs who had sent him. The fact that there were indigenous people already occupying the land did not matter as they were neither Christian nor civilized by European standards.
On the land masses that would become known as the Americas on that night in October 1492, life for the indigenous people that lived on those lands was the same as it had been when night fell. They were in possession of the property that they and their ancestors had lived on for hundreds of years. They possessed their own religious beliefs, cultures and customs, that had been practiced and passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years. What the indigenous people did not know was that invaders from a foreign land had “discovered” an island offshore from their continents. Within 300 years of that night in October 1492, all of their societies, cultures, religious beliefs and their very existence as races of people would be changed forever or completely eliminated.
Little did the indigenous people of the Americas know when they watched the first European explorers arrive on their lands, that these guests were not just visiting, not here to share; but here to replace them. The European countries came to the New World with economic, political and religious reasons and were motivated to acquire property in the form of land and resources. Those countries that were exploring and making discovers of the Americas had an understanding, that whichever country first claimed new land could determine how that country acquired the land from the indigenous people, The Doctrine of Discovery.
Those first contacts began the destruction of all of the Native Americans cultures and result in the loss of the lands they lived on and claimed. Europeans arriving in the new world brought with them diseases, unknown in the New World that would decimate the indigenous populations. There are no written records confirming the population of the Native Americans living in America before the arrival of the Europeans, but we do know that the epidemics that followed first contact killed extremely large numbers of Native Americans. Waves of a different disease would follow each new contact and soon those indigenous people that survived the first disease would perish after contracting the next disease. This drastic decline in Native American population, that in some area killed entire villages, helped to create the myth that Henry Nash Smith mentions in his book Virgin Land, when he refers to new world being “free land and vacant". (Smith 128) With the Native Americans numbers diminishing by up to 90% in some areas, David Beck in his essay TheMyth of the Vanishing Race states that “American Indiannations and people were largely viewed by scholars, government officials and the public at large as a vanishing race.” (Beck)
What is Property?
“Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of persons.”(Wikipedia) Property is someplace to be, something to have, something to share, something to protect, property is something to desire, to believe in and in some way is part of everything humans are and do. In 1492 the beginning of the loss of most "Property" that the indigenous people of America possessed, started with America being "discovered". Europeans and later the "New Americans", would use their Religions as the reason to justify the discovery, exploration and finally exploitation of the New World.The creation of what would become America is clouded by myths and misconceptions that have left most people unaware how disease, religion, decrees by European monarchs and the European invader's biases and beliefs, were used in the occupation of the New World. The study of how a previously unknown part of the world and its resources were taken from the indigenous people who lived there, is the foundation to understanding how the United States of America was created.
Dr. Stacy Takacs in her introduction to American Studies lecture, states that the term “America” has (at least) 3 senses:
The 3 senses of America in terms of Pre-American Property
Property is the "Empty Virgin Lands" of Ameria that were "Discovered" and taken from the indigenous people that possessed it.
Doctrine of Discovery was the Authority to claim the land and property from the people that possessed it.
God, Gold and Glory was the motivations to explore the "New World" and conqueor and explot the indigenous people that lived there.
To understand why the maritime countries of Europe suddenly in the second half of the 15th century began to explore the world in what would become known asThe Age of Discovery or the Age of Exploration,we must look at how they were motivated by property.
Why and how did the countries of Europe begin their world wide discovery of new places, people and things? They wanted a shorter, cheaper way to the store and to get more people to believe in their God, before somebody else did. The five major European countries, Portugal, Spain, England, France and Holland, that had access to the Atlantic Ocean and had developed sailing technologies sufficient enough to handle long ocean voyages, were the primary Discoverers of the New World.
This Diego Gutierrez’s map of 1562 depicts what appears to be the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (Charles I of Spain), as the reborn Caesar in his chariot crossing the Atlantic to lay claim to America.
It depicts a "fourth continent" across the Atlantic and a whole new world of potential for the modern empire builders.
To Europeans, most of the interior of the new world was still terra incognita (unknown land).
Diego Gutierrez filled it in with a mixture of real and highly fanciful images.
Gold, Glory and God was their main motivations. Gold, represented not just that precious metal, but any resource that would generate wealth and profit. Glory, was the property, wealth and power that expanding thier empires would bring those countries. For the explorers it was their desire to seek immortality, riches and fame. God, was the mission to spread Christianity outside of Europe before the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire could spread their religion.
Ottoman Empire that controlled the West end of the trade routes to Asia
The Ottoman Empire defeated the Byzantine Empire in 1453, cutting the land link between Europe and Asia. If spices were to reach Europe, a sea route to Asia had to be found.
The Europeans desire to get the spices they needed to improve the food quality at cheaper price and deney their religious enemies the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire would fuel the Age of Exporation
Italy, as a country did not have to participate in the race to discover and explore, because in the 1400s they were a collection of merchant city-states that along with the Ottoman Emprie controlled the Western end of the Spice Route.
Italy did provide some of the great explorers of the New Wold:
John Cabot – Giovanni Caboto for England.
His younger brother Sebastian Cabot - Sebastiano Caboto for England and Spain.
Amerigo Vespucci for Spain. This is man that America was named after and may have visited North America months before Columbus.
Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European to visit New York harbor, for France.
Christopher Columbus – Cristoforo Colombo for Spain. The man that discoverd America by mistake.
In 1492 Christopher Columbus “ sailed the ocean blue” and discovered what he believed to be Asia, instead he had found a new and unknown world. This discovery would change the future of the indigenous people of America forever and the rest of the world in ways that could not even be imagined at that time.
Was Columbus the first to discover America? Well not really. he was searching for a direct route to India and the Far East to obtaindirect access to the lucrative spice trade that the was controlled by the Ottoman Empire and believed the islands he found were part ofAsia. Since the islands he found were not part of America and were occupied by people who had immigrated there first, he was only making contact with anew unknown nation of people living on land no one in Europe was aware of.
Norsemen had discovered Greenland in 1,000 A.D. and did visit parts of North America. Portuguese navigators as early as 1414 did suspect or even know of lands lying west of the Azores that appears on a navigational charts called Antilia. It is very possible that Chinese and Phoenician sailors had discovered the Americas as far back as 1500 B.C. Columbus had probable only re-discovered what had been found numerous times before and the lost because no one could take advantage of the discovery. Why then is Christopher Columbus credited with discovering America? His discovery of a New World came at a time when the Maritime countries of Europe were eager, ready, prepared and needed to find new property, new resources, new money and new ways to extend their empires. The Renaissance prepared Europe for the Age of Exploration that would be driven by the way of doing business called the Mercantile System or Mercantilism as it would later be called. Robert Hooker in his Article The Beginnings reports “Mercantilism is a simple economic activity. All it involves is the purchase of certain goods in a region where those goods are common, moving those goods to another region where they are not common, and then selling them at a profit.” (Hooker)
Thepeople of Secotan lived in permanent villages near today's North Carolina Outer Banks. Like the northern Algonquians, they farmed collectively in the growing season and dispersed into family units to hunt during the colder months. The engraving, based on a drawing made by John White in the 1580s, shows careful management and use of the land. Crops include tobacco and pumpkins, corn in three stages of growth, and sunflowers, while domesticated deer graze in the adjoining woods. The buildings include family units and storehouses for the surplus corn.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/america.html
Theindigenous people who lived in what would come to be called North America viewed property as something they used, a natural resource that was communally shared and not perceived by Europeans as valuing private property the same as the civilized people. The Europeans who came to North America saw the new land as an opportunity to extend their national sovereignty and used their European traditions of property laws, as justifications for obtaining the land of the Native Americans. One of the Europeans concept of property in the new world was based on their view that this newly discovered land had been claimed by the first explorers and belonged to the monarchy, to be disposed as the crown saw fit. Since the indigenous people were uncivilized and the land undeveloped, the Europeans saw the land as a wildness, that presented them the right to claim the land and bring civilization to the Native Americans and the new world. In the words of Henry Nash Smith, "The Narrative turns constantly about the central issue of the old forest freedom versus the new needs of a community with must establish the sovereignty of law over the individual." (Smith)
Between the early seventeenth century and the early twenth century, the indigenous people of America had lost by deceit, treaties, murder and purchase almost all of the land they had occupied before the “discovery” of the New World. The methods used by the white Europeans who claimed the new land, Religion, Hatred and so many other techniques are incontrast with the beliefs and concepts that America is founded on. The Native Americans who lost their lands, lifes and cultures were just another race of people that lost the war of migration by a people with superior technology and sheer numbers. (Banner)
Banner, Stuart. How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power On the Frontier.
(Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005)
Beck, David. "The Myth of the Vanishing Race” in “Edward S. Curtis (1868 – 1952) The North American Indian” (Chicago and Washington, D.C.: Northwestern University and American Memory Project, Library of Congress, 2001). 1 Oct. 2009
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