Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
121-130 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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121) The urgency of this short period in New England's history is conveyed by Mourt's Relation, as well as by subsequent accounts or "relations" intended to "excite more prospective settlers," thus ensuring greater conquest and more widespread religious conversion. The literature of non-justification severely disrupts this process, offering twenty-first-century readers of history a rare opportunity to engage in the various forms of literature from seventeenth-century New England critically and dialogically. Such critiques of and dialogues with the writers of the text and the texts themselves do not necessarily unveil new truths; rather, my aim is to show how both literature of justification and literature of non-justification were operating with separate political aims, yet were disseminating the same "ardent faith" alluded to in the earliest literature of the period. Such an intersection of politics and faith renders a very tense period in New England's history, complicating our current view of our entire country's early settlement. (Kristina Fennelly, Lehigh University )
122) The Indians did not live by the law of nature, and thus the Indians were by nature slaves. This was indeed a perverted synthesis, combining Franciscus de Victoria's argument on the right of Spain to subjugate the Indians because of their violations of natural law and the Law of Nations with the popular Aristotelian-derived argument that a slave by nature participated in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have reason. (Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 174. )
123) The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to... (Joseph Conrad, qtd. in Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993: vii.) (hear commentary by Mehnaz Choudhury)
124) Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (excerpt from the 14th Amendment )
125) In rethinking our history, we are not just looking at the past, but at the present, and trying to look at it from the point of view of those who have been left out of the benefits of so-called civilization. It is a simple but profoundly important thing we are trying to accomplish, to look at the world from other points of view. We need to do that, as we come into the next century, if we want this coming century to be different, if we want it to be, not an American century, or a Western century, or a white century, or a male century, or any nation's, any group's century, but a century for the human race. (Howard Zinn, On History. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001: 120. )
126) His [Thomas Hariot's] basic mistake was to consider the Indians as largely passive. This was far from being the case. Their willingness to choose to accept or adopt with some limited aspects of white society was combined with a proud, even arrogant preference for their own values and customary way of life. (David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985: 223. )
127) Defined as ignoble savages, the native people of the New World occupied a special place in the European imagination. Possessing none of the components of an ordered society, their only grip upon the world seemed to be the undifferentiated rage that they released upon anyone foolish enough to come within reach. Ignoble savages violated all the limitations imposed on ordinary men by social usage. Violence, treachery, brutality, and destruction were the foundations of savage existence. (Bernard W. Sheehan, Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980: 38. )
128) Reasons why it is not fittinge vtterly to make an exterpation of the Sauages (savages) yett. . . . Holy writt sayeth . . . not to vtterly distroy the heathen, least [lest] the woods and wilde beasts should ouer runn them. My owne observaccon hath bene such as assureth me yt if the Indians inhabitt not amongst vs vnder obedience And as they haue ever kept downe ye woods and slayne the wolues, beares, and other beasts . . . we shalbe more opressed in short tyme by their absence, then in their liueing by vs both for or owne securitie as allso for or Cattle. . . .Seacondly when as by ye meanes before spoken of, they shalbe brought into subiection and shalbe made to deliuer hostriges for theire obedience, there is no doubt by gods grace but of the saueinge of many of their soules And then beinge natiues are apter for worke then yet or English are, knowinge howe to attayne greate quantitie of silke, hempe, and flax, and most exquisite in the dressinge thereof ffor or vses fitt for guides vppon discouerye into other Countries adiacent to ours, fitt to rowe in Gallies & friggetts and many other pregnant vses too tedious to sett downe. (John Martin, A Proposal for Subjugating the Indians. December 5, 1622. )
129) It is time to wipe away such an imputation of Barbarisme, especially since the consequence is so pregnant, that without this or the like, the state cannot subsist without some dangerous and imminent mutation. He is ouer blinde that doth not see, what an inundation of people doth ouerflow this little Iland: Shall we vent this deluge, by indirect and vnchristian policies? shal we imitate the bloody and heathenish counsell of the Romanes, to leaue a Carthage standing, that may exhaust our people by forraine warre? or shall we nourish domesticall faction, that as in the dayes of Vitellius and Vespasian, the sonne may imbrew his hands in the blood of the father? Or shall we follow the barbarous foot-steps of the state of China, to imprison our people in a little circle of the earth, and consume them by pestilence? Or shall we like the beast of Babylon, denie to any sort the honourable estate of mariage, and allow abhominable stewes, that our people may not ouer increase in multitude? Or shall we take an inhumane example from the Muscouite, in a time of famine to put tenne thousand of the poore vnder the yce, as the Mice and Rats of a state politique? If all these be diabolicall and hellish proiects, what other meanes remaines to vs, but by setling so excellent a Plantation, to disimbarke some millions of people vpon a land that floweth with all manner of plenty? (A True Declaration of the Estate in Virginia, 1610 )
130) Neither were the Spaniards the only Europeans to believe that there was an almost eschatological association between gold and godliness. Those, declared Richard Hakluyt, who sought to plead the Gospel in the newfound lands would be rewarded materially for their pains. That, he claimed to believe was the only reason why God had filled the Indies with such wealth. (Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-1800. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995: 68. )
