Those Moderate Muslims Again...

[Walks_in_islam]

Originally Posted by n david

Post your source.

Did you go to school dude? That's American History 101. If you did not study western expansion, the Indian wars, and colonialism (after all if you can burn a few witches you can certainly tag a few raggedy savages right?) then get to work. This isn't kindergarten storytime and I'm not going to play "pastor to tell you what to think because you're incapable of deciding for yourself". In here - you are expected to do your own work. Don't shoot your eye out.

John Smith: “there is yet in Virginia no place discovered to bee so Savage in which the Savages have not religion...But their chiefe God they worship is the Divell [Devil].”

John Smith: ”till their Priests and Ancients have their throats cut, there is no hope to bring them to conversion.”

John Winthrop, 1629 “...the whole earth is the Lord's garden, and he hath given it to the sons of Adam to be tilled and improved by them. Why then should we stand starving here for the places of habitation, (many men spending as much labor and cost to recover or keep sometimes an acre or two of lands as would procure him many hundreds of acres, as good or better, in another place,) and in the mean time suffer whole countries, as profitable for the use of man, to lie waste without any improvement.”

John Winthrop: “the natives are neere all dead of the smalle Poxe, so as the Lord hathe cleared our title to what we posses.”



James Axtell, "Natives and Newcomers" Jesuits set up reserves for Native Americans and missionaries. The laws governing these reserves reflected Christian values, and punishments varied from whipping, payment, to even death for crimes of adultery, witchcraft, and worshiping any other deity than the Christian God. However, many Natives did not truly convert and became false Christians to avoid punishment, which only further angered the Europeans. Lesser punishments on the reserves were for the following crimes: powwowing, gaming, fornication, polygamy, mourning with loud noises (such as howling), body-greasing, as well as several others

Today, now the only source of lost language is in the notes of the priests and ministers who took it. : Due to their desire to communicate the Word of God to the "savage", they compiled significant records of the languages they heard. Today, in the modern world of Native American revitalization movements, at a time when many of the the thousands of languages are being lost and Indigenous communities are trying to stop that loss or even regain already extinct languages, the only records they have to relearn their languages are of those priests' notes and translated Bibles. Bitter irony that the religion that stole their language and culture from them, is a critical resource for regaining it.

What's a jot here or a tittle there right?:

A common practice was to convert the more "fun" stories of the Bible into picture books, and teach a young child the story so he would tell it to the people in the native language. If the religious leaders could find any similarity between the individual tribe's religion and Christianity, they would exaggerate that aspect. In Mexico City, where the religion was bloody, and where god sacrificed his brother, and children were sacrificed to the gods, the story of Abraham and Jesus were highlighted... the very bloody story of Jesus.

There were several other obstacles facing missionaries, notably language. Christian words, based in Judeao-Christian, grecco Roman culture had no direct parallels in many if not most Native Languages. Sin, Heaven or Hell are obviously non existent, but for most nomadic tribes, neither shepherd nor sheep had any relevance. King, kingdom, prayer, ark, redemption, sacrament, baptism all had to be defined, to some often amusing results

NOTE: In an early Lakota bible that still exists in the Library of Congress, Jesus the Shepard was described as "Jesus the man who road horses to hunt without killing the deer"

Idly thinking it's probably been awhile since you've been in a library.