Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
wretched subsistence, would support 150 families of civilized men, in
plenty and comfort. But most of the Indian tribes raise melons, beans,
and maize; and were we to take the case of a people who lived entirely
by hunting, the disproportion would be still greater. _If God created
the earth for the sustenance of mankind, this single consideration
decides the question_ as to the sacredness of the Indians’ title to
the lands which they roam over, but do not, in any reasonable sense,
occupy.”—v. 224.
A more abominable doctrine surely never was broached. It breathes the
genuine spirit of the old Spaniard; and, if acted upon, would produce
an everlasting confusion. Every nation which is more densely populated
than another, may, on this principle, say to that less densely peopled
state, you are not as thickly planted as God intended you to be;
you amount only to 150 persons to the square mile, we are 200 to the
same space; therefore, please to walk out, and give place to us, who
are your superiors, and who more justly fulfil God’s intentions by
the law of density. The Chinese might fairly lay claim to Europe on
that ground; and our own swarming poor to every large park and thinly
peopled district that they happened to see.
“This single consideration,” indeed, is a very good reason why the
Indians should be advised to leave off a desultory life, and take to
agriculture and the arts; or it is a very sufficient reason why the
Europeans should ask leave to live amongst them, and thus more fully
occupy the country, in what the French geographer calls a reasonable
sense. And it remained for M. Malte Brun to show that they have ever
refused to do either the one or the other. They have, on all occasions
when the Europeans have gone amongst them, “in a reasonable sense,”
received them with kindness, and even joy. They have been willing to
listen to their instructions, and ready to sell them their lands to
live upon. But it has been the “unreasonableness” of the whites that
has everywhere soon turned the hearts, and made deaf the ears, of
the natives. We have seen the lawless violence with which the early
settlers seized on the Indians’ territories, the lawless violence
and cruelty with which they rewarded them evil for good, and pursued
them to death, or instigated them to the commission of all bloody and
desperate deeds. These are the causes why the Indians have remained
uncivilized wanderers; why they have refused to listen to the precepts
of Christianity; and why they roam over, rather than occupy, those
lands on which they have been suffered to remain. From the days of
Elliot, Mayhew, Brainard, and their zealous compeers, there have never
wanted missionaries to endeavour to civilize and christianize; but they
have found, for the most part, their efforts utterly defeated by the
wicked and unprincipled acts, the wicked and unprincipled character
of the Europeans. When the missionaries have preached to the shrewd
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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