James BlueWolf & Nathan Lupe'                                                                           approx. 120,581 words
3809 Scotts Creek Rd                                                                                            c 2003 James BlueWolf
Lakeport, Calif, 95453
707-263-1099
jbluewolf@access-4-free.com

 
 

Shirts N' Skins

 (Renegade Essays & Issues For A New Century)


Preface
         Our opinions are not intended to represent anyone other than ourselves, and we acknowledge that a significant amount of the information in this book has been gathered or plagiarized from other popular, and not so popular, authors.  We have made every attempt to identify them and give credit, where possible, both in the text and in the bibliography.  Still, the knowledgeable reader may find instances that lack quotation marks or identifying notations.  We hope that the entire stew will be tasty enough for such a reader to forego their justifiable criticisms.  Also since these essays have been composed over time, the discriminating reader will undoubtedly find some repetitions.  We hope these are not too distracting and that our affection and earnest enthusiasm to build a subjective theme into the entire work may be viewed more as a musical piece than a literary one, with movements and repetitive themes toward a single end.   
Natives do not need us to "educate" them in regards to the issues and concerns we all share, our intention is simply to contribute to the timely and important discussions being held within, and without, our individual Nations.
        Where we have erred, over-generalized, misrepresented, or misunderstood our subjects or the facts, the responsibility is ours alone.
        A final word—if any essay seems to be too much—skip it and go on to another. We tried to make each one stand alone.  Who says a book must progress from front to back?
James BlueWolf & Nathan Lupe'
 




Introduction

        One of the reasons we have taken undertaken this compilation of essays, ideas, and plagiarized writings is to put educational information from many places and authors into a central stewpot for general consumption. We agonized over whether some of our later ranting might detract from the book, being too controversial, too negative, or worse--off topic--but ultimately decided that there were good reasons for expressing our militancy.
        First in our minds was the simple importance of offering an alternative voice to the litany of educational textbook clones offered by our educational system to indoctrinate our children.
        Second was our observation that Native People are some of the most patriotic Americans we know.  Our history values the warrior, and the entrance of many of our loved ones, past and present, into the U.S. Armed Forces is a source of unity and pride for all of our Nations.  Our Veterans have served with dignity and honor (as will be described later) in every U.S. conflict during the last century.  But aside from that, we believe that many Native Peoples have been misinformed and, in some cases, intentionally misled about the history and motives of the United States Government, particularly as it relates to military engagements in the last fifty years.  It is our belief that many Native people, along with most other Americans, have been fed a conglomerate series of myths and morality plays that inaccurately represent the history, not only of the American Experiment in the past, but the part, place, and importance of Native Peoples in that history.  We believe that a clearer understanding of the successes and failures of the American Experiment will help Native Peoples make important decisions regarding our continued support and cooperation with American Foreign and Domestic Policies.
        It is not our intention to devalue the heroes and cherished beliefs of European descendants or global immigrant Americans, but we feel that Native peoples have the right to be educated to the true facts of history as we understand them, with the Native perspective taken into consideration.  Native people should feel empowered by what they learn, or re-learn, and should rightfully feel a great deal of pride in the accomplishments and sacrifices made by our ancestors, as well as the modern heroes of our time. One of the most valuable lessons that can be learned from history is that all the great leaders, spokesmen, healers, warriors, and artists of the past were common human beings, subject to all of our problems and vices.   None were so perfect or heroic that they did not experience moments of doubt, tragedy, or criticism.  In this we learn that each of us has the potential to be like them.      
        If one is not exposed to contradictory ideals and opinions, fundamentalism prevails.  Not that all fundamentalism is bad--it depends on the historical reality of the premises and events of the past.  Unfortunately much of what Indigenous Peoples have learned about their contemporary world is what they have been given by the conquering culture, its history, and world-view.  It's time for debunking the myths of America.  We're certain it'll make us plenty of enemies.  So be it. 
Many American Indigenous Peoples indulged in warfare.  Some did not.  It's up to the reader to explore the differences in Indigenous cultures and Nations to identify those differences.  But for those who prized bravery, courage, and heroism as it applied to conflicts between men, their defeat at the hands of a more callous, brutal, and heavily armed foe was debilitating and heart-wrenching.  Many individual Natives, searching for an extension of those traditions, have sought continuity in service to the United States of America and it's Armed Forces.  Successful integration into an armed force means that one must put aside personal attitudes and opinions, conform to the orders and expectations of superiors, and accept the values and necessity of those who direct ones actions.  In order to survive one must ultimately accept what one is told.  Questions will get you killed. 
        Even before the First World War, Natives were proudly serving in the Armed Forces.  We would not presume to speak for them or those who have served since, except to notice that, by and large, they are proud of their service, honor the flag and their officers, and generally exhibit the expected patriotic views one might expect from honorable veterans.   We want it to be crystal clear that we revere and honor all our Native Vets.  We also think that very few of them have received the education or historical background necessary to understand the behind-the-scenes reasons for the conflicts they were involved in and the real reasons many of the conflicts were enjoined.  By the late 1960's, some of them, in their hearts, probably wondered why they were killing other brown people in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. But myths and politricks, as well as the realities of survival, have kept them from questioning the larger American picture.
        While real historians argue about the reasons and the behind-the-scenes decisions of World War One and Two, the rest of us are reasonably comfortable with believing that it was a black and white struggle of good over evil, tyranny over freedom.  Of course that's what we were taught and told, so perhaps it's not that unreasonable for us to still believe it.  And certainly those veterans who saw the horrors of those wars have arguments aplenty for America's justifications.  But our interest here moves into the time when the general education of everyone in America was thought to be a given.  The 1960's were a time when TV, radio, and the print media reached into almost every single household (except Indigenous America).  Suddenly people were discovering that the Government was capable of lying to its citizens--and its veterans.  History began to get a lot more interesting as we began to discover discrepancies in what we had been told about events, decisions, and policies of the past.  It became evident that we knew a lot less about who we were, where we had come from, and what we represented than we had been led to believe.
        This book is an attempt at discovery, as well as an evaluation of where we have come from and where we are going.  If it can be a burr under a blanket, or provide one single fact that helps us move toward a clearer view of the future we would like to share, we'll be happy with our efforts.  


















BC--Before Columbus and Beyond

"Forked tongues hold an empty cup
dipped until all springs run dry;
a past of lies served on formal sterling
make the taste of our defeat
so much more bitter now
we know exactly what was lost."













BC/ One                                                                       BlueWolf & Lupe'/ Shirts N' Skins

What Hollywood Forgot To Tell America About Indians  (Indigenous Americans)

        An entire book could probably be written about this subject--but we're going to restrain ourselves and just talk about a few of the things we wish Americans knew about "Indians"
We wish Americans knew...
…that all Natives did not come across the land bridge at the Bering Strait...
…that there were over 700 totally different Nations on this continent with a population of 100 million inhabitants (more than in Europe) before the arrival of Columbus. (The Mayan lowlands held at least 8 to 18 million people in one region alone)... that Indigenous civilizations before the coming of pestilence had raised cities larger (50,000--300,000) than the greatest cities of Europe with artisans, architects and impressive astronomers with advanced mathematical knowledge…
...that the longest continually operating democracy is still that of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (1000 years), not the US Republic (227 years)...
…that the largest pandemics of disease in the history of mankind occurred on the North American continent between 1492 and 1700, sweeping north and south and from ocean to ocean with a 90-95% fatality rate, continuing until the late 1800's...
…that North and South America were never vacant wild lands until after European diseases destroyed most of their Indigenous populations...
… that agriculturally, Indigenous Americans were light years ahead of Europe with entire continents of carefully managed agricultural acreage...
…that the first book in Europe extolling the virtues of New World Indigenous culture and government, Thomas More's "Utopia", was written in the 1500's...
…that most Native societies were matriarchal, where the women had as much (or more) to say about the daily social and political affairs of the People than the men ..
…that Indian personal habits of cleanliness and knowledge of medicine were considerably advanced compared to Europeans, who considered bathing dangerous and had little to no knowledge of herbs...
…that Indians lived at least as long and quite possibly significantly longer than their European counterparts and that there was plenty of leisure time in Indigenous cultures to devote to spirituality, culture, art, music, dance and entertainment...
…that American Indigenous people did not develop the wheel because there were no beasts of burden in the New World capable of drawing them...
…that one-half to four-fifths of the world's current vegetable staples were exported from the America's, including corn, potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, manioc, peppers, etc. and that those imports kept many European Nations from starving.... 
…that Christopher Columbus was preceded by a number of different peoples from other continents, notably Phoenicians, Norsemen, and possibly many more.  Also that he entered upon the voyage, not with any intent to find new trade routes, but for the express purpose of discovering gold in a "New World"…
…that thousands of Indians were captured and sent by Columbus as slaves to the Canary Islands, Europe and other locations and that the idea for the Black slave trade was proven profitable and possible by those practices...
…that the methods and crimes of Columbus and his men were not just normal behavior for the times and that numerous contemporaries, notably Bartolome' De Las Casas, defended Native rights to land, life, liberty. property, and sovereignty...
…that the Thanksgiving Gathering never took place as such, but was a treaty parley where a prayer was said thanking the Pilgrim God for saving the colonists from the "ravages of the savages" even though these were the same "savages" who had only recently rescued them from starvation...
… that Ben Franklin's first proposal of government to the Colonies, the Albany Plan Of Union, was strictly organized to utilize the principles of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the subsequent Constitutional Convention closely considered those same principles of government...
…that until the early-1800's, the word "Americans" was used to describe Indigenous Peoples and not Europeans immigrants or their descendants...
…that the U.S. has never honored a single treaty with Indigenous Nations even though the original United States Congress vigorously complained to England that there was never an excuse for treaties between Sovereign Nations to be ignored, become obsolete, or be arbitrarily abrogated...
…that more American Indians per capita have volunteered in every American military conflict since World War One (before Indians were legally declared US Citizens)... that the 1940 Nationalities Act, which established citizenship for all Indians, was not intended to dilute tribal authority…
… that if not for the CodeTalkers--Choctaw, Comanche, Navajo, Ojibway, Menominee, Lakota, Crow, Blackfeet and others--America could have lost World War One or Two, even though those same Code-talkers had been raised in boarding schools that denied them the right to speak the languages that eventually became America's most important weapons...
… that Indians still have the highest rates of infant mortality, rural poverty, and suicide in the US...
…that contemporary Indians don't wear feathers or live in tipis on a daily basis... that most of the government monies that go to Indians are not taxpayer monies but the result of land or resource leases, treaty settlements or trust agreements...
…that any sovereignty and rights allowed to Tribes that seem to give Natives an advantage or different status than other Americans by the U.S. Government are a product of constitutionally guaranteed treaties or good faith negotiations executed under the Constitution of the United States and not by any arbitrary state or federal decision... .
…and finally that, to this day, the U.S Government has never had a consistent legal policy recognizing and restoring the rights of Native Nations under the constitutionally guaranteed provisions of treaties and agreements negotiated in good faith by their ancestors, even though many of those treaties were signed with an acknowledged guarantee similar to the famous closer, "for as long as grass grows and waters flow".





BC/  Two                                                                      BlueWolf & Lupe'/ Shirts N' Skins

What Is Civilized?

        Fundamental characteristics of "civilized" society that distinguish it from cultures: firmly organized states with definite boundaries and systematic political institutions; the distinction of social classes; the economic specialization of man as farmer, trader, or artisan, each dependent on the other; and the conscious development of the arts and intellectual attitudes-- specifically the rise of monumental architecture, sculpture that carefully represents man, the use of writing to commemorate accounts or deeds, and the elaboration of religious views about the nature of the gods, and their relation to men and the origin of the world.  Whenever civilization has appeared, most or all of these characteristics will have quickly sprung into existence and will have assumed a precise form and interlocking coherent view, easily distinguishable from other ways of life.  Chester Starr

        “What is civilization?  If its marks are a noble religion and philosophy, original arts, stirring music, rich story and legend.  We had these.  Then we were not savages but a civilized race.”   Grand Council Of American Indians 1927

        Starting our history with this essay seemed a logical beginning.  One of the main tenants of the dominant western civilization has been their insistence on the elements that constitute civilization and their demands on a history that shows an orderly appearance of civilization descending from Mesopotamia.  They make a rigorous denial of the contention that Indigenous peoples ever independently developed civilizations, except for a brief credit to the Peruvian cultures.  Yet, taking the definition above, an honest historian might contend that there have been many civilizations on the American continents, and perhaps elsewhere around the world.  The coastlines and oceans have changed, flooded, and receded countless times.  Who knows what unknown civilizations wait to be discovered under the oceans of the world?  Archaeologists are just now determining that simply because no evidence remains, natural civilizations may have occurred--and been lost without a trace--in antiquity.
        This part of the essay could just as easily gone into our section “Ranting And Raving”, under the sections on mythology, but we think it best to get it out of the way early.
         The patronizing attitudes of science toward the assertions of Native Peoples that they either originated on, or came to these lands many millenia before the supposed land migrations over the Bering Strait in the Clovis period, (11-12,500BP), is one of the more exasperating irritations Natives endure.  Modern archaeology is well on the way to exploding the Bering Strait theories, yet mainstream scientists resist and our children are still taught this myth. The archaeological finds at Meadowcroft, in western Pennsylvania have now been confirmed at 16,000, almost 3500 years before the “migration”.
        Certainly there may have been Peoples passing back and forth over northern lands in ages past (the Bluefish Caves site in the Yukon is dated 24,000), but to insist that no other migrations occurred and that origination has been undeniably established is ridiculous.  The oceans have risen over 400 feet since those times. Any coastal routes which may have significantly preceded the Clovis dates have long been inundated. Yet none of the theories, even those who suppose coastal migrations, have been able to explain why South American digs pre-date North American ones.  Scientists are now hard-pressed to explain how early Americans could have established significant settlements at Monte Verde, Chile, centuries before they supposed to be making the arduous trip through the ice corridors of Canada.  Even more difficult for them to rationalize, are the recent carbon datings at Pedra Furada, in Brazil.  Archaeologist Guidon has confirmed, with the help of internationally respected Hans Mueller-Beck, that the dig dates at least to 30,000 and most probably to 48,000.
        This find is so substantial as to cause Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian to declare, “It’s becoming very clear that people have been in the New World for over 20,000 years.  How much older than 20,000 seems to be the key question right now, but the old argument— Clovis is the First Americans—I don’t think that’s a real valid argument anymore.
        Other disciplines agree.  Geneticist Rich Ward has been conducting DNA testing on a small Northwest Tribe that is supposed to have been in the 3rd , and latest migration (coastal) from the Bering regions.  Ward and others expected to find only three to ten lineages among the small number of test subjects.  He was overwhelmed by the evidence that these few people represented twenty-eight to thirty entirely different DNA lineages in four main clusters.  Ward estimates that a much longer time period than previously supposed must have elapsed for that number of changes in the genetic code to have occurred.
         Linguists are adding more fuel to the fire that is consuming the Bering Strait migration theory.  It has now been documented that as many as 2000 different language groups have existed on the American continents. Experts are convinced that that kind of linguistic diversity could only occur over a long period of development in situ—as much as 50,000 years!
        Of course Natives don’t need DNA, archaeology, and linguistics experts to tell us what we have always known.  As much as Europeans can say they originated in Europe, Indigenous Peoples in the Americas can make the same claims.

        As far as discussions of the properties that define civilization go, many of the pre-Columbian American civilizations had all the defining characteristics listed by Chester Starr in our earlier quotation.
        Their borders were well known and their political systems complex and advanced.  The distinction of social classes and separation of trades most probably occurred naturally within Native societies, though they may not have reached the levels of distinction and stratification as peasant or noble, slave or owner, eta (untouchable) or samurai.  Yet there were certainly levels of social distinction and success in even the most democratic of Native nations.  The creative trades in procurement of necessities have always ordered themselves toward the most efficient system, with the most capable and productive assuming their natural roles in sustaining local economies.  A simple attitude of superiority does not give one culture the ability to judge either the artistic or intellectual development of another culture.  Examples of monumental architecture abound in the Americas, as do representative sculpture, including some creations that could not be matched by today's architectural or artistic giants.
        We have gathered the information below from prominent archaeologists and anthropologists local to the regions described, however since we did not consult with the descendants of the peoples described directly we cannot be sure of the accuracy of any of the dates or opinions expressed about their ancestors.  We’ve found that it’s always good to take any scientific pronouncement about Native Peoples and their history with a few grains of salt. Our biggest contention with the status quo is their insistence that these civilizations ended.  While the monumental architecture and urban sprawl might no longer be in evidence, many of the descendants of these Peoples have long memories.  They still hold the knowledge, the wisdom and the spirit of their peoples.  They are not gone, they are simply harder to see.

Pre-Incan & Incan
        “Six earth-and-rock mounds rise out of the windswept desert of the Supe Valley near the coast of Peru. Dunelike and immense, they appear to be nature's handiwork, forlorn outposts in an arid region squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and the folds of the Andean Cordillera. But looks deceive. These are human-made pyramids, and compelling new evidence indicates they are the remains of a city that flourished nearly 5,000 years ago. The ruins, which have been carbon dated to some 100 years before the Great
        Pyramid at Giza, make it one of the oldest urban center in the Americas and among the most ancient in all the world. What has amazed archaeologists is not just the age but the complexity and scope of Caral.  Pirámide Mayor alone covers an area nearly the size of four football fields and is 60 feet tall. Inside a large sunken amphitheater, which could have held many hundreds of people during civic or religious events.   Eventually Caral would spawn 17 other pyramid complexes scattered across the 35-square-mile area of the Supe Valley.” (AP Release)  Cotton appeared to be their main trade item, and nets of cotton fiber were discovered many many miles from Caral—evidence of a considerable commerce with distant peoples. “But based on Caral's size and scope, archaeologists believes that it is indeed the mother city of the Incan civilization.”

        “Around 200 AD, the highlands of South America witnessed the rise of the Tiahuanaco culture (200 AD), based in the Collao region (which covered parts of modern-day Bolivia and Chile). The Tiahuanaco were to bequeath a legacy of agricultural terracing and the management of a variety of ecological zones.”
        “The Nazca culture (300 AD) were able to tame the coastal desert by bringing water through underground aqueducts. They carved out vast geometric and animal figures on the desert floor, a series of symbols believed to form part of an agricultural calendar which even today baffles researchers.”
        Also in the highlands, “both the Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) culture, near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, and the Wari (Huari) culture, near the present-day city of Ayacucho, developed large urban settlements and wide-ranging state systems between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1000. The Wari culture (600 AD) introduced urban settlements in the Ayacucho area and expanded its influence across the Andes.”
        “Chimú were the great city-builders of pre-Inca civilization. As loose confederation of cities scattered along the coast of northern Peru and southern Ecuador, the Chimú flourished from about 1150 to 1450. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo. The largest pre-Hispanic city in South America at the time, Chan Chan had 100,000 inhabitants. Its twenty square kilometers of precisely symmetrical design was surrounded by a lush garden oasis intricately irrigated from the Río Moche several kilometers away.”

        The Mayan's are considered the “grandparents” of many Tribes, the Mayans were prominently established in 1000 BC.  Their civilization is said to have endured for 2000 years, reaching its Zenith in 7th to 10th Century AD in Copan in Honduras.  We’ll examine the advanced state of their civilization in another essay.

        There is a growing suspicion that the entire southwest was once part of a great Anastazi system that included the 25,000 square mile San Juan River drainage system.  Pueblo Bonito, the largest of the monuments, had 660 circular rooms. It contains more than 50 million finely cut blocks of sand stone. 150 other great houses were discovered in the San Juan Basin, covering four states: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico and encompass an area of 1000s of square miles. Even in the desolate Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico there is abundant evidence that as many as 6,000 to 10,000 ancient native Americans lived and worshiped there at one time. The remains of elaborate buildings--some as high as four stories and containing 800 rooms--indicate the location was used for rituals and ceremonies. Extensive villages were also built nearby.  NASA archaeologist Tom Seaver uncovered the huge Pueblo road system.  The roads are straight as an arrow and were built without beasts of burden or the wheel!
In the Americas, extensive cultural empires were established through the exchange of  “symbolic goods.”  The relationship between Meso-America and the Anastazi culture is well documented even considering the problem of monumental distances to transportation, communication, and the overall poverty of the societies involved. Nevertheless, relationships of contact between women, goods, knowledge, and the circulation of specialists proved that even symbolic goods may contribute to the establishment of extensive cultural empires.

        Cahokia, (Mississipian), in southwest Illinois, was, in its day, the largest and most influential settlement north of Mexico. Henry Brackenridge, speaking of Cahokia, 1810, found a great mound larger than the Pyramid at Giza, surrounded by more than one hundred smaller mounds covering a five square mile area.  Its influence extended from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and from the Atlantic coast to Oklahoma.  About 4,000 of the roughly 20,000 individual mounds of this widespread Mississippian civilization have survived agriculture and construction in Wisconsin alone.  Other “great” mounds exist in Alabama, Mississippi, and other southeastern states. The textile industry in Mississippian culture was advanced, as were the social city-states, with high walled settlements, moats, and advanced soci-ceremonial structures, organizations, and governments.

        The knowledge that these great systems were present is not just a modern penomina.  Besides the recordings of the Priests and adventurers of Middle and Soouth America, we have what remains of the North American history in these  snips of an 1860 document about an area near the eastern Great Plains of the U.S. 
       
        The first section is entitled, "Unquestionable Antiquity of Many of the Mounds".
        "Although many of the mounds now found may be of comparatively modern date, there are some which, like those on the Ohio and the other western rivers, bear incontestable evidence of great antiquity in the immense trees that are found growing upon them. There are live-oaks standing upon some of these tumuli of such size that they are estimated to be six or seven hundred years old. This would carry back the date of the mound to a period two or three centuries anterior to the time of Columbus."
        "Ancient Fields"
        "There are also in certain parts of the prairies marks of ancient corn fields, of every great size, and extending over the country for a hundred and fifty miles. The land in these fields lies in ridges, like those always seen in a corn field that is left, after the corn is harvested, to grass itself over, without being leveled by the plough and harrow. These ridges are so regular, and confined so strictly to circumscribed and well defined fields--fields, too, occupying situations exactly suitable for the cultivation of corn--as to leave no room for doubt in respect to the nature of them. They are very ancient too, as is proved by the trees often found standing upon them. Some persons, in examining these fields, once caused an oak tree to be cut down which was growing in one of them, and on counting the layers of wood they found that the tree was three hundred and twenty-five years old. This carries the time when the fields were cultivated far beyond the settlement of the country by Europeans; and inasmuch as no Indian tribes have been known, since the coming of Europeans; to cultivate the ground so extensively, it is supposed that these fields denote that in ancient times there existed a more numerous and civilized population over all this region than exists at the present day.
        "The Copper Mines"
        "This opinion is confirmed by certain indications that are observed in the Lake Superior copper region. Ancient mines are found here with traces of former workings that are on a scale fare beyond the capacity of the Indians of the present day.  Accordingly, as might naturally be expected, copper implements and ornaments have been, from time immemorial, very much in use among all the Indian tribes. But at the period of the discovery of America, and since that time, the supply of copper for these purposes was obtained almost entirely from specimens found near the surface of the ground. There is no evidence of any systematic or extended workings of the mines within a period of several centuries; but there is abundant evidence that before that time, as is shown by the age of the trees growing over the old excavations, mining operations in this region were carried
on upon a very considerable scale.
        The miners of the present day frequently come to old trenches, half filled in and grassed over, and with immense trees growing in them, at the bottom of which, when they dig them out anew, they find remains of the ancient works. They come down, when digging in such places, to great masses of copper blocked up on skids of wood which have been preserved from decay by lying all the time in water, with marks of fire upon them, and broken tools lying all around. Trees have been found growing over ancient works in these mines with five hundred concentric layers of wood in them, proving that the excavations and the works carried on in them were finally abandoned at least five hundred years ago."
        "Conclusion"
        "On the whole, there is abundant evidence in these ancient remains that this continent has been inhabited by the ancestors of the present Indian races for a very long period. It is, moreover, generally supposed that in former times the population was far more numerous, and that the nations composing it were far more advanced in civilization than those found in possession of the country when the Europeans first visited these shores."

        The cxivilizations of the Americas, especially at the time of the "discovery", rivaled any to be found in Europe.  At the time of Columbus; London, Paris, and Cologne were towns of only 20,000-50,000 citizens.  These were roughly equivalent to the pre-plague size of many American Indigenous eastern coastal agricultural villages of the time, and equal to, or smaller, than many of the larger agricultural centers of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Anastasi cultures.  None of the European cities came anywhere near the sophistication and population of many Meso-American urban areas. 
        Writing did exist in the America's, but the most developed--the Mayan system--was almost totally wiped out by Spanish European colonization. (It was preserved enough to be making a comeback today.)  Most of our Nations made use of the discipline of exact recitation to commemorate events, convey important messages, and keep history.  Messages, still recited in their exact form, exist today that were carried coast to coast, east to west, north to south, over 500 years ago!  Few written documents exist for that long in a pristine state.  As for religious views, a rich tradition of Native theology integrated into the daily life of the Nations continues to inspire and support many of the Indigenous peoples on this continent.  Many of these ideals, symbols, and ceremonies have taken on new significance as modern men re-examine the supposed superiority of colonial traditions.
        Though neolithic civilization may or may not have occurred in Europe before the Americas, the Native ability to advance agriculturally far outstripped the European civilization with global implications.  Nineteenth century Central and Southern Europe became dependent on maize as a staple. That dramatic reduction in the European tradition of starvation led to a population explosion in Europe.  Peanuts, manioc, and maize also transformed African agriculture at the same time that disease was wiping out most of Native America.
        .In our minds, the definitions of civilization have been met time and time again by the developing Nations and Peoples of these great continents.  Not only did they exist in the past; they existed at the time of Columbus. Why do European-descendant historians continue to make light of those achievements and pretend that only they were party to the higher developments of men?  Part of the answer lies in how they define "higher developments" of both man and culture.  This goes directly to the crux of what Native People have been asking themselves for 500 years.  Why do white men think like that?









BC/  Three                                                                  BlueWolf & Lupe /Shirts N' Skins

The Origins Of Science And Technology

Something we always hear from enthusiastic Eurocentrists is their contention that one of the reasons this European civilization is so superior is because of the advances of sciences that originated there.  Here's our answer.  We put it here because most of it is BC.
Real historians are now exploding the myth that science is almost entirely Western in origin.  By western here, we mean Europe, Greece and Post Colombian North America.  The myth, originating in Germany, is just part of the Eurocentric glamorization of accomplishments which has consumed American society since the middle of the 19th century.
Generally it is believed that science originated in Greece about 600-146 BC, when the Greeks gave it over to the Romans and it hibernated until the Renaissance in Europe, circa 1500.  This is known as the “Greek Miracle”.
The belief that Peoples from India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, sub-Saharan Africa, China, The Americas, and elsewhere developed fire and then sat around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for Greek magicians to conjure up modern science ranks up there with the tooth fairy.  Equally astonishing is the belief that no science was conducted from the Greek end to the time of Copernicus--a mere 1500 years.  The only concession to non-European cultures was a patronizing credit to Islam, which made them the scribes, translators, and caretakers who kept science alive until it was rediscovered by its rightful heirs.
Western science is what it is because it is built upon the best ideas, data, and equipment from other cultures.  The Greeks openly acknowledged that their culture had arisen from the result of Egyptian colonization.  Europeans, during the renaissance, accepted that Egypt was the cradle of civilization until the 18th century, when Christians began worrying about the influences of Egyptian pantheism.  The first Aryan racists--Locke, Hume, and others--created their Aryan model in the first half of the 19th century.  They rewrote history to deny the existence of the Egyptian settlements, and as anti-Semitism grew, further denied Phoenician cultural influences.  The passing of time refined the Aryan model to establish Greece as distinctly European. This myth has never been stronger than today.  Of the 96 most important scientific achievements in recorded history, noted Science magazine, (1-14-2000), only two were attributed to non-white, non-western scientists!  The first was the invention of zero in India, and the astronomical evaluations of the Maya and Hindus, AD 1000.   The Indians were only given credit for discerning the symbol, rather than the concept of zero.  The Mayans and Hindus were stripped of scientific status by the assertion that their find was for agricultural and religious purposes only. "Science" proclaimed that “Prior to 600 BC… phenomena were explained within the context of magic, religion and experiences", ignoring two thousand years of discovery. If one wishes to return to a truthful historical perspective, it is only necessary to read, in the Greek, Herodotus and other ancient Greeks.
Francis Bacon said that three inventions marked the beginning of the modern world.  All three; gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and paper and printing, came from China! Bacon himself wrote that inventions from China created the Modern World.  Aristotle credited Egypt with developing the mathematical sciences.
           At the time that Science gave Guttenberg credit for the invention of the printing press, Chinese and Korean publishers had been using their machines for two centuries and books had been published and printed for 500.  Some Chinese collectors had as many as 50,000 volumes in their collections. 
Western scholars, eager to preserve their pre-supposed scientific dominance have consistently changed the rules when faced with the tide of undeniable evidence.  Indian physics, they insist, is meaningless because, though accurate, it was abstract with no empirical data.  Then they turn right around and insist that the Babylonian and Egyptian scientists, who used their discoveries, were simply to be considered unsophisticated craftsmen.
     As time passes, the Western scientific establishment is forced to make acknowledgements of correction in its propaganda.  Western scholars once refused to accept that ancient Black Ethiopians had a number system, asserting they were too primitive and unsophisticated.  Closer examination using modern chemical techniques discovered that ancient letters to Greeks from Ethiopians used specific inks, as distinctly African in origin as the numbers.
To dispel the Eurocentricity of scientific discovery, mathematics and physics are an excellent place to start. Rather than providing a history of each name mentioned in this history, we refer the reader to Dick Teresi's book, "Lost Discoveries", the source of most of this chapter. Here are some of Teresi's miscellaneous facts: 
Indians, Babylonians, and Egyptians used Pythagorean triplets to establish right angles in their construction,
Babylonians developed a place value system and the Pythagorean Theorem fifteen hundred years before Pythagorus.
Mesopotamians kept extensive tables of squares in 2000 BC.
In China, Li Hui calculated the value for Pi in 200 AD.  Fu His’s diagrams correspond to Liebnix’s binary mode of arithmetic.
Algebra is an Arabic word meaning “compulsion”, compelling the unknown, “X”, to a numerical value.  They also developed decimal fractions.
The Egyptians were familiar with Pi and could calculate the volume of a cylinder long before the Greeks.  They also developed the concept of the lowest common denominator and a fraction table that required 28,000 calculations to compile.
The Hindu Rig-Veda asserted the law of gravity twenty-four centuries before Isaac Newton.  The Gwailor Numerals 0-9 were invented in India 500 AD.  Indians had basic mathematics, algebra, indices, logarithms, trigonometry, and nascent forms of calculus centuries before Liebniz.  Indians calculated the Earth’s age as 4.3 billion years in 500 AD, a number that wasn’t arrived at in the modern world until the twentieth century.  Indians and Mayans developed zero and negative numbers a thousand years before Europeans.  Indians understood that the sun was at the center of the solar system and gravity held the solar system together two centuries before Pythagorus. Arabic numerals were first developed in India.
Ibn al Shartir (1350 AD) was responsible for writing down two important theorems discovered by other Muslims which allowed Copernicus to revolutionize astronomy by repairing the flawed mathematics of the Ptolemaic systems.  One theorem was devised by Nasir al Din al Tusi and the other by Muayyad al Din al Urdi.  Copernicus avoided crediting them because Muslims were not popular in 11th Century Europe.  The new math of the Copernicus Revolution began in Islamic, not Europeans minds.
Sumerians used sophisticated algebraic expressions to solve problems of food distribution and supplies in 1800 BC.
                   
No where is there more phony information than in the area of technology.  The wheel, the stirrup, moveable type and metallurgy all came from lands foreign to Europe.  Sumerians started a textile industry working wool into cloth, and flax into linen.  They had a modern canal irrigation system.  The first freestanding glass was produced around 2500 BC in both Mesopotamia and Egypt.  The Sumerians began writing around 3500 BC.  Their tablets record poetry, lullabies, records of property, animals, medicinal plants, astronomical events and account ledgers.  They devised a standard of weights for business and ran a huge import/export system by land and sea. In 300 BC their architecture was both sophisticated and enduring.  Some of their structures exist today.  The Hittites smelted iron and developed gear and axle military machines in 1600 BC.  Assyrians built roads and had an effective postal system in 700 BC.  Nebuchaneezer, the Babylonian King, built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  The roof had a base of lead covered with brick and asphalt.  The garden was watered by screwlike lifts, which brought up water from the Euphrates 700 years before Archimedes.  Floating water mills and turban wheels with mounted millstones were used throughout Eurasia.  Europe didn’t have anything similar until the mid-12th century.
One of the common criticisms of these types of accounts is that they were discoveries simply related to necessity, and did not reflect a purposeful attempt to advance civilization through scientific discovery.  Yet while Europe was in the Dark Ages, the Islamic Middle East had advanced engineering technologies and encouraged the pure science that was responsible for the development of mirrors, incremental weights, surveying, hydraulics, military technology and navigation.  Devises for providing hot and cold running water, dredging, oil lamps, elaborate fountains, suction pipes and the earliest use of a crank as part of a machine were all credited to the Banu Musa brothers.
Many of the basic building blocks of European technology originated in the Middle Eastern River valley civilizations.  Islam's central location between Europe, Africa, and Asia allowed it to acquire Indian and Chinese inventions as well as improve on Egyptian/Greek technology.
Much has been made of the fact that while the Native Americas had a number of advanced civilizations; Mississippian, Mayan, Olmec, Toltec, Incan and Azteca, none of them developed the wheel.  Of course it is hardly mentioned that there were no domestic animals capable of pulling such a vehicle!  Yet they were the worlds greatest crop cultivators and plant breeders. Meso-American agriculture was used to support huge populations. Between 450-650 AD, Teotihuacan had between 150,000-300,000 citizens and was among a handful of the largest cities in the world.  
The agricultural impact of the Americas on Europe was enormous and the crops were considered miraculous.  From 1/2 to 3/4ths of the world's agricultural crops were first cultivated in the Americas.  Europeans, used to famine and hunger, were overwhelmed by the variety of plants available to them.     
Accounts of Conquistadors in the early 16th century Americas described their amazement at the variety of types of spun and woven cloth, the indoor plumbing facilities, sewers, running water, individual housing, huge open markets (offering foods from a thousand miles distant), clean streets, botanical gardens, and the preponderance of free time the people seemed to have for family, music, artistry and craftsmanship, ceremony, dance, and gaming.
Among the Maya, writing and books complimented their complex calendar system of astronomical events and sophisticated mathematical computations. 
Cortes took Aztec ballplayers to Europe in 1528.  The Toltec-Maya Ball Court has walls 27 feet high.  The playing field is 181 yards long and 75 yards wide.  The acoustics of the stadium are so perfect that one can clearly hear a voice from one end to the other, almost two football fields away
The vulcanization of rubber was achieved by 1600, 239 years before Goodyear.  In analyzing the raw latex and vine juice used traditionally, nuclear magnetic resonance spectography revealed unidentified plasticizers had somehow been eliminated in the process allowing the natural polymers to link, a process exactly the same as the one utilized today.   This allowed rubber with specific elasticity's to be created by the Olmecs, Aztecs, and Mayans.  There was solid rubber, hollow rubber, and rubber bands of all sizes, shapes, widths and thickness.  They also had obsidian blades, which microscopic examinations reveal to have been the sharpest blades in the world, sharper than modern surgical steel.  Modern surgeons are just now beginning to experiment with obsidian scalpels.
The Incan road system is 12,000 miles long and comparable only to the Romans as a pre-modern transportation network. The Pueblo road system also covers hundreds of miles, as straight as an arrow. 
The Andes contain approximately 1.5 million acres of small terraced gardens. Also, Andean farmers were the first to freeze dry vegetables, freeze drying potatoes. Each June for at least the last four centuries, farmers in 12 mountain villages in Peru and Bolivia follow a ritual that Westerners might think odd, if not crazy. Late each night for about a week, the farmers observe the stars in the Pleiades constellation, which is low on the horizon to the northeast. If they appear big and bright, the farmers know to plant their potato crop at the usual time four months later. But if the stars are dim, the usual planting will be delayed for several weeks. Now Western researchers have applied the scientific method to this seeming madness. Poring over reams of satellite data on cloud cover and water vapor, Professor Benjamin Orlove, an anthropologist at the University of California at Davis, and colleagues have discovered that these star-gazing farmers are accurate long-range weather forecasters. High wisps of cirrus clouds dim the stars in El Nino years, which brings reduced rainfall to that part of the Andes. In such drought conditions, it makes sense to plant potatoes as late as possible. Orlove's work, which was reported in January in the British journal Nature, is just the latest example of Indigenous or traditional knowledge that has been found to have a sound scientific basis. In agriculture, nutrition, medicine and other fields, modern research is showing why people maintain their traditions
At Windover Bog, in Florida, over 170 individuals were found--50 generations of the same family group. Glen Doren from Florida State University directed the dig.  Dated at 7,210 BP (Before Present), the Windover people lived in permanent settlements.  They had a fairly sophisticated understanding of healing techniques and they wore finely woven cloth just as we do today!  Four kinds of close twining, one kind of open twining, and one type of plaiting can be seen in the mats, bags, and basketry recovered from the site. Clothing woven by the inhabitants of Windover Bog on looms included hoods and burial shrouds, as well as some fitted clothing and many rectangular or squarish clothing articles.   Seven weaving techniques were discovered, all requiring a loom to accomplish the weave.  Children were buried lovingly with toys.  An atlatl hook was found, as well as a gourd or seed not found anywhere except in Central or South America.  The elderly were found to be at least 60 years old and there was significant evidence that they cared for their sick and infirm in an advanced and caring way.

Medicinal advancements were common to the Americas. Imagine the reaction of the Aztec’s, already familiar with the use of antibiotics, watching the Spaniards praying and pouring hot oil on their wounds!
Indigenous South America also recognized quinine as a cure for malaria. 
15% of the total plant life on earth exists in the Amazon Basin. 16,000 species have been identified as being used by the Indigenous Peoples for their healing properties.  Stimulants, purgatives, and even monoamine oxidase inhibitors were known.  Medicines were used as muscle relaxants, anesthetics, fever reducers, as well as for mental illness, fungal infections, nervousness, menstrual aids, and external healing. 
Even today’s search for medicines for AIDS has yielded greater results when searchers consulted knowledgeable Medicine People first.  It is now acknowledged that the state of Pre-Columbian medicine was significantly more advanced in the Americans than in Europe at the time and life expectancy was significantly longer.
            European Americans depended so heavily on Native medicinal knowledge and remedies that when bottled and prepared medicinal products were introduced as consumer products they invariably had Native names or pictures on their labels.  This continued until the mid-1800's, assuring consumers that they were indeed purchasing a useful and effective product.
        
The Far East far outstripped the rest of the world in the development of technology. China was a treasure trove of invention.  In addition to those inventions and technologies previously mentioned, the Chinese first developed cast iron, porcelain, ship sternpost rudders, canal lock gates, horse stirrups and harnesses, fishing reels, hot air balloons, the seismograph, whiskey, gimbals, umbrellas, crank handles, kites, mechanical clocks, sprocket chains and chain drives, paper money, the iron plow and the seed drill.
In 1040, the first Chinese formulae for gunpowder were published and used in making incendiary arrows, bullets, catapult bombs, and hand grenades.  Later, the flame-thrower or fire-spear was developed.  In 1288, iron barrels utilizing high nitrate gunpowder and projectiles were developed.  The Chinese went on to make guns that shot lead balls the size of coins, led pellets, flames and poison.  36 barrel “cartwheel” guns, mortars and bombs followed soon thereafter.  By the mid-1200’s poison bombs, gas, and fire-oil were created and by 1277 they created land mines. 
These devices began to trickle into Europe by 1300.  The revolution of Knights, brought about by the European importation of the Chinese stirrup, were soon being blown to bits by gunpowder and its byproducts.    
Metallurgy and metal manufacturing were a major part of the Chinese military institution.  The Sung’s "million man army" almost literally ate up iron and steel.
William Kelly’s bringing four Chinese steel experts to Kentucky in 1845 preceded the Bessemer process of refining steel products.  They taught him the process they had used for 2000 years.  The Hau Nan Tzu, published in 120 BC, described the process of removing carbon from cast iron by blowing oxygen on it, a technique surprisingly similar to Bessemer’s “discovery”.  The Chinese also used the Siemens process in 500 AD--it was called the Ch’iwu Huai Wen process.
As early as the first century AD, the Chinese constructed suspension bridges, using chains of wrought iron.  It was 1809 before a similar one was created in the west.    
The first completely printed book was completed in China in 868 AD. The Chinese made large print runs for ordinary books, even calendars and horoscopes.  Having been writing since 2000 BC, the oldest Chinese paper is from Shensi Province and was made between 140 and 87 BC.  It was created from pounded hemp.  The Chinese used paper for clothing, shoes, and toilet paper (which amazed Europeans).  Paper reached India by 700 AD and Islamic Nations by 800 AD.  The Arabs jealously guarded the secret for a time, selling Europeans paper at a hefty profit.  It was the Italians who finally brought paper manufacturing to Europe in the 13th Century.
As previously mentioned, when Guttenberg first set his Bible to print, Chinese libraries already held editions of books over 550 years old.
The Chinese were also responsible for maritime advances, inventing fore and aft rigging, the lateen sail, the sternpost rudder, and watertight bulkheads.  While Columbus was trying to get support for his adventure, Chen Ho sent to India and East Africa fleets of Chinese vessels armed with cannons and manned by many thousands of sailors and passengers.  Were it not for the Eurocentric nature of our history, Chen Ho might be regarded as the first and greatest of the maritime explorers.
The Chinese had toothpaste at a time when Europeans barely had teeth!  Mathematics and astronomical calculations were also known in China.  Liu Hui calculated the value of Pi in 200 AD.  Eclipses were recorded and dated as far back as 1400-1200 BC.  4th Century Chinese (as well as 13th Century Arabs) recognized the use of fossils to study history while 17th Century Oxford faculty members taught that fossils were false clues left by the Devil to deceive man.  The K’ao Kung Chi, in 1100 BC, set down quantitative chemical analysis not more than 5% off from modern day analysis.  Mohist physicists set down the law of motion in 300 BC, 2000 years before Newton.  The Shu-Ching, 2700 BC, stated that matter was composed of distinct and separate elements 1700 years before Empedocles.  It also hypothesized that sunbeams were comprised of particles, a hypothesis later put forward by Einstein and Planc.  The creation stories of Egypt, India and China all began with a “Big Bang”.  In 500 BC, the Chinese developed their first antibiotic--from soybean curd.  Chinese alchemists were empirically familiar with the conservation of mass 1500 years before Lavoisier.  Wei Po Yang’s Unification Of Three Principles, written around 140 AD, describes an experiment similar to the cinnabar-mercury-sulfur reaction.  But it was the vessel described that was important.  It is used for melting and subliming different metals and is, at once, similar and more complex than Lavoisier’s pelican.          
Advanced technologies are not the sole property of today’s modern civilization.  Even in 3000 BC, a large technologically advanced civilization existed in India.  Well-organized cities utilized terra cotta ceramics and exhibited a huge trade industry.  Uniform buildings had hidden drains, toilets, sewers, bathing rooms in each house.  Municipal drainage systems featured earthenware drainpipes joined with asphalt. 

Advanced civilizations have occurred time and time again throughout recorded and unrecorded history.  As more and more exploration of the ocean floor is undertaken, we are certain many more civilizations will be discovered that may challenge our ideas of even our present state of advancement.  One fact should be obvious--the present state of scientific and technological advancement owes its successes, not to a few European Greeks, Italians, Germans, English, Spanish and French inventors, scientists, and mathematicians--but to a legion of minds that encompassed the Earth.
The utilization and plagiarizing of the worlds inventive and scientific disciplines has created a civilization that, above all else, prizes "ingenious devices" of every nature. These single-minded pursuits, particularly in the areas of weaponry, energy, medicine, industry, and technology have contributed to the world's knowledge.  But it is not the science, math, technology, industry, and invention that represent the significance of the European contribution.  Rather, it is the unintended consequences of colonialism, militarism, a huge slave trade and access to new areas of rich natural resources that allowed those disciplines to proceed so quickly.  The rush to progress and develop industrially and technologically has come, not from any altruistic desire to serve the interests of humanity, but to enhance and serve the goals of profit and power.  We have yet to travel far enough down the timeline of the future to know whether this fledgling civilization will survive its "ingenious devices".

 

















BC/ Four                                                                       BlueWolf & Lupe'/Shirts N' Skins

What We Know

"It would be better not to know so many things than to know so many things that are not so."     Felix Okaye

"What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors."      James Baldwin

“American Indians have been the most lied about subset of our population."  
  James Loewen

Historians, scholars and teachers are always amazed at how little knowledge Americans have of history.  Compounding the problem is the fact that high school history texts, a primary source for most Americans, are filled with myths, omissions, distortions, and outright lies.
National history texts indoctrinate students into a mindless endorsement of Eurocentric colonialism, while excusing its failings and excesses as acceptable or inevitable.  The basic tenant of colonialism--greed--and the horrific and tragic consequences visited on Indigenous populations are ignored, downplayed and skimmed over in favor of the myth of heroic discovery.   As Francis Jennings said, "The invaders anticipated, correctly, that other Europeans would question the morality of their enterprise.  They therefore (prepared)...quantities of propaganda to overpower their own countrymen's scruples. The propaganda eventually took standard form as an ideology with conventional assumptions and semantics.  We live with it still."     
         There have been a number of good books about U.S. history published in the last few years, notably James Loewen’s book, “Lies My Teacher Told Me” (which we have utilized extensively in this section), and Howard Zinn’s,  “A Peoples History Of The United States”. 
           















 BC/ Five                                                                      BlueWolf & Lupe'/ Shirts N' Skins

 One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

The first part of our historical journey toward understanding how White men think must begin on the European continent.
Modern archaeology has thrown a monkey wrench into popularly accepted myths regarding the Roman Empire and the economic stability of Europe.  By the beginning of the seventh century most of Western Europe was in a state of complete economic degeneration.  Even in formerly highly urbanized areas city life had shrunk dramatically.  This proves that the previous belief in a highly developed Western European society, characterized by wealth and sophistication emanating from the Roman Empire appears to have been significantly exaggerated.  Since a commercial unity had never been achieved, the fragile Roman unity of the west seems to have rapidly evaporated after AD 400.  This event has a similar parallel on the American continent.  Early fur traders brought advanced weapons to the northern Innuit and encouraged them to alter their economic patterns to participation in the fur trade.  When the demand for furs dropped precipitously after a few generations, the trading companies pulled out and the Natives were unable to procure shells for their rifles.  Having become dependent on this new hunting technology they were unable to return to traditional methods quickly enough to avert mass starvation.  Similarly, the Roman economic “pump” of large scale commerce and taxation drove the economy in Britain and other western European areas.  When that “pump” was withdrawn, the expanded economic map was unable to sustain itself, and localities were forced to draw into themselves and shut down their larger relationships.
Middle European Tribes were first Christianized en masse between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.  This provoked a violent reaction the like of which was not seen again in Europe for many centuries.  The political change from Tribalism to Monarchy, as well as the transformation from Earth-based spirituality to dogmatic Christianity, was vehemently resisted by the leaders and the common people.  As Leslie Tihany wrote, “The Chiefs resisted because they knew in their hearts that the substitution of a centralized monarchy for the old tribal order, of feudal fiefs for lands contractually divided among the Clans, would bring social and economic degradation.”  The Peoples were totally against assimilation because they realized it meant the end of volatile freedoms, and the coming of immobile subordination.  Though the resentment against foreigners pushing the new agenda was great, there was an even greater resentment against leaders who collaborated with the eastern or western emperors. These collaborations, which resulted in diminished sovereignty for the Tribes, precipitated quite a number of mass uprisings.  The focus of the resistance continued until the Traditional Leaders were wiped out, at which time the peasants only form of demonstrating took the form of open rejection of the established Church.  Gradually, the people accepted Christianity and the Old Ways were lost.
Nevertheless, generations later, the Tribal Peoples were still shaving their heads and wearing leggings.  On the Eurasian steppe, the horse retained its position of influence and mystic power.  Like the bison in America, the every part of the horse was utilized and venerated.  The Peoples  recognized the Spiritual Power inherent in the trees, rocks, water, fire, sun, moon, and stars. They carried amulets and talismans.  They remembered and venerated their ancestors.  Their Spiritual and medicinal leaders kept the natural world in balance with ceremonials, healings, and  cleansings.  Group singing was a common form of worship and social fellowship.  Indeed, at that time, Christians of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds believed that the “Saints” could be present on the Earth, and they gloried in a universe crowded with intermediary beings, invisible guides and protectors.  Theirs were not the empty skies of the Post Enlightenment modern European missionary Christian.
 In the ninth and tenth centuries, Bulgarian, Bohemian, and Serbian mass executions were the order of the day, as the newly baptised Christian Leadership struggled to gain control.  Even after the tribal leaders had been drowned in blood, the common peasantry revolted against the Greek Religion and its supporters, mainly due to desperate conditions brought about by war, famine, plague, and unusually severe winters.  The resistance continued in other areas even into the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Hungarian Christians made non-Christian worship punishable by decapitation. The uprisings in Poland during the thirteenth century were quelled by the Order of the Teutonic Knights, who went about establishing German colonies from Pomerania to Estonia.  Lithuanian resistance continued into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Some areas of Europe embraced a curious mixture of evangelical Christianity and Oriental dualism.  Though some scriptural justification for these beliefs undoubtedly descended from the Epistles of Paul, a significant amount of the early Persian Mystery Religions permeated the doctrine of the so-called Bogomil Heresy.  Bogomil preached that there were two worlds, one visible and temporary, one invisible and eternal.  The world was a battleground between good and evil, darkness and light.  The body was the creation of the Devil, while the soul an everlasting emanation of God.  Three Popes preached Crusades against the Bogomil Heresy, however we can see the lasting effects of those early Persian beliefs in the fundamental Christian Vision espoused by Modern American Christianity.   
The other major Heretical Movement spawned in Middle Europe was that of the Hussites, precurser to Luther’s reformation.  Their animosity to the foreign-sponsored religious establishment in fourteenth century Czechoslovakia would ultimately change the face of Europe and prepare the world for revolutions to come in Holland, England, America, France and Russia.  Bogomil and Hussite freedom fighters proved to be an inspiration to romantic nationalists four hundred years later. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
As the Germanic Tribes settled into the former Roman Empire, civilization fragmented.  From 900 to 1100 AD, tribes and city-states engaged in countless small wars.  For protection they began to band together into hierarchical feudal contracts, establishing fiefs of divided land supporting at least one armored mounted knight.  Knights swore oaths of loyalty to their liege, and fighting became a way of life for the upper class.  By the 12th century it was well established as a phenomenon in France, Spain, and England.  The first tournaments were bloodthirsty affairs with few of the civil constraints and protections of the sporting events of the 13th and 14th centuries.  These events even drew the ire of the Church.  
          In the 14th century, France and Italy, having regularly commissioned armies for their regular campaigns began to have problems with the decommissioned soldiers in between conflicts.  These out-of-work soldiers took to rampaging and plundering the countryside as an alternative occupation.  The Church threatened them with every punishment it could until, fearing for the safety of the whole Christian community, it ordered a Crusade against the marauders.  Almost immediately however, a viable alternative came to light, and a Holy War was suggested.  Veterans were enlisted to go to the Eastern Mediterranean, Hungary, and Spain to fight the advance of Muslims. 
Concurrently, between 1348 and 1350, plague killed fully one third of the population of Europe.  Medieval citizens were convinced that the plague was God's punishment for human sins.  Thinking the Day of Judgement was imminent they neglected to plant crops, gave themselves over to alcohol, and experienced almost complete civil and economic chaos.  The entire culture was affected with fear as death and guilt accumulated.  The artistic motifs of the time clearly indicate to what extent the populace was overwhelmed.  Milder accompanying plagues continued to ravage Europe until the seventeenth century.  Starvation, pestilence, and landless poverty deeply affected the minds and values of the European peasantry.
The Church saw the opportunity to further cement its iron-fisted control over the populace as each of the great European nations was inundated with crime following the plagues and relating to swordplay, duels, and general ruffians and criminals making use of their skills in a society of chaos.
Institutional conflicts between England, France, Spain, and Portugal significantly sapped the resources of the European continent.  During the reoccurring wars between England and France, large areas of land were salted to keep the peasantry starving.  After occupations, soldiers routinely destroyed every farm and household implement they could to keep the populace impoverished.   Poverty was extreme and contributed to what later became a European drive to obtain and increase holdings and wealth, even beyond reasonable standards.  Years of mistreatment at the hands of nobles, armies, and criminals, created a social terrorism that resulted in peoples maniacally driven to secure for themselves and their families every security and material wealth possible with little thought given to others not so fortunate.  The concept that wealth is achieved through divine intervention, nobility, and merit only strengthened during those times of deprivation.   
With the resources of Europe destroyed and depleted, the major European Powers increasingly looked at expanding their eastern trade. With evidence at hand that shortcuts or new lands might be available to them over the Eastern horizon, adventurers like Cristoforos Columbus proposed expeditions to the Spanish Crown.  In anticipation of encountering new pagan cultures, the first Papal Bull, Romanua Pontifex, Jan 8 1455 was issued. (Edited)
           " We bestow favors and special graces on those Catholic champions to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all pagans, to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to appropriate possessions to Christian use and profit."
People from other continents had reached America many times previous to 1492, notably the Norse Vikings and the Afro-Phoenicians.  Some of these contacts were just trade ventures and some were outright settlement attempts, but significant interaction occurred between the continents during these contacts.  Nevertheless, Columbus made his "discovery" (although many today believe he actually had charts in his possession from previous "discoverers"), and his accounts of riches and the immediate exportation of Native Indigenous slaves created an immediate demand for knowledge about the New World.
           The Renaissance was just over the horizon and a new player was about to emerge--Science.  In the early 1500's, Copernicus engendered a spiritual crisis in Europe with his revelation that the earth was not the center of the Universe.  At approximately the same time Thomas More created a furor with his book "Utopia" based on the Incan Civilization and suddenly the Dark Ages evaporated in an orgasm of discovery, change, and violence.
The Christian Church, which had been the source of much of the stability (and subjugation) of the western world during centuries of European chaos, entered a period of internal and violent upheaval. In time this upheaval came to be called the Protestant Reformation, but during the violence itself, it was referred to by many less attractive adjectives. The institution that called itself the Body of Christ, broke first into debate, then acrimony, then violence and counter-violence, and finally into open warfare between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians. It produced the Hundred Years War and the conflict between England and Spain that came to a climax in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. That destruction was widely interpreted as a defeat for the Catholic God of Spain at the hands of the Protestant God of England.
As Columbus was rapidly depopulating the islands of Haiti and Jamaica, the Catholic Church, looking to rationalize the slaughter issued the "Requirement" of 1513.  This "appeal" was to be read to any Indigenous populations before any hostilities could commence. (edited)
" ...Wherefore we require you acknowledge the Church as the ruler of the world. If you do not do this we shall enter your country and make war against you and subject you to the yoke of the Church.  We shall take you, your wives, your children and shall make slaves of them, selling and disposing of them as Their Highnesses shall command; we shall take away your goods and do you all the mischief and damage we can and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault!"
Professor Peter deErrico believes these Papal Bulls form the underlying fabric of modern U.S. law as it relates to Native Americans.  He asserts that Supreme Court Justice (John) Marshall borrowed from the Papal Bulls the essential legalisms needed for State power over Indigenous Nations--Johnson Vs McIntosh.  Native Americans have been denied their rights under Federal Law from 1823 until today--because they were not originally Christian.  Since Johnson Vs McIntosh has never been overruled, the legal foundations for U.S. Sovereignty over Indigenous Nations has remained "Christian Discovery", concealed by the insertion of the word  "European" for the word "Christian" in subsequent history and law books.  The "age of discovery" became the "age of European expansion".  Even Marshall admitted the doctrine was an "extravagant...pretension", which "may be opposed to natural right" but "these claims have been established and maintained...by the sword."   (deErrico)
Our next essay should rightfully be about Columbus, but we will digress here to paint a short picture contrasting the history of the Americas with Europe during that same time period.
 

   



BC/ Six                                                                        BlueWolf &  Lupe'/ Shirts N' Skins


Native Civilization BC


Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.  New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rainforest may be a largely human artifact.”
Charles C. Mann

It is said that the bustle and noise of the market at Tenochtitlan could be heard fully four miles away.  Our "science" essay painted a fair picture of the advances in North America but we figured a few more wouldn't hurt.
It is often said by many American Indigneous Peoples that a significant number of the continental Tribes are originally descended from the Grandfather Quiche Maya Nation in Guatemala.  In our discussions of Civilization, we skirted the nature of how civilizations begin and then radiate outward.  Rome and Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia were undoubtedly centers that most completely represented the accepted characteristics of modern civilization.  To be sure, the characteristics that defined those civilizations radiated out from those centers to varying degrees, diminishing somewhat as they got further and further from their source.
 If we accept those definitions of civilization, we know that there were many highly developed societies and governments throughout the Americas at different times in the last 6000 years.  The fact that the whole continent was not civilized to the point of urbanization is easily understood by the vast distances and natural geo-physical boundaries found on the continents.  Nevertheless, civilizations were huge and their influences were felt far and wide.
The Maya deserve to be credited as one of the world’s great civilizations.  It fulfilled even the dubious characteristics of civilization demanded by Europeans attempting to justify their colonization by preaching the myth of pristine and unoccupied territories with only sporadic nomadic settlements.
The Mayan Civilization stretched from Guatemala to the western Honduras and El Salvador, to Chiapas and to Yucatan.  The Mayans had a written language, though they jealously guarded their books from early Spanish invaders, hiding them so well that it is only in the last century and one half that modern civilization has become aware of the extent of their literacy.  Recorded on smoothed, bleached, and folded bark and cloth, Bartolome De Las Cases reports that they formed “their large books with such keen and subtle skill that we might say our writing were not an improvement over theirs.”  Las Cases credited them with knowing “the origin of everything pertaining to their religion, the founding of villages and cities, how the kings and lords carried out their memorable deeds, how they governed and how they elected their successors; they knew about their great men and their courageous captains, of their wars, their ancient customs, and all that belonged to their history.”   They wrote in an elegant and exalted style, and the Mayan Popul Vuh, or Sacred Text is an epic of the most distinguished literary quality. (Morley)  The Popul Vuh, or Book Of The People, among other things, recounts the time before the days of the conquest, when the all the Tribes were united and had not yet dispersed across the region.  The modern Mayan civilization reached its height in the tenth century AD, and continued for a least four more centuries before it began to wind down in the late 15th century. 

Recently discovered roads, bridges, and plazas deep in the Brazilian rainforests belie the myth of a pristine Amazon.  Evidence has found a linked network of urban communities that may have supported thousands of inhabitants.  The roads appear to link together villages in a carefully organized grid-like pattern.  The evidence implies that the inhabitants dramatically changed the local landscape by digging enormous ditches around the villages, building bridges and moats in wetland areas, and cultivating large tracts of land.  Virtually no part of the large area was truly wild.  Even the forested areas appear to have been more akin to a large park than an untouched forest.  Flying over Beni, a Bolivian Province, Charles Mann reports seeing an archipelago of startlingly round islands, hundreds of acres across.  Each island rose ten, thirty or sixty feet above the floodplain.  Trees grew there that could never survive in the water.  These forests were linked by raise berms, as straight as a rifle shot and up to three miles long.  University of Pennsylvania archaeologist, Clark Erickson believes that 30,000 square miles of forest mounds surround by raised fields and linked by causeways was constructed by a complex populous society. In addition to building up mounds for houses and gardens, these peoples trapped fish in the seasonally flooded grasslands with zigzagging networks of earthen fish weirs.  They controlled their habit with fire.  The consistent burning created an intricate ecosystem of fire-adapted plant species.
This coincides with evidence found on the East Coast of North America that implies that huge areas were actually landscaped and controlled Native environments.  Fire was an important landscaping tool.  The first settlers in Ohio found forests as open as English parks—carriages could be driven through them.  The annual fall burning by Indians along the Hudson River lit up the banks for miles on end.  Dutch from New amsterdam boated upriver to gawk like tourists at the display.
John Smith, of Pocohontas fame, on visiting Massachussets in 1614 (before disease) remarked that the land was “so planted with gardens and corn fields, and so well inhabited with a goodly, strong, and well-proportioned people…I would rather live here than anywhere.”
 Similar testaments to levels of development and sophistication have been gathered on the eastern Great Plains from west of the Mississippi to Canada and down to the Gulf of Mexico.  The plains were burned regularly and millenia of this kind of land management was a key element in the creation of huge bison farms. 
Yet in all these areas, more than a century later, these carefully managed areas had returned to a wild state due to the deaths of their gardeners.  Carefully managed animal populations exploded into huge herds and flocks.  We know it was not always so because the archaeological record shows no evidence of these huge populations of bison, elk, antelope, doves, etc. in pre-Columbian sites.  Nevertheless, as historians began to “forget” the level of sophistication and development the first Europeans found, history was rewritten to reflect the wild pristine myth of an entire continent empty of people.
As for the longevity of Native democracy, approximately 145 Todadahos have been recorded on the Cane of Enlistment (still in possession of the Haudenosaunee) since, only days following a total eclipse of the sun, the Seneca Nation was the last to ratify the Great Law Of Peace around 940 AD.  This Confederacy had been at peace with its neighbors for 552 years at the time Columbus was being rescued by the Tainos. 
We acknowledge that there have been cyclical periods of civilization and flowering cultures, not only in the America's, but all over the world.  All the efforts to achieve immortality in government or civilization have failed.  The idea that modern civilization is somehow different in its progress (or decline) will be realized (or not) generations from now.  One fact is certain. Native Indigenous peoples on the North and South American continents were significantly more advanced and "civilized" than any previous scholarship in the last two centuries ever dreamed of. 
 








BC/ Seven                                                                    BlueWolf & Lupe'/ Shirts N' Skins

The Tragedy Of Cristoforos

"The Indies were discovered in the year one thousand four hundred and ninety-two. In the following year a great many Spaniards went there with the intention of settling the land. And all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people...there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples."
Bartolome' De Las Casas

When Taino Indians saved Christopher Columbus from certain death on Oct. 12, 1492, what occurred next was neither beautiful nor heroic.  Columbus wrote, "I swear that there is not a better people in the world than these: more affectionate, affable, or mild.  They love their neighbors as themselves, and they always speak smilingly."
         His diaries indicated he was greeted with the most generous hospitality he had ever known; yet he immediately began the encomienda system tying Indian slaves to their stolen lands, and was personally responsible for their slaughter. Columbus wrote in his journals.  "I saw that they were very friendly to us... They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed, their eyes were large and very beautiful...Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them. They are good to be Ordered about, to be made to Work, Plant, and do whatever is wanted, to build towns and be taught to go Clothed and accept our Customs.  The air is as soft as April in Seville." "Our Lord in his goodness guide me that I may find this gold".
In 1492 the big island of Hispanola was one of the most densely populated areas of the known world.  In January 1493, 39 men are left behind to guard the fort at La Navidad in the "New World" while a triumphant Columbus sails back to Spain with parrots, gold, and Indians.  In November, Columbus returns, this time with a fleet of 17 ships, 1500 men, as well as horses, dogs, armor, and cannons. The 39 men who had been left to guard the fort are found dead. The official Chronicler of the Indies, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, writes that the "natives could not endure the excesses, for the Spaniards took their women and used them as they wished and committed other violence's and offenses..."  
Even before the ships arrived on Haiti, Columbus has begun the practice of rewarding his lieutenants with Native women to rape.  On Haiti, sexual slavery is common, including the abuse of pre-teen children.  Columbus writes, “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from 9 to 10 are now in demand”.  To ensure the cooperation of the Natives, Columbus orders disfigurement, removal of the ears or nose, as punishment for even the most minor offenses.  Oviedo writes that the Native women began killing their newborn children and mass suicides were common.  The honeymoon of the "discovery" was over.
In 1494, Columbus and company gather green wood to place under the feet of the same Tainos that saved him.  The conquistadors string them up in groups of thirteen, representing Jesus and the 12 apostles.  The burning is slow, methodical, and torturous.  Columbus notes in his journal, "The weather is like April in Andalusia."
Columbus "discovers" the island now called Jamaica.  Terrified Indians flee from soldiers and their crossbows. Dogs pursue the Indians.  In the Old World these dogs are trained to hunt wild game.  In the "New World" they learn to savor human flesh.  Columbus writes, "...so many vultures flocked there to scavenge on the bodies that they darkened the sky."
By 1496, after only four years, half the native population of Hispanola was dead.  In 1498 Columbus wrote, "From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many as 4000 slaves to be sold."  The "New World", once the mother of countless peaceful and happy Native peoples, had been literally transformed into Hell.  Eleven years after Columbus pronounced the Indians as "beautiful, loving, pliant and without knowledge of weapons or violence", he now described them as "unfriendly, cruel, and hostile savage savages."
Within 49 years, the 3 to 8 million people Native to the island of Hispanola were reduced by their new Christian neighbors to two hundred, and in a few more years--none.
In 1542, the great historian Bartoleme’ de Las Casas opposed the belief that Indians were inferior and stood up for their rights as sentient human beings.  De Las Casas' arguments were so powerful it caused Spain to enact laws forbidding slavery (in Spain only), even as slavery gained a stranglehold that lasted three and one-half centuries in the Americas.  Queen Isabella became so outraged by the practice that she actually sent back many of the slaves shipped to Spain by Columbus.  De Las Casas publicly denounced the murder, rape, pedophilia, forced labor, and slavery practiced by the Spaniards and Columbus.  He called it "one of the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and Mankind".  "More than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated, and the land laid waste. On these islands I estimate there are 2,100 leagues of land that have been ruined and depopulated, empty of people."  "Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies."
Columbus himself verified his motives when he wrote in his journal, “Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does all he wants to in the world, and can even lift souls up to paradise”. 
Michele de Cuneo confirmed this when writing about the 1494 expedition to Haiti.  “...It seemed to the Lord Admiral that it was time to put into execution his desire to search for gold which was the main reason he had started on so great a voyage full of so many dangers.” 
Despite his murderous nature, Christoforos' "discovery" came to symbolize certain civilized truths; Manifest Destiny justified theft, assimilation or genocide was a reasonable choice for pagans.   A successful violent campaign to destroy Nations validated the superiority of European values and institutions.
Christopher Columbus, Ponce De Leon, and other Spaniards were primarily slave traders and treasure seekers in the “New World".  Hundreds of thousands of Natives of many Nations crossed the oceans heading east to the Canary Islands and Europe before the first Blacks were brought to American shores.  Racial slavery was begun with the practices of these early Spaniards. Indian slavery in America was heavily promoted and in many places one of every four slaves was Indian.
            Concurrently, European nations, bolstered by social organizations controlled and dependent on their burgeoning militaristic economies, were the first to consider enslaving a “race” of people.  After successfully proving it possible with the exportation of thousands of American Natives, they turned toward their African neighbors.  Before 1450, Europeans considered their African neighbors ‘exotic’ but equals.  Timbuctu held a renowned university and library, and was a repository for advanced knowledge of the time.  African Moors brought much of the learning that contributed to the Renaissance in Spain and Italy.  Just as the War of 1812 marked the onset of a plague of amnesia in Colonial minds--from a change in their perception of Natives as intelligent, capable, equals to regarding them as lazy, immoral, barbarous sub-humans--so the 1550’s enslavement of African Natives caused Europeans to forget African contributions and characterize them as stupid, backward, and uncivilized sub-humans.      

One cannot "discover" a hemisphere inhabited by 100 million people, yet the modern celebration of Columbus Day perpetuates the myth that the "New World" was a wilderness containing only a few hunter-gatherer savages awaiting the blessings of civilization.  Bartolome' De Las Casas says it plainly in one of his many letters challenging the public rants of Gines Sepulveda.  "...He falsely defames the larger part of the human race whom the providence of God has scattered abroad in the vast expanses of the Indies."  Hardly mentioned in our modern histories is the fact that the Western Hemisphere was a virtual paradise of ecology and health, that Native agricultural advances currently provide 60 percent of the world's daily diet and hundreds of medicinesl and medicinal techniques that are still used today. 
For us to continue to celebrate this abominable man and the lie of "discovery" is an affront to those who perished under his sword and truly justifies the use of words like "savage" and "uncivilized" to describe not only his actions, but those of the society that honors him.
On the other hand, honoring a man like Bartolome' De Las Casas would be appropriate.  Las Casas, a Dominican Priest, upheld the cause of Native rights to land, life, liberty and self -government in two hemispheres.  Any number of Aristotelian apologists spoke to assure the Crown and the Church that the actions of conquistadors were right and just.  The most foremost among them was Gine' Sepulveda, who composed significant rhetoric in defense of the actions of Columbus and those who followed.  "...The Indians are obliged by natural law to obey those who are outstanding in virtue and character in the same way that matter yields to form, body to soul, sense to reason, animals to human beings, women to men, children to adults, imperfect to more perfect, worse to better, cheapest to most precious and excellent, to the advantage of both.
    This is the natural order, which the eternal and divine law commands be observed, according to Augustine.  Therefore, if the Indians, once warned, refuse to obey this legitimate sovereignty, they can be forced to do so for their own welfare by recourse to the terrors of war.  And this war will be just by both civil and natural law, according to the second, third, and fifth chapters of the Politics of Aristotle." 
     Las Casas answered.."...I want to set forth...the frightful and disgraceful crimes that my own people, the Spaniards, have inflicted in violation of justice and right during these last few years on the Indians, who have been ruined by terrible butchery, and to wash away the shame brought upon that name among all the nations..."  "What good can come from these military campaigns...how will they become our friends when children see themselves deprived of parents, wives of husbands, and fathers of children and friends.  When they see those they love wounded, imprisoned, plundered, and reduced from an immense number to a few?  When they see their rulers stripped of authority, crushed, and afflicted with a wretched slavery?"  "For the Creator of every being has not so despised these peoples of the New World that he willed them to lack reason and made them like brute animals, so that they should be called barbarians, savages, wild men and brutes, as they (Sepulveda, et al) think or imagine.  On the contrary, they are of such gentleness and decency..."
           If any European of the time deserves a holiday in their honor, we think it should be Bartolome' De Las Casas.
 
A Short Biography of Bartolome’ De Las Casas
Las Casas first trip to the Americas was in 1502.  He was eighteen.  In 1512, he became the first ordained priest of the “new world”.  In 1514 he freed his Native slaves and began vigorously interceding on their behalf with local authorities.  Soon he was challenging the entire system of encomienda, started by Columbus.  Despite his powerful and influential enemies, in 1520 he was granted a hearing by Charles the First of Spain to defend his point of view.  He was supported by the public pronouncements of Antonio De Montesinos (the first Spanish Citizen to denounce the treatment of Native Indigenous Peoples in America), and the Bishop of Darien, Juan Quevedo.
Charles the First was swayed by Las Casas argument and agreed that the Indies should not be governed by force of arms.  Enforcing his decree was another matter.  Pope Paul III’s 1537 Papal Bull, Sublimis Deus, proclaimed that American Indians were rational beings with souls and their lives and property should be protected.  In 1542, the Neyes Nuevas (New Laws) forbade Native slavery and attempted to put forward a plan to squeeze out the encomienda system within a generation.
 Las Casas oral reading of his book, “The Devastation Of the Indies”, to the Royal Court was influential in getting the Neyes Nuevas.  The New Laws started a revolt in the Americas by angry encomenderos.  When Charles V revoked key statues of the New Laws, Las Casas went on the offensive and refused absolution to Spaniards who refused to free their slaves or pay restitution.  He issued a “confessor” manual for Priests that reiterated his refusal for absolution.  This created a public outrage.  De Las Casas claimed that all the wealth was ill-gotten and invalidated Spanish claims.  This struck at the very basis of Spain’s legitimacy in the New World and got Las Casas immediately recalled by the Council Of The Indies. This led to the 1550 showdown with Sepulveda.ordered by Charles V.  Las Casas once again proved his argument but the Court refused to publicly affirm his position.  In 1552, he published  “The Devastation Of The Indies” without prior approval of the Inquisition.   Its publication seriously undermined the Spanish moral claim to the Americas.  Immediately translated into other European languages, it became a weapon of those other nations against the Spanish Empires’ claims in the “Indies”.  His prestige protected him from official punishment even though he was accused of Treason on two continents. He later completed his two largest works; the anthropological Apologetica Historica, and his three volume, Historia de las Indias.  Both works sought to disprove the Spanish view of themselves as superior the Indigenous Americans.  He remained an advocate for Indian Rights until his death in 1566.


 
















BC/ Eight                                                                     BlueWolf & Lupe'/ Shirts N' Skins

Invisible Warriors

"The Americans were able to conquer America not because of their military genious, or their ambition, or their greed.  They conquered it by waging unpremeditated biological warfare."      
Howard Simpson

"European settlers and invaders discovered an inhabited land.  Had it been pristine wilderness then it would possibly be so still, for neither the technology nor the social organization of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries had the capacity to maintain, of its own resources, outpost colonies thousands of miles from home."  
 Francis Jennings

Previously we wrote about what Columbus and his men took from the Native Peoples.  Now we'll discuss what was "given" back to the Natives by the various intrepid explorers of the New World.  The first guests they brought were viral hepatitis, smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, and measles.  Cholera, malaria and scarlet fever came later.
Many diseases are passed back and forth between humans and livestock.  Before 1492, Indigenous America had no domesticated livestock at all, and had no experience with such diseases.   America had numerous places where social density was significant, but none that were as poorly maintained as the sewage strewn, filth encrusted streets of Europe.  Indigenous Americans were obsessed with basic hygiene and cleanliness, and bathed and sweated regularly.   Many of the Northern Europeans, and particularly the English, believed that bathing was unhealthy and utilized perfumes and scents to disguise personal odors.  They rarely removed their clothing more than a piece at a time.  According to the personal biographer of Squanto, Feenie Ziner, the Indian "tried, without success, to teach them to bathe."  These practices, however disgusting, and the general living conditions in urban Europe had caused the Europeans to acquire at least some defense against the plagues and diseases they carried, and the fatality rate.  
On the other hand, the Native practice of sweating together and the realities of communal living provided the perfect breeding ground for viral outbreaks within defenseless peoples.  Europeans had learned during the plague to isolate their sick and dying.  Native people’s practices usually included the entire family, with medicine people, gathering at the bedside in support of the sick or dying.
The Spaniards introduced many of the original diseases as early as the latter 1400's and early 1500's.  When they first marched into the capital of Tenochtitlan, they had to walk upon the disease-ridden bodies because there was no spaces of ground between them.  Records kept throughout the history of those early days, particularly those kept by early Missionaries and the Church, document the incredible loss of life that occurred throughout the North American continent.  American historians in the mid-1800s made numerous references to the huge original American and Meso-American civilizations that had disappeared, leaving only small remnants of their populations. Yet their estimates of the original populations were only a fraction of what is now known to have existed.  It wasn’t until insistent anthropologists consulted  16th and 17th century Church documents that the bulging bibles of Catholic friars divulged the names of the millions dead; recording, in many instances, the passing of entire villages.
On the East Coast of the U.S., Europeans had been making contact with the Natives for a century.  Because of the tremendous populations they encountered, and numerous failed attempts, they gave up trying to establish settlements and never anticipated an opportunity to colonize the region permanently. 
But in 1617  New England, the extermination began with the shipwreck of a French vessel.  Just four years prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, and within three years, 90 to 96 percent of the Indigenous inhabitants of coastal New England were dead or dying.  Even before the Mayflower landed King James of England gave thanks to Almighty God for sending "this wonderful plague among the savages."
J.W. Barber published this description in 1829.  "A few years before the Plymouth settlers, a very mortal sickness raged with great violence among the Indians... Whole towns were depopulated...and their bodies were found lying above ground, many years after.  The Massachusetts Indians are said to have been reduced from 30,000 to 300 fighting men.  In 1633, (again) the small pox swept off great numbers."
Robert Cushman, a British eyewitness, wrote, "only the twentieth person is scare left alive."   Survivors, unable to cope with the huge numbers of corpses, fled their villages carrying the disease to other villages who had yet to come in contact with any Europeans at all.  The Pilgrim, Howard Simpson, described what those newly arrived settlers witnessed.  "Villages lay in ruins because there was no one left to tend them.  The ground was strewn with skulls and the bones of thousands of Indians who had died and no one was left to bury them."
Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, called the plague "miraculous".  He wrote, in 1634, "for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them."   Historians in the twentieth century have had a hard time envisioning such a severe death rate.  The black plague of Europe was mild compared to this.  But their bias is understandable.  The circumstances of the pandemics were unusual, especially as they compared to the European experience of only a 30% death rate.
Nevertheless, accounts like William Bradford's tell the tale compellingly.  "...It pleased God to afflict these Indians with such a deadly sickness that out of 1000, 950 of them died."
Missionaries were able to use the plague as a powerful tool of conversion.  As with the Europeans during their plague, Native societies were devastated and struggled to find a reason for these horrors.  Native spirituality had had no experience with these particular enemies and could find little explanation.  Christians, however, had a built in system to explain the whys and wherefores of the crisis.
As a geopolitical event, these epidemics constituted the most important circumstances of the early centuries of the European invasion.  In New England, the net result was that for the next 50 years the British colonists would not encounter any real Indian resistance to their settlements.  The continuing small pox epidemic insured that a consistent campaign could not be sustained.  In the words of the Puritan minister, Increase Mather, "God ended the controversy by sending the smallpox among the Indians.  Whole towns were swept away, in some of then not so much as one Soul escaping Destruction."
Historian Karen Kupperman writes, "The technology and culture of Indians on America's east coast were genuine rivals to those of the English... One can only speculate what the outcome of the rivalry would have been if the impact of European diseases on the American population had not been so devastating.  If colonists had not been able to occupy lands already cleared by Indian farmers who had vanished, colonization would have proceeded much more slowly..."
Perhaps the High School history text, "Life And Liberty" says it best.  "If the Pilgrims had arrived at Plymouth a few years earlier they would have found a busy Indian village surrounded by farmland.  As it was, an epidemic had wiped out most of the Indians... Fortunately for the Pilgrims, the cleared fields remained..."
Everywhere in America, the very first European explorers found many more human beings than were found by subsequent generations.  In 1539, Hernando De Soto arrived in Tampa Bay, Florida with 600 soldiers, 200 horses and 300 pigs.  For four years his forces roamed through Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas wrecking havoc on everything and everybody they touched. One of his men wrote the lands were “very well peopled with large towns, two or three of which were to be seen from one town.”  Eventually they came to a cluster of small cities protected by earthen walls, moats, and deadeye archers.  Soto died on the journey of fever and no European ventured into those areas again for almost 100 years.   French explorers found the same areas deserted. La Salle did not find one village in two hundred miles, where De Soto’s men had found at least 50 settlements. Researchers believe that it was the pigs who ultimately did the most damage to the Native civilizations.
Quickly breeding and carrying viral microbes, the pigs could have contaminated not only people, but forest animals as well, particularly deer and turkeys. 
    The Coosa city-states in western Georgia, and the Caddoan-speaking civilization on the Texas–Arkansas border disappeared soon after De Soto.  The Caddos had monumental architecture, public plazas, ceremonial platforms, etc.  So did many other southeastern civilizations of the time.  After De Soto, they stopped building community centers and began building community cemetaries.
    In 1792, the Pacific Northwest was visited by the Brit, George Vancouver, who found a charnel house of bones scattered on the beaches of Puget Sound.  Similarly, Lewis and Clark encountered substantially more Natives in their 1806 expedition in Oregon than were found there a mere twenty years later--an indication of more than one cycle of pandemic.
Henry Dobyns has compiled a list of no less than 93 epidemics among Indigenous Americans between 1520 and 1918.  Almost half of these consisted of diseases deadly to Natives: bubonic plague, smallpox, measles and influenza.  Many of these outbreaks became pandemic in nature sweeping east and west until they reached the Atlantic and Pacific, and north and south until reaching the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.
Conservative contemporary estimates of pre-pandemic populations in the Americans are approximately one hundred million.  The population of Europe at the time of colonization stood at about seventy million.  Mid-1800 historians estimated the original population of the entire Americas at about sixteen million, but that had decreased to about two million by the time of their publishing.  (That figure eventually declined to about 300,000.)
Latter historians like James Mooney, eager to forget the pandemics and prove the mythical postulation of a wild unpopulated continent, estimated the original population at one million.  That these estimates could be revised downward one hundred times to "forget" these honorable dead, only demonstrates the lengths to which American educators and historians were (and are) willing to bend reality to justify and rationalize the past.  Did we say past?  As recently as 1991, miners and loggers in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela infected the Native population of Yanomamos, killing more than a fourth of their entire population.
One popular American High School history text still utilizes the myth when it reports that "The American Republic was from the outset uniquely favored. It started from scratch on a vast and virgin continent, which was so sparsely peopled by Indians that they were able to be eliminated or shouldered aside." 
Though perhaps semi-correct in its final description, the land, as Loewen says, was "not a virgin, but recently widowed."
Yet the myth of wild and pristine lands beckoning to wide-eyed pilgrims yearning for freedom and adventure still pervades the average American's understanding of history.  It is hard to imagine this to be the case since a large number of white men succumbed to these illnesses as well, but the timelines of relationship have grown shorter and shorter over time, and the families of European descendants have forgotten.  That forgetting will prove to be a significant factor in the way White men think.        



BC/ Nine                                                                      BlueWolf & Lupe/ Shirts N' Skins

Giving Thanks And Thanksgiving

"The chief design of all parties concern'd was to fetch away the Treasure from thence, aiming more at sudden Gain, than to form any regular Colony."    
One of the first Virginians


To Native Peoples, Thanksgiving is a daily event.  Every gathering or ceremony includes the concept of thanksgiving.  Events throughout the year have always had feasting and thanksgiving.  For thousands of years this has been so.        
           European American history actually began on the West Coast, but the mythic history of the United States is at Plymouth Rock, November 9, 1620.  In point of fact, the very first non-Native settlers in the country we now know as the United States were African slaves who revolted in 1526 and were left by the Spanish in South Carolina to become part of the Native Nations there.
           Nevertheless, The Thanksgiving Story, and the Story of Plymouth Rock have become a major part of the civil religion of America.  Whitewashed and filmed in Technicolor, Thanksgiving assures Americans that "God was on our side", and that our civilization was hacked out of the wilderness in an orderly way by decent, hardworking, idealistic Pilgrims.  Holiday greeting cards and school handouts go even further.  "I is for Indian, who we invited to share our feast" and "They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash.  The Indians had never seen such a feast!"
           Though it was actually the Pilgrims that had never seen such a feast, this type of history has infected Americans.  As James Loewen observes, "This notion that we "advanced" peoples provided for the Indians...is not benign.  It reemerges time and again through our history to complicate race relations."  He reminds us that our history would have us believe that white plantation owners provided everything necessary for their slaves, when the exact opposite is true.  It was the knowledge and labor of Black slaves that created the wealth, and insured the survival of the owners. 
           Even so, it was not the Pilgrims who founded America.  Nineteen years before their arrival the largest transnational corporation of that time, the East India Company, had already staked out lands from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.  The Pilgrims actually arrived on the fourth voyage of the Mayflower, a boat chartered from that corporation.   They arrived at Cape Cod, without supplies, only six weeks before winter.  They were forced to search an empty Native village for corn caches and grave stashes. Nearly a month later, they landed at Plymouth Rock and immediately invaded another village emptied of Natives by mortal illness in search of food and shelter.
           The first Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth and even cannibalism.  They spent much their early days digging holes in the ground, haplessly looking for gold instead of planting crops.  Starving, they invaded Indian homes and dug up Indian graves for corpses to eat, along with the dried corn, beans and other burial foods. Some of them rented themselves as servants into the few remaining Indian families.  Finally, they began kidnapping Indians to teach them how to farm.   Hardly the heroic picture provided to elementary students at Thanksgiving!  Especially since the entire areas had been previously burned and cleared for generations creating a park-like environment.  Fresh water was readily available and some of the fields had even been recently planted in corn.  Their "New Plimouth" was actually the Indian town of Patuxet.  Rather than starting from scratch in a wilderness, one 1622 colonist wrote, "In this bay wherein we live, in former time hath lived about two thousand Indians." The Pilgrims of 1620 were confirmed communists for at least a number of years after their arrival at Plymouth Rock.

            A paper prepared for the Tacoma School District by Ross, Robertson, Larson and Fernandez, gives us a closer look at the Puritans.
"The Puritans were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the King and the Church of England for their unorthodox beliefs. They were political revolutionaries who not only intended to overthrow the Government of England, but who actually did so in 1649. The Puritan "Pilgrims" who came to New England were not simply refugees who decided to "put their fate in God's hands" in the "empty wilderness" of North America, as a generation of Hollywood movies taught us.  In any culture, at any time, settlers on a frontier are most often outcasts and fugitives who, in some way or other, do not fit into the mainstream of their society...  At any rate, mainstream Englishmen considered the Pilgrims to be deliberate religious dropouts who intended to found a new nation completely independent from non-Puritan England. 
            In 1643 the Puritan/Pilgrims declared themselves an independent confederacy, one hundred and forty-three years before the American Revolution. They believed in the imminent occurrence of Armageddon in Europe and hoped to establish here in the "New World" the "Kingdom of God" foretold in the book of Revelation...
            So they came to America not just in one ship (the Mayflower) but in a hundred others as well, with every intention of taking the land away from its native people to build their prophesied "Holy Kingdom."
            The Pilgrims were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. They were victims of bigotry in England, but some of them were themselves religious bigots by our modern standards. The Puritans and the Pilgrims saw themselves as the "Chosen Elect" mentioned in the book of Revelation. They strove to "purify" first themselves and then everyone else of everything they did not accept in their own interpretation of scripture. 
            Later, New England Puritans used any means, including deception, treachery, torture, war, and genocide to achieve that end. They saw themselves