Continuing with the developments
that led both to the treatment of the indigenous natives (American Indians) of
the Western Hemisphere, and the creation of the United States. The last post
discussed the extent of the treatment after the conquest of the Indians in
Central and especially in South America. Here we will turn our attention to the
treatment of the Indians in North America after the arrival of the “gentiles.”
According to legend, Native Americans met William Penn under
an elm tree at Shackamaxon, just north
of Penn’s Landing. Traditionally, the encounter included words of friendship
and maybe the purchase of land. While such a “Great Treaty” meeting may never
have occurred, it symbolized the desire for peace on the part of both the
Delaware (Leni Lenape) Indians and William Penn
The treatment of the indigenous
natives in North America was quite different after the Europeans arrived than
that of the lands further south. There is much criticism about how many
treaties the U.S. broke with the Indians; however, in Andean South America,
there were no treaties—just bloodshed and enslavement! The Spanish
Conquistadors never attempted to bargain with, agree with, or involve the Inca
in any political endeavor—it was conquer and rule. While the Europeans in North
America went back on their agreements land and continued to encroach on Indian
lands, they at least made an attempt at negotiations rather than conquest.
As for this different treatment,
first of all, North America did not have civilized and advanced Empires as did
Mexico, Mesoamerica and Andean South America that needed to be conquered. The
Indian tribes of the northern continent were not as organized as what the
Spanish found south of the U.S. border (The Six Nations was an amalgamated league,
a union of decentralized tribes, or nations, but was more a social and cultural
unity than one of government—as an example, symbolically, the
Mohawk were the guardians of the eastern door, as they were located in the east
closest to the Hudson, and the Seneca were the guardians of the western door of
the "tribal longhouse", the territory they controlled in New York.
The Onondaga, whose homeland was in the center of Haudenosaunee territory, were
keepers of the League's (both literal and figurative) central flame.
1870s Chiefs from the Six Nations reading wampum belts, the beaded devices used by colonial
agents to communicate with Indians at treaty councils. No one could expect to
engage in diplomacy with the Iroquois without being able to present and
interpret wampum belts in councils
Secondly, there were no Spanish
invaders of North America seeking gold and fortune, nor exhibiting wanton
destruction of those already upon the land, who came not for settlement and
migration, but for conquest and pillage. Their intent, throughout all of
western South America was to take what they could, especially through thievery
and force of arms, deceit and destruction.
The Pilgrims and
Indians socialized in the early days of the colonial period
On the other hand, when the
Pilgrims landed in the northeast, the first settlers in that land, they
befriended the Indians who, in turn, saved them from starvation their first
winter. The Dutch settled to the south of the Pilgrims and purchased Manhattan
island from the Canarsee Indians, and later Staten island from the Unami, a
division of the Lenape. Though this purchase/exchange has been termed unfair to
the Indians, modern man simply does not understand the value of this sale/trade,
which included several intangibles, such as the Indians considered the sale included
the value of the Dutch as potential military allies against rival Indian
nations—an intangible that cannot be valued strictly in currency. To the Dutch,
the sale included the prospect of future trade. The settlement at Manhattan was
to be created, after all, to trade furs with the Indians, with both communities
expecting to benefit from the relationship.
There was a Swedish
settlement on the lower Delaware River (New Sweden, now Wilmington), among the
Lenape (Delaware) Indians (left), and France further north in Canada.
England (Britain) founded settlements in Virginia, with Jamestown being the
first permanent European settlement in North America, and along the east coast,
from New England to Georgia; the French in Louisiana, and from Maine to Quebec
in Canada; and the Spanish moved northward from Mexico into the southwestern
U.S. and Florida. Other countries had settlements in the islands, with Denmark
and Norway in Greenland and the latter in parts of coastal Canada; Russia in
Alaska, and Scotland in Carolina and Georgia. All of these people came to
settle, and their treatment of the indigenous natives (American Indians) was
far more benevolent than what happened to the far south.
One of the factors involved was
early European settlers were unfamiliar with the need for self-care, and in
many cases neglected planting and harvesting their food in favor of searches
for gold, with the Indians promptly stepping in to offer food to these early
settlers, not only in New England, but as far south as Virginia. Initially, the
relationship between Europeans and Indians was strained at best, but several
tribes fought one another in order to gain control over the fur trade with the
Dutch settlements. The British secured three treaties with the Six Nations (Mohawk,
Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) and the Delaware and Shawnee, which
opened the western Virginia frontier to European settlement.
While there were skirmishes and
incidents between Indians and whites in the east, with relations often tense, and
occasional outbreaks of hostilities that often led to severe results on both
sides, partly because the Indians fought among themselves for hunting rights in
a territory, but Europeans fought for ownership of the land. On the other hand,
the Native Americans in Central and South America felt land was to be owned and
extended their empires as far as they could to control both land and people.
Yet, it wasn’t until the French
made allies of the Indians to fight the British colonies in America as the
Seven Years War between France and England escalated into a world war, that the
colonies fought with Indians on a large scale in the eastern lands. These
Indians, with French support became a scourge up and down the frontier in the
1750s in what was called the French-Indian War. When Britain defeated the
French in 1760, France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain
who lost Florida to the colonies, and France’s colonial presence north of the Caribbean
was reduced to a few islands as England became the dominant power in the
eastern half of North America.
Problems, of course, increased
between the Europeans and Indians as the white settlements continued to spread
further west, encroaching on Indian territory. Few Europeans married Indian
women, which was an affront to the Indians, and the friendship the Indians frequently
offered was not always returned by the whites. It often took several years, but
sooner or later, the Indians came to realize the whites were in their lands to
stay, and more hostilities broke out.
However, it should be pointed
out that these conflicts, battles, and sometimes all-out wars, were fought as
equals—that is, both sides had nearly equal firepower as white renegades
continued to sell weapons to the Indians. Nor did it take long before the
Europeans realized their “British organizing, marching and lines of fire” were
almost worthless in the woods and forests where the battlegrounds took place,
and they began to adopt the Indian hit and run methods of warfare.
The Conquistadors offered and gave no quarter to the Incas—often
rounding them up and slaughtering them
The point of all of this is that
Nephi’s vision of the treatment of the seed of his brethren (Lamanites) led him
to state: “I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of
promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my
brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten”
(1 Nephi 13:14). We might describe the treatment of the Indians (Lamanites) in
North America as being scattered and driven out of their lands, but those in
Central and South America, and especially the Inca from Ecuador to Chile, were
not scattered, but were smitten. The
1828 dictionary states that smitten refers to “a blow, to kill, to destroy
life, the primitive mode of killing, as in a great slaughter.” This should
suggest that the “seed of my brethren” that Nephi saw would have been in the
land to the south, either Central or South America where the treatment of the
indigent natives (American Indians) was far greater, more bloody, and
definitely a “great slaughter.”
By inference, then,
we should look to Central and South America for the location of “the seed of my
brethren” that Nephi saw, and more particularly in the Andean area of South
America where the greatest destruction of indigenous life occurred, and where
slavery and mistreatment was rampant and the Indians--the seed of my brethren--were smitten.
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