Thursday, January 17, 2019

Where Did Columbus Actually Visit and Land in the Americas? And Where Was Lehi’s Isle of Promise? – Part II

Continued from the previous post that covered where Columbus landed in the New World, and the scriptural record surrounding that event.
    What should be noted, is the condition in the three major areas: Inca and Aztec Empires, and North America. These indigenous peoples were neither oblivious to the Spanish threat, nor at their peak of power to withstand them, though they each had tens of thousands more in arms than did the Spanish. The problem was, that calamities and wars had always been part of native life long before the Spanish arrived in Central and South America, and the Europeans in North America.
Mayflower Landing 1620 and early settlements in the area

One example of calamities is that in 1616, prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims on the shores of Plymouth, an epidemic of typhus or yellow fever, struck New England coastal Indian communities and raged for three years, in which it is now believed killed up to 90% of the native population in the Massachusetts Bay area. In addition, wars existed long before the Europeans arrived.
    In South America, the Inca had a civil war on the eve of the Spanish arrival, called the Dynastic War or War of Succession, which was fought between the two brothers, Huáscar and Ataphalpa, sons of Emporer Huayna Capac, over the succession to the Inca throne, in which the Inca population was severely decreased. Including this war and the Spanish conquest, it is today estimated that the overall total was the destruction of 95% of the population (C.T. Smith, et al., "Depopulation of the Central Andes in the 16th Century," Current Anthropology, vol.11, iss.4-5, January 1970, pp453–464).
    In Mesoamerica, the Aztec before the Spanish arrived, was a society centered on warfare; every Aztec male received basic military training from an early age and the only possibility of upward social mobility for commoners was through the military achievement within the six warrior societies, especially the taking of captives, with warfare the main driving force of both the economy and religion. The Aztec had two main objectives in warfare: 1) Political—the subjugation of enemy city states in order to exact tribute and expand Aztec political hegemony; 2) Religious—the taking of captives to be sacrificed in religious ceremonies. All of this led to the Aztec empire maintaining their state through warfare or the threat of war with other cities.
    About 70 years before the arrival of the Spanish, the Aztec Empire was involved in a devastating civil war over succession between Tayahuah and Maxtla, after the death of the Tepanec king Tezozomoc, weakening the Empire. About 30 years before Cortez invaded, the Aztecs lost a major battle to the Purépecha Empire, losing 95% of their army, some 40,000 warriors. Following, the Aztec Empire was involved in numerous wars, intrigues, and assassinations until Montecuzoma (Montezuma) gained control. In 1515, the Aztecs again lost a major war four years before the Spanish arrived, who found a greatly reduced and fragmented Aztec Empire.
The major Indian tribes in the northeast at the time of the European landings in North America

In addition, the Algonkian Indians of northeast North America waged continual wars against other Indian tribes because of social advancement, excitement, religious obligation, capture of women, slavery, plunder, appropriation of territory, trade, defense, and fear, which sometimes escalated into life-and-death struggles between various tribes and bands (Wendell S. Hadlock, “War Among the Northeastern Woodland Indians,” American Anthropologist, vol.49, University of Chicago Press, 1947, p205-6; John Reed Swanton, “Are Wars Inevitable?” Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies, No. 12, Washington DC, 1943).
    The point is, much death among native tribes in the Americas had been taking place for some time before the Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere. Indian life had not been easy, fruitful or free to engage in other pursuits than that of warfare and defense. The plight of the Lamanites in the Americas had been foretold many centuries earlier, from the end of Lehi life onward, when he blessed his sons and prophesied the consequences of their differing ways of life. Speaking to Laman and Lemuel, he regretted that, because of the hardness of their hearts, they would be “cut off and destroyed forever,” and that a curse would come upon them because they would be “led according to the will and captivity of the devil” (2 Nephi 1:17–18).
    The people who followed Laman and Lemuel “hardened their hearts against [God], that they had become like unto a flint” (2 Nephi 5:21). The Lord, therefore, caused a “sore cursing” to come upon them “because of their iniquity.” They suffered spiritual death as they were cut off from his presence and “because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey” (2 Nephi 5:21, 24).
    The Lord also placed upon these Lamanites the mark of a dark skin. The Lord warned that anyone who mingled with the wicked would also become subject to their curse (2 Nephi 5:21–23). In Mormon’s time, the Lamanites sacrificed women and children to idols (Mormon 4:11, 14). Nevertheless, the mark of the dark skin evidently had not yet returned to the wicked. Mormon noted that the remnant of this people would “become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that whichever hath been amongst us, yea, even that which hath been among the Lamanites” (Mormon 5:15).
    The Lamanites became a mixture of many lines. Undoubtedly, there was in their veins the blood of Nephi, Joseph, and Jacob, as well as that of Laman, Lemuel and Sam, and also that of the Mulekites of Judah. The name “Indian” was given to the early possessors of the Americas by Columbus, mistaking them for indigenous people of India. As the Indians of the Americas intermarried with the invading European conquerors and nations were formed, they became Mexicans, Peruvians, Bolivians, Guatemalans, and others. But the correct name for all the descendants of Lehi and Ishmael is “Lamanite.”
According to Henry Kamen, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London and an emeritus professor of the Higher council or Scientific Research in Barcelona, Spain’ conquest, under the world of militant Castile and their conquistadors was a brutal adventure in the New World. “Their ceaseless quest for land, gold and slaves made Spain, both for its conquered people and much of the rest of Europe a rapacious nightmare” (Henry Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a world Power, Penguin Books, London UK, 2009). The cruelty of the Spaniards in the New World was incontrovertible; it was pitiless, barbaric and never brought under control by the colonial regime. When, for instance, 15 colonists in the Yucatan were killed by the Maya in 1546, the Spaniards retaliated with the enslavement of 2,000 men, the hanging of their women, and the burning of six native priests (John Adamson, “The reign of Spain was mainly brutal,” The Daily Telegraph, London, December 8, 2002).
    This brutality of the Spanish conquest has been pointed out lately by the unearthing of a 500-yer-old cemetery in Peru. Human skeletons have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca fatalities caused by Spanish conquerors. Despite the fact that Spanish documents of the 16th century show their preference for the steel sword, these dead had been killed by the Spanish with guns, steel lances, or hammers, along with the likelihood of light cannon, according to a report in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, March 23, 2010. Surprising there were no incisions or other marks characteristic of sword injuries appeared on the bones reported by anthropologist Melissa Murphy of the University of Wyoming.
    In fact, skeletons in the Inca cemetery, as well as at another grave site about a mile away, display a gruesome array of violent injuries, many probably caused by maces, clubs and other Inca weapons, the researchers report. Those weapons may have been wielded by Inca from communities known to have collaborated with the Spanish, or might have been borrowed by the Spanish, they posit. “The nature and pattern of these skeletal injuries were unlike anything colleagues and I had seen before,” Murphy says. “Many of these people died brutal, horrible deaths.”
Skulls showing heavy blows to the head with large, weighted instruments causing death; the number of these type injuries to skulls was inordinately high for the number found in the cemetery
 
According to anthropologist Haagen Klaus of Utah Valley University, “Murphy’s data show the types of violence that emerged from the first moments of contact between Spaniards and the Inca.” Pottery and artifacts at the sites date to between 1470 and 1540, placing the deaths close to when Spaniards captured the Inca emperor around 1532. It took the invaders nearly another 40 years to control all Inca lands. As stated by archaeologist Steven Wernke of Vanderbilt University, “I’m struck by the severity of violence, where the skull was essentially crushed, repeatedly stabbed or struck, or shot through by gunshot…whoever killed these individuals wanted to intimidate survivors” (Bruce Bower, Science News, Washington DC, April 2, 2010).
The point is, the violent Lamanite end was foretold in the scriptural record by Lehi, Nephi, and others, and of all the contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples of the Americas, that which took place in Andean Peru was by far the most brutal and devastating, wiping out the vast majority of the population in cruel and vicious acts of violent brutality.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing, nice post! Post really provice useful information!

    Giaonhan247 chuyên dịch vụ ship hàng amazon từ dịch vụ order đặt mua hàng ebay từ hướng dẫn cách mua hàng online từ mỹ uy tín, giá rẻ với cước phí vận chuyển hàng đi mỹ từ dịch vụ chuyển hàng đi mỹ giá rẻ nhất uy tín nhất.

    ReplyDelete