Inovadores de produtos de software para a arquitetura-engenharia 8211 Construção (AEC) vertical servindo órgãos governamentais e empresas de construção SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd é dedicada a inovar produtos de software confiável e de classe mundial para o nicho vertical de Arquitetura-Engenharia-Construção (AEC). Nossos produtos permitem aos clientes reduzir custos, aumentar a produtividade, ter controle efetivo e melhorar a utilização dos recursos em termos de pessoas, infra-estrutura e atendimento ao cliente. Nossos produtos de reputação: AutoDCR um prêmio nacional ganhando produto, que revolucionou o processo de exame de plano de construção em órgãos de governo. Atualmente é implementado em 50 ULBs na Índia PWIMS Sistema de Gerenciamento de Informação de Obras Públicas, um aplicativo comercial baseado na web para gerenciar os principais processos funcionais de planejamento de obras, aquisição e manutenção em organizações de obras públicas. OPTICON um software robusto da gerência da construção projetado especialmente para organizações da construção. Com módulos inteligentemente construídos para projetos, finanças, máquinas de amp de plantas, seus projetos de construção são assegurados de retornos positivos. BIM Services A virtualização de projetos está ganhando importância dia a dia. Com a disponibilidade de um modelo 3D, antes do início da construção real tem vantagens multifold. Com o BIM, um design permanece consistente, coordenado e mais preciso em todas as partes interessadas. Com 750 anos-homem de experiência e um estudo aprofundado do cliente, a SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd tem desenvolvido e-governação e construção de produtos ERP mantendo em mente as necessidades específicas de nossos clientes, você pode ter certeza de que seu negócio está em boas mãos. Produtos da SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd. assegure: A rampa da produtividade acima Focalize na função do núcleo de seu negócio Linhas inferiores melhoradas Preserve seus bens da companhia Investing tempo e dinheiro na tecnologia do negócio Softtech Engineers Pvt. Ltd. é o associado confiável em seu tryst para o success. Internet Modern History Sourcebook A Internet Modern History Sourcebook agora contém milhares de fontes e as páginas de índice anteriores eram tão grandes que eles estavam travando muitos navegadores. Consulte Introdução para obter uma explicação dos objetivos do Sourcebooks. Explicação das fontes de material aqui. Consulte a página de Ajuda para obter toda a ajuda sobre pesquisas que posso oferecer. Embora eu esteja mais do que feliz em receber notas, se você tem comentários sobre este site, não posso responder perguntas específicas de pesquisa e - para os alunos - não posso, ou melhor, não vou fazer sua lição de casa. O Manual de História Moderna agora funciona da seguinte maneira: Esta página de Índice Principal foi muito estendida para mostrar todas as seções e sub-seções. Estes também foram regularizados em uma hierarquia consistente. Isso deve permitir uma rápida revisão de onde os textos estão. Para acessar as páginas da sub-seção, basta navegar nas seções abaixo e selecionar o título da seção destacada (texto branco com fundo verde) à esquerda. Além disso, existem agora duas barras de navegação à esquerda de cada página para cada sub-secção A barra de navegação superior e inferior direcciona-o para as outras partes principais do Livro de Referência - esta página de Índice global clicando no logo IMS também o levará até lá Se você perder a página de Textos Completos, a página Multimídia: a página de Pesquisa e uma nova página de AJUDA, que você deve consultar se você se perder ou precisar de ajuda para pesquisa. A barra de navegação inferior e maior irá levá-lo diretamente para qualquer uma das sub-seções de qualquer uma das outras sub-seções, cada uma indicada por um título curto. Todos os URLs de documentos permanecem inalterados - somente páginas de índice foram reorganizadas. Adicional StudyResearch Aids Além da estrutura acima, há uma série de páginas para ajudar o professor e os alunos. Índices antigos de estilo antigo ainda disponíveis Como alguns membros do corpo docente tinham construído em suas páginas de curso links diretos para os índices antigos de Sourcebooks, estes permanecem disponíveis, mas não serão atualizados com materiais adicionados após 12311998. Assuntos cobertos pelos textos de origem em cada seção. Introdução: Utilizando Fontes Primárias Natureza da Historiografia História da Escrita Teorias Antigas Século XIX Filosofias da História Teorias Profissionais História e Epistemologia História e Antropologia História e Identidade Política Teorias Pós-Modernas Misc. Discussões Outras Fontes de Informação sobre a História Moderna Guias Gerais para o Texto da Net links para textos em outros sites. Projetos gerais do Etext Projects com textos on-line. Economia Direito Militar Religião Filosofia Literatura Música Letra Western CivilizationEurope Estados Unidos História América Latina História Estudante Papers e Projetos Student Papers Estudante Web Projects O início do mundo moderno Reforma Protestante Precursores e Críticos Papais Lutero e Luteranismo Calvino e Calvinismo Reformadores Radicais Reforma Inglês Scottish Reforma John Knox Protestante Cultura Reforma Católica Precursores O Concílio de Trento Papas Ativistas Outros Reformadores Católicos A Sociedade de Jesus Cultura Católica Conflito Mulheres e Reforma Sistema Moderno do Mundo Moderno O quotAge Europeu de Discoveryquot Sudeste e Sudeste Asiático Ásia Oriental O Oriente Médio: Otomanos e Safavids - Rivais de Poderes Europeus África A Europa Oriental torna-se uma área periférica Capitalismo Mercantil Reflexões sobre o Comércio ea Nova Economia Estruturas da Vida no Ocidente Vida Diária Do Popular à Cultura de Massa Absolutismo Espanha Inglaterra A França eo Antigo Regime A Crise Ench Guerras de Religião A Criação de um regime Absolutista O Rei Sol Absolutismo e Política Comercial Cultura Francesa nos Séculos XVI e XVII Estados Constitucionais A Revolução Inglesa Governo Tudor O Desafio Stuart Guerra Civil e Revolução Radical Grupos Religiosos quatPuritansquot Batistas Quakers A Restauração A quotGlorious Revolutionquot Cultura inglesa nos séculos XVII e XVIII Países Baixos Reflexões filosóficas sobre a política constitucional Ideias internacionalistas Colonial América do Norte América do Norte colonial Conquista e exploração precoce Formas políticas Virgínia Nova Inglaterra Médio Atlântico Sociedade Americana Colonial América Latina Conquista e exploração A criação de culturas latino-americanas A transformação Da Revolução Científica, Política e Industrial do Ocidente A Revolução Científica Aristotelianismo Tradicional Novas Análises Medievais do movimento O Desafio: A Astonomia no Século XVI Galileu Galilei: A Filosofia do Ponto de Viragem de Scie Nce: InductionDeduction A Criação da Física Clássica Novas teorias médicas Instituições Científicas A Atitude Científica A Iluminação Precursores O Iluminismo como um Projeto de Propaganda O Iluminismo e Análise Política A Iluminação Avaliação da Condição Humana A Iluminação e Economia Iluminismo e Filosofia Iluminismo A iluminação A Iluminação Social Filosofia - Textos completos Iluminismo Política e economia - Textos completos Religião em uma era da razão Oposição à religião Cristianismo racional Evangelicalismo Catolicismo Pietismo Respostas judaicas Despotes ilustrados Governo na era da iluminação Independência americana Política do século meados do século Política Antiga de Nova York Guerras francesas e indianas Benjamin Franklin Revolução Americana O Estabelecimento do Estado Americano Comentadores sobre a América Nativos Americanos Escravidão Revolução Francesa A Revolução Francesa Levantar Revolução Liberal Revolução Radical Respostas à Revolução Napoleão Napo Guerras Leônicas Revolução Industrial A Revolução Industrial A Revolução Agrícola dos Séculos XVII-XVIII A Revolução na Fabricação de Têxteis A Revolução no Poder Ferroviário Navios a Vapor Os Grandes Engenheiros O Processo de Industrialização Efeitos Sociais e Políticos A Vida dos Trabalhadores Vida Urbana: Classes Reformismo Social Resposta Literária Raízes do Romantismo Filosofia Romântica O Romantismo nas Artes O Século XIX ea Hegemonia Ocidental O Conselho do Sistema de Viena e os Desafios Pensamento Reacionário Conservadorismo Moderno Nacionalismo Analisa Formas Nacionais de Governo Nacionalismo Cultural: A Nação como Foco Positivo de Identidade Liberal Nacionalismo: A nação como base para a democracia liberal Nacionalismo triunfal: a nação como uma reivindicação à superioridade Liberalismo Utilitarianism Laissez-Faire Economia Radical Política John Stuart Mill Outros liberalismos Bem-estar Liberalismo Feminismo Origens Feminismo político Estados Unidos Grã-Bretanha Outros países Proibicionismo 1848: A Europa na Revolta Grã-Bretanha Radicalismo Reformismo Liberal O Estado As Profissões Os Pobres Homens, Mulheres e Sexo Classe Social Irlanda Sensibilidade Vitoriana Literatura Vitoriana França A Restauração A Monarquia de Julho 1831-1848 1848 O Segundo Império A Guerra Franco-Prussiana ea Guerra Comuna A Terceira República Literatura Francesa Áustria-Hungria Alemanha Literatura Alemã Outros Países da Europa Ocidental Países da Europa Oriental Grécia Roménia MoldáviaWallachiaTransylvania Bulgária Hungria Polônia Boémia Rússia Os Estados Unidos Emerge Instituições Políticas Desenvolvimento Econômico Expansão e Destino Manifesto Os Estados Unidos como um Poder Mundial US A guerra civil americana O conflito sobre a escravidão A guerra civil Documentos confederados Documentos da união A história militar da guerra civil A história social da reconstrução da guerra civil e Jim Crow Imigração dos EU e seus efeitos Imigração européia Geral Inglês britânico Irlandês Italiano Jewi Sh Outros Imigração asiática Imigração latino-americana Ellis Island e Nova York Oposição à imigração A maturação da cultura americana Quadro legal da vida americana A idade dourada O surgimento da política moderna Pensamento americano Literatura americana Canadá: Outra sociedade norte-americana Origens Lealismo Criação do Estado canadense Sociedade Canadense Regiões do Canadá América Latina no Século XIX Independência Desenvolvimento Político Estados Unidos Imperialismo Imigração México Argentina Brasil Chile ColômbiaPanama Cuba Nicarágua Peru Venezuela Respostas ao Crescimento Econômico: Socialismo e Marxismo Socialismo Antigo Marxismo Versões do Socialismo Revisionismo Fabianismo Partidos Trabalhistas Cultura Socialista Sindicalismo Imperialismo Análises Motivos e Atitudes Celebrações e Objeções China e Ocidente Índia Sob a África Britânica O Oriente Médio A Exceção Japonesa Imperialismo Americano A Segunda Revolução Industrial e o Capitalismo Avançado Crescimento: Mercados Livres e Governo Nt Apoio A Corporação Moderna A Vida dos Trabalhadores O Mercado do Consumidor Novas Tecnologias A Indústria do Aço A Indústria Química Eletricidade Avião Confiança e Desastres Contradições do Iluminismo: Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Dada A Síntese Clássica O Avanço da Teoria e Tratamentos Médicos Geologia Biologia : Red in Tooth and Claw Reações a Darwin Darwinismo Social Física: O Fim da Síntese Clássica Astronomia Psicologia: A Obscuridade da Mente Reflexões Filosóficas: O Fim da Razão Literatura: Humanidades Coração das Trevas Artes Visuais: O que Fazer Depois da Fotografia Religião A Face da Modernidade Catolicismo: Reação e Radicalismo Os Papas: Reação e Reforma Renovado Marianismo Converte Convertidos e Decadência Radicals Expansão Missionária Protestantismo: Ativismo, Racionalismo e Fideísmo Crítica Bíblica Muscular Cristianismo O Movimento de Oxford Quakers Fundamentalismo Expansão Missionária Resistência ao Controle Romano Old Catholics quot Modernismo na ortodoxia oriental: vida cristã sob zares e sultões. Judaísmo e Modernidade Religiões Orientais no Ocidente Humanista Consideração do Pensamento Religioso Guerras Mundiais eo Fim da Dominância Ocidental Primeira Guerra Mundial O Caminho para a Guerra Império Otomano: Fraqueza Os Balcãs: Conflito Áustria Hungria Raça Alemã de Armas O Sistema da Aliança A Guerra História Diplomática História Militar Contas Pessoais Resistência à Guerra Respostas Literárias As Consequências O Estado Czarista A Revolução Russa O Desenvolvimento da Oposição Lênin 1905 1905 Programas do Partido 1917 A regra bolchevique a 1924 O Estalinismo A Era da Ansiedade: Os Inter-anos Cultura Europeia Europa Ocidental Grã-Bretanha França Os Novos Estados da Europa Oriental Jugoslávia Checoslováquia Hungria Romênia Grécia Turquia Os Estados Unidos América Latina no início do século XX Estados Unidos Intervenção México Argentina Chile Uruguai Relações Internacionais Inter-Guerra Problemas Econômicos e a Depressão Guerra Reparações Problemas Econômicos na Europa A Depressão nos EUA A República de Weimar Nacional Socialismo Hitler Electi Ons As Igrejas e os Nazistas O Holocausto Anti-Semitismo Anti-Semitismo Religioso Anti-Semitismo racista Anti-Semitismo racista violento A solução final: O assassinato dos judeus europeus Os alemães comuns eo Holocausto Os deficientes Os ciganos romanos Os sérvios homossexuais quotRevisionismquot Pre - e Post - Genocídio do Holocausto Arménia 1914- Bangladesh 1971 Timor Leste 1975- Camboja 1978 Ruanda 1996 Antiga Jugoslávia Conduzir à Guerra Guerra na Europa A Guerra da Frente Inicial na Ásia Utilização da Bomba Atómica Após a Guerra O Mundo Desde 1945 Unidade Mundial Organização das Nações Unidas Direitos Humanos: Ideais Universais ou Imposições Ocidentais A Guerra Fria Começos Berlim Crises Crises Cubanas Guerras Frias Várias Detentes Reflexões Literárias América como Líder Mundial: Poder Externo Relações Exteriores Americanas Realpolitik ou Direitos Humanos Relações com a União Soviética também ver acima quotCold Guerra Relações com a China A Guerra da Coreia O quotVietnam Warquot America como Líder Mundial: Mudança Interna US Domestic Política: O Estado Conservadorismo Americano McCarthyismo Republicanos Democratas Radicalismo Americano Sociedade Americana: Imigração O Século XX Expansão dos Direitos Legais Balanço do Poder Direitos em Tribunal Igualdade Racial Liberdade de Expressão Europa Ocidental Desde 1945 A Divisão da Europa Reconstrução União Europeia O Estado de Bem-Estar Pós-Guerra Ocidental Estados Unidos Grã-Bretanha Alemanha França Itália Espanha Irlanda Outros Países Ocidentais Europa Oriental Desde 1945 União SoviéticaRussia Política Interna Política Externa Outros Países da Europa Central e Oriental Albânia Hungria Jugoslávia 1989: O que aconteceu e porquê Roménia Depois de 1989 Descolonização Retiro do Império O Movimento Não-Alinhado Globalização : Novas Hegemonias Índia China Esforços para Modernizar: 1911-1949 Dissidentes da Regra Comunista Post Mao China Hong Kong Japão Coréia Vietnã Outros Estados Asiáticos África África do Sul Outros Países Africanos Israel e Palestina Sionismo Mandato Britânico O Estabelecimento do Estado de Israel Israel Li Soceity Os Palestinos Turquia Egito Argélia Irã Curdos 20o Século América Latina Temas comuns e questão Estados Unidos Interferência Esforços Pan-Americanos Progresso Econômico Identidade Nacional Libertação Teologia Argentina Chile Brasil Paraguai Uruguai Peru América Central Nicarágua México Cuba Povos Indígenas Movimentos Sociais Modernos Feminismo Origens do Terceiro Onda Feminismo Cultural Feminismo Político Feminismo Radical Feminismo Radical Poder Negro Movimento dos Direitos Civis dos EUA Radicals desde 1968 Outros Movimentos de Minorias Étnicas Direitos Lésbicos e Gays Pensamento Ocidental pós-Guerra Existencialismo Pós-Estruturalismo e Filosofia Linguística Antropologia Pomo Marxismo Deconstrução Construção Social Queer Theor Religião desde 1945 Roman Catolicismo Protestantismo Ortodoxia Oriental Judaísmo Islã Budismo Debate Humanista-Religioso Ciência, Tecnologia e Transformação nos Meios de Produção Biologia: A Revolução do ADN Física Exploração Espacial Computadores Produção Baseada no Conhecimento T O Internet O ambiente do mundo: Abundância Cornucope ou uma situação de crise Cultura Popular Estados Unidos Europa Esportes: O ópio do povo O século XXI A Internet História Moderna Sourcebook é uma das séries de historybooks primários de história. Destina-se a atender às necessidades de professores e alunos em cursos de pesquisa universitária na história européia moderna e história americana, bem como na civilização ocidental moderna e Culturas mundiais. Embora esta parte do Internet History Sourcebooks Project tenha começado como uma forma de acessar textos que já estavam disponíveis na Internet, agora contém centenas de textos disponibilizados localmente. A grande diversidade de fontes disponíveis para uso nas classes de história moderna exige que as seleções sejam feitas com grande cuidado - uma vez que material praticamente ilimitado está disponível. Os objetivos aqui são: Apresentar uma diversidade de material de origem na história moderna européia, americana e latino-americana, bem como uma quantidade significativa de materal pertinente para culturas mundiais e estudos globais. Uma série de coleções de outras fontes on-line enfatiza documentos jurídicos e políticos. Aqui foram feitos esforços para incluir narrativas contemporâneas, memórias pessoais, canções, relatos de jornais, bem como documentos culturais, filosóficos, religiosos e científicos. Embora a história dos grupos de elite social e cultural continue a ser importante para os historiadores, as vidas das mulheres não-elite, pessoas de cor, lésbicas e gays também estão bem representados aqui. Para apresentar o material da maneira mais limpa possível, sem hierarquias e subdiretórios complicados e sem marcação HTML excessiva. O que você obtém aqui é o acesso direto a documentos significativos, e não os esforços de alguns designers de sites. Em outras palavras, estamos interessados aqui na música, não na Hi-fi. Dentro das seções principais, indicar alguns Web site da alta qualidade para a fonte adicional material e pesquisa. Fontes de Material Aqui Os textos nestas páginas vêm de muitas fontes: Arquivos afixados a vários lugares na rede. Em alguns casos, o URL de origem não existe mais. Textos mais curtos criados para fins de classe extraindo de textos muito maiores. Em alguns casos, os extratos foram sugeridos por uma variedade de fontes comerciais. Textos digitalizados em material impresso. Em alguns casos, o livro impresso pode ser recente, mas o material digitalizado está fora do copyright. Textos enviados para inclusão. Links para outros textos on-line. Em quase todos esses casos, fiz cópias locais, por favor informe-me se os links não funcionam mais. Esforços têm sido feitos para confirmar a Lei de Direitos Autorais dos EUA. Qualquer infracção não é intencional, e qualquer ficheiro que infrinja os direitos de autor, e sobre o qual o requerente de direitos de autor me informa, será removido na pendência da resolução. Paul Halsall, halsallfordham. edu. Sourcebook Compiler As datas de adesão de material adicionado desde julho de 1998 podem ser vistas na página New Additions. A data de início foi 9221997. Links para arquivos em outro site são indicados por Em alguma indicação do nome do site ou local. Os textos disponíveis localmente são marcados por Neste Site. WEB indica um link para um de pequeno número de sites de alta qualidade que fornecem mais textos ou uma visão especialmente valiosa. Capítulo 1: Columbus, os índios e o progresso humano homens e mulheres arawak, nu, tawny e cheio de maravilha, Surgiu de suas aldeias para as praias das ilhas e nadou para obter um olhar mais atento sobre o barco grande estranho. Quando Colombo e seus marinheiros desembarcaram, carregando espadas, falando estranhamente, os arawaks correram para recebê-los, trouxeram-lhes comida, água e presentes. Mais tarde ele escreveu sobre isso em seu diário: Eles. Trouxe-nos papagaios e bolas de algodão e lanças e muitas outras coisas, que trocaram para as contas de vidro e sinos de falcões. Eles voluntariamente trocaram tudo o que possuíam. Eles eram bem construídos, com bons corpos e características bonitas. Eles não carregam armas, e não as conhecem, porque eu lhes mostrei uma espada, elas a pegaram pela borda e se isolaram da ignorância. Eles não têm ferro. Suas lanças são feitas de cana. Eles fariam bons criados. Com cinqüenta homens poderíamos subjugá-los todos e fazê-los fazer o que quisermos. Esses arawaks das ilhas Bahama eram muito parecidos com os índios no continente, que eram notáveis (os observadores europeus diziam repetidas vezes) por sua hospitalidade, sua crença na partilha. Esses traços não se destacaram na Europa do Renascimento, dominada pela religião dos papas, pelo governo dos reis, pelo frenesi pelo dinheiro que marcou a civilização ocidental e seu primeiro mensageiro para as Américas, Cristóvão Colombo. Assim que cheguei às Índias, na primeira Ilha que encontrei, tomei alguns dos nativos pela força para que aprendessem e pudessem me dar informações de tudo o que houvesse nessas partes. A informação que Colón queria mais era: Onde está o ouro? Ele convenceu o rei ea rainha de Espanha a financiar uma expedição às terras, a riqueza, ele esperava estar do outro lado do Atlântico - as índias e a Ásia, o ouro E especiarias. Pois, como outras pessoas informadas de seu tempo, ele sabia que o mundo era redondo e ele poderia navegar para o oeste, a fim de chegar ao Extremo Oriente. A Espanha foi recentemente unificada, um dos novos estados-nação modernos, como a França, Inglaterra e Portugal. Sua população, principalmente camponeses pobres, trabalhava para a nobreza, que era 2 por cento da população e detinha 95 por cento da terra. A Espanha se ligara à Igreja Católica, expulsou todos os judeus, expulsou os mouros. Como outros estados do mundo moderno, a Espanha buscou o ouro, que estava se tornando a nova marca da riqueza, mais útil do que a terra, porque podia comprar qualquer coisa. Havia ouro na Ásia, pensava-se, e certamente sedas e especiarias, pois Marco Polo e outros haviam trazido coisas maravilhosas de suas expedições terrestres séculos antes. Agora que os turcos tinham conquistado Constantinopla e o Mediterrâneo oriental, e controlado as rotas terrestres para a Ásia, uma rota marítima era necessária. Os marinheiros portugueses estavam trabalhando sua maneira em torno da ponta do sul de África. Espanha decidiu apostar em uma longa vela em um oceano desconhecido. Em troca de trazer de volta ouro e especiarias, eles prometeram a Columbus 10% dos lucros, a governação sobre terras recém-descobertas ea fama que iria com um novo título: Almirante do Mar do Oceano. Era um vendedor de mercadores da cidade italiana de Gênova, tecelão de meio período (o filho de um tecelão habilidoso) e marinheiro especialista. Ele partiu com três veleiros, o maior dos quais era o Santa Maria. Talvez 100 pés de comprimento, e trinta e nove membros da tripulação. Colombo nunca teria chegado à Ásia, que estava a milhares de quilômetros de distância do que calculara, imaginando um mundo menor. Ele teria sido condenado por aquela grande extensão de mar. Mas ele teve sorte. Um quarto do caminho lá ele veio sobre uma terra desconhecida, desconhecida que estava entre a Europa ea Ásia - as Américas. Era início de outubro de 1492, e trinta e três dias desde que ele e sua tripulação tinham deixado as Ilhas Canárias, ao largo da costa atlântica da África. Agora eles viram ramos e varas flutuando na água. Eles viram rebanhos de pássaros. Eram sinais de terra. Então, no dia 12 de outubro, um marinheiro chamado Rodrigo viu a lua matutina brilhando em areias brancas, e gritou. Era uma ilha nas Bahamas, o mar do Caribe. O primeiro homem a ver terra era suposto ter uma pensão anual de 10.000 maravedis para a vida, mas Rodrigo nunca conseguiu. Colombo afirmou ter visto uma luz na noite anterior. Ele recebeu a recompensa. Então, aproximando-se da terra, eles foram recebidos pelos índios Arawak, que nadaram para saudá-los. Os arawaks viviam em aldeias comunas, tinham uma agricultura desenvolvida de milho, inhame, mandioca. Podiam girar e tecer, mas não tinham cavalos nem animais de trabalho. Não tinham ferro, mas usavam minúsculos ornamentos de ouro nos ouvidos. Isto teria consequências enormes: levou Colombo a levar alguns deles a bordo do navio como prisioneiros, porque insistia em que o guiasse até a fonte do ouro. Ele então navegou para o que é agora Cuba, então para Hispaniola (a ilha que hoje consiste em Haiti e República Dominicana). Lá, pedaços de ouro visível nos rios e uma máscara de ouro apresentada a Colombo por um chefe indiano local, levaram a visões selvagens de campos de ouro. Em Hispaniola, fora das madeiras do Santa Maria. Que havia encalhado, Colombo construiu um forte, a primeira base militar européia no hemisfério ocidental. Ele chamou-a de Navidad (Natal) e deixou trinta e nove tripulantes lá, com instruções para encontrar e armazenar o ouro. Ele tomou mais prisioneiros indianos e os colocou a bordo de seus dois navios restantes. Em uma parte da ilha ele entrou em uma briga com índios que se recusou a comércio de arcos e flechas como ele e seus homens queriam. Dois foram executados com espadas e sangraram até a morte. Nina e a Pinta partiram para os Açores e Espanha. Quando o tempo ficou frio, os prisioneiros indianos começaram a morrer. Columbuss ao Tribunal de Madrid foi extravagante. Ele insistiu que tinha alcançado a Ásia (era Cuba) e uma ilha ao largo da costa da China (Hispaniola). Suas descrições eram parte fato, parte ficção: Hispaniola é um milagre. Montanhas e colinas, planícies e pastagens, são férteis e bonitas. Os portos são incrivelmente bons e há muitos rios largos dos quais a maioria contém ouro. Há muitas especiarias, e grandes minas de ouro e outros metais. Os índios, segundo Colombo, são tão ingênuos e tão livres com suas posses que ninguém que não os testemunhasse acreditaria nela. Quando você pedir algo que eles têm, eles nunca dizem não. Pelo contrário, eles oferecem para compartilhar com ninguém. Concluiu seu relatório pedindo uma pequena ajuda de suas Majestades e, em troca, ele os traria da próxima viagem o máximo de ouro que precisassem. E como muitos escravos como eles pedem. Ele estava cheio de conversa religiosa: Assim, o Deus eterno, nosso Senhor, dá vitória àqueles que seguem Seu caminho sobre aparentes impossibilidades. Devido ao relatório e promessas exageradas de Columbuss, sua segunda expedição recebeu dezessete navios e mais de mil e duzentos homens. O objetivo era claro: escravos e ouro. Eles foram de ilha em ilha no Caribe, levando índios como cativos. Mas como a propagação da palavra dos europeus intenção eles encontraram aldeias mais e mais vazias. No Haiti, eles descobriram que os marinheiros deixados em Fort Navidad haviam sido mortos em uma batalha com os índios, depois de terem vagado pela ilha em gangues em busca de ouro, levando mulheres e crianças como escravas para sexo e trabalho. Agora, a partir de sua base no Haiti, Colombo enviou expedição após expedição para o interior. Eles não encontraram campos de ouro, mas tiveram que encher os navios retornando à Espanha com algum tipo de dividendo. No ano de 1495, realizaram uma grande operação de escravos, arrebanharam mil e quinhentos homens, mulheres e crianças arawak, colocaram-nos em canetas guardadas por espanhóis e cães, e depois pegaram os quinhentos melhores espécimes para serem carregados em navios. Desses quinhentos, duzentos morreram no caminho. Os demais chegaram vivos na Espanha e foram colocados à venda pelo arquidiácono da cidade, que relatou que, embora os escravos estivessem nus como o dia em que nasceram, não mostraram mais embaraço que os animais. Colombo escreveu mais tarde: Vamos em nome da Santíssima Trindade ir em enviar todos os escravos que podem ser vendidos. Mas muitos dos escravos morreram em cativeiro. E assim, Colombo, desesperado por retribuir dividendos àqueles que haviam investido, teve que cumprir sua promessa de encher os navios de ouro. Na província de Cicao, no Haiti, onde ele e seus homens imaginavam a existência de enormes campos de ouro, eles ordenaram a todas as pessoas de catorze anos ou mais que colecionassem uma certa quantidade de ouro a cada três meses. Quando eles trouxeram, eles foram dadas fichas de cobre para pendurar ao redor de seus pescoços. Os índios encontrados sem um token de cobre tinham suas mãos cortadas e sangraram até a morte. Os índios receberam uma tarefa impossível. O único ouro ao redor era pedaços de poeira garnered dos córregos. Então eles fugiram, foram caçados com cães, e foram mortos. Tentando reunir um exército de resistência, os arawaks enfrentaram espanhóis que tinham armaduras, mosquetes, espadas, cavalos. Quando os espanhóis tomaram prisioneiros os enforcaram ou os queimaram até a morte. Entre os arawaks, começaram os suicídios em massa, com o veneno da mandioca. Os bebês foram mortos para salvá-los dos espanhóis. Em dois anos, por meio de homicídio, mutilação ou suicídio, metade dos 250 mil índios no Haiti estavam mortos. Quando ficou claro que não havia mais ouro, os índios eram levados como escravos em grandes propriedades, conhecidas mais tarde como encomiendas. Eles foram trabalhados a um ritmo feroz, e morreram aos milhares. Até o ano de 1515, havia talvez cinqüenta mil índios à esquerda. Em 1550, havia quinhentos. Um relatório do ano de 1650 mostra nenhum dos Arawaks originais ou seus descendentes deixados na ilha. A fonte principal - e, em muitos assuntos, a única fonte - de informações sobre o que aconteceu nas ilhas depois de Colombo, é Bartolome de las Casas, que, como jovem sacerdote, participou da conquista de Cuba. Por um tempo ele possuía uma plantação em que os escravos indianos trabalhavam, mas ele desistiu disso e tornou-se um crítico veemente da crueldade espanhola. Las Casas transcreveu a revista Columbuss e, aos cinquenta anos, começou uma história multivolume das Índias. Nele, ele descreve os índios. Eles são ágeis, diz ele, e podem nadar longas distâncias, especialmente as mulheres. Eles não são completamente pacíficos, porque eles lutam de vez em quando com outras tribos, mas suas baixas parecem pequenas, e eles lutam quando eles são individualmente movidos a fazê-lo por causa de alguma queixa, e não por ordens de capitães ou reis. As mulheres na sociedade indiana foram tratadas tão bem como para assustar os espanhóis. Las Casas descreve as relações sexuais: As leis do casamento são homens e mulheres inexistentes escolhem seus companheiros e os deixam como quiserem, sem ofensa, ciúme ou raiva. Eles multiplicam em grande abundância as mulheres grávidas trabalham até o último minuto e dão à luz quase sem dor no dia seguinte, eles se banham no rio e são tão limpos e saudáveis como antes de dar à luz. Se eles se cansam de seus homens, eles se dão abortos com ervas que forçam mortos-nascidos, cobrindo suas partes vergonhosas com folhas ou pano de algodão, embora, em geral, homens e mulheres indianos olham a nudez total com tanta descontração como olhamos para a cabeça de um homem Ou em suas mãos. Os índios, diz Las Casas, não têm religião, pelo menos sem templos. Eles vivem em grandes edifícios comunais em forma de sino, abrigando até 600 pessoas ao mesmo tempo. Feito de madeira muito forte e coberto com folhas de palmeira. Prêmio penas de pássaro de várias cores, contas feitas de espinhas de peixe, e pedras verdes e brancas com que adornam seus ouvidos e lábios, mas eles não valorizam ouro e outras coisas preciosas. Faltam todo o tipo de comércio, nem compra nem venda, e confiam exclusivamente em seu ambiente natural para a manutenção. Eles são extremamente generosos com suas posses e pelo mesmo sinal cobiçar as posses de seus amigos e esperar o mesmo grau de liberalidade. No Livro Dois de sua História das Índias. Las Casas (que inicialmente pediu a substituição dos índios por escravos negros, pensando que eles eram mais fortes e sobreviveriam, mas depois cedeu quando viu os efeitos sobre os negros) conta sobre o tratamento dos índios pelos espanhóis. É um relato único e merece ser citado extensamente: Testemunhos sem fim. prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians. Las Casas tells how the Spaniards grew more conceited every day and after a while refused to walk any distance. They rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings. Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades. Las Casas tells how two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys. The Indians attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports, they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help. He describes their work in the mines: mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside. After each six or eight months work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants. Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides. they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation. in this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk. and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile. was depopulated. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it. Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe)-is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration. Past the elementary and high schools, there are only occasional hints of something else. Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbuss route across the Atlantic. In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide. That is on one page, buried halfway into the telling of a grand romance. In the books last paragraph, Morison sums up his view of Columbus: He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great-his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualities-his seamanship. One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. Morison does neither. He refuses to lie about Columbus. He does not omit the story of mass murder indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide. But he does something else-he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him. Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but its not that important-it should weigh very little in our final judgments it should affect very little what we do in the world. It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map. My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-makers distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historians distortion is more than technical, it is ideological it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual. Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmakers technical interest is obvious (This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, youd better use a different projection). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations. To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves - unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia . It is too late for that it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly. The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as the United States, subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a national interest represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media. History is the memory of states, wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored . in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmens policies. From his standpoint, the peace that Europe had before the French Revolution was restored by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated. My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been, The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners. Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scotts army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can see history from the standpoint of others. My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims. Still, understanding the complexities, this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I dont want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you dont listen to it, you will never know what justice is. I dont want to invent victories for peoples movements. But to think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the pasts fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. That, being as blunt as I can, is my approach to the history of the United States. The reader may as well know that before going on. What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots. The Aztec civilization of Mexico came out of the heritage of Mayan, Zapotec, and Toltec cultures. It built enormous constructions from stone tools and human labor, developed a writing system and a priesthood. It also engaged in (let us not overlook this) the ritual killing of thousands of people as sacrifices to the gods. The cruelty of the Aztecs, however, did not erase a certain innocence, and when a Spanish armada appeared at Vera Cruz, and a bearded white man came ashore, with strange beasts (horses), clad in iron, it was thought that he was the legendary Aztec man-god who had died three hundred years before, with the promise to return-the mysterious Quetzalcoatl. And so they welcomed him, with munificent hospitality. That was Hernando Cortes, come from Spain with an expedition financed by merchants and landowners and blessed by the deputies of God, with one obsessive goal: to find gold. In the mind of Montezuma, the king of the Aztecs, there must have been a certain doubt about whether Cortes was indeed Quetzalcoatl, because he sent a hundred runners to Cortes, bearing enormous treasures, gold and silver wrought into objects of fantastic beauty, but at the same time begging him to go back. (The painter Durer a few years later described what he saw just arrived in Spain from that expedition-a sun of gold, a moon of silver, worth a fortune.) Cortes then began his march of death from town to town, using deception, turning Aztec against Aztec, killing with the kind of deliberateness that accompanies a strategy-to paralyze the will of the population by a sudden frightful deed. And so, in Cholulu, he invited the headmen of the Cholula nation to the square. And when they came, with thousands of unarmed retainers, Cortess small army of Spaniards, posted around the square with cannon, armed with crossbows, mounted on horses, massacred them, down to the last man. Then they looted the city and moved on. When their cavalcade of murder was over they were in Mexico City, Montezuma was dead, and the Aztec civilization, shattered, was in the hands of the Spaniards. All this is told in the Spaniards own accounts. In Peru, that other Spanish conquistador Pizarro, used the same tactics, and for the same reasons - the frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call the primitive accumulation of capital. These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries. In the North American English colonies, the pattern was set early, as Columbus had set it in the islands of the Bahamas. In 1585, before there was any permanent English settlement in Virginia, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships. The Indians he met were hospitable, but when one of them stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village. Jamestown itself was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the chief, Powhatan. Powhatan watched the English settle on his peoples land, but did not attack, maintaining a posture of coolness. When the English were going through their starving time in the winter of 1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. When the summer came, the governor of the colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways, whereupon Powhatan, according to the English account, replied with noe other than prowde and disdaynefull Answers. Some soldiers were therefore sent out to take Revenge. They fell upon an Indian settlement, killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard and shoteinge owit their Braynes in the water. The queen was later taken off and stabbed to death. Twelve years later, the Indians, alarmed as the English settlements kept growing in numbers, apparently decided to try to wipe them out for good. They went on a rampage and massacred 347 men, women, and children. From then on it was total war. Not able to enslave the Indians, and not able to live with them, the English decided to exterminate them. Edmund Morgan writes, in his history of early Virginia, American Slavery, American Freedom: Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their com wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them, killing as many as possible and burning the corn. Within two or three years of the massacre the English had avenged the deaths of that day many times over. In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it: I have seen two generations of my people die. I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must die soon my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love Why will you destroy us who supply you with food What can you get by war We can hide our provisions and run into the woods then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out Here comes Captain Smith So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner. When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a vacuum. The Indians, he said, had not subdued the land, and therefore had only a natural right to it, but not a civil right. A natural right did not have legal standing. The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. But they wanted them out of the way they wanted their land. And they seemed to want also to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area. The murder of a white trader, Indian-kidnaper, and troublemaker became an excuse to make war on the Pequots in 1636. A punitive expedition left Boston to attack the Narraganset Indians on Block Island, who were lumped with the Pequots. As Governor Winthrop wrote: They had commission to put to death the men of Block Island, but to spare the women and children, and to bring them away, and to take possession of the island and from thence to go to the Pequods to demand the murderers of Captain Stone and other English, and one thousand fathom of wampum for damages, etc. and some of their children as hostages, which if they should refuse, they were to obtain it by force. The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops. Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again. One of the officers of that expedition, in his account, gives some insight into the Pequots they encountered: The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side, crying, What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for They not thinking we intended war, went on cheerfully. - So, the war with the Pequots began. Massacres took place on both sides. The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes and later, in the twentieth century, even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorizing the enemy. This is ethno historian Francis Jenningss interpretation of Captain John Masons attack on a Pequot village on the Mystic River near Long Island Sound: Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemys will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective. So the English set fire to the wigwams of the village. By their own account: The Captain also said, We must Burn Them and immediately stepping into the Wigwam. brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire. William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation written at the time, describes John Masons raid on the Pequot village: Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie. As Dr. Cotton Mather, Puritan theologian, put it: It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day. The war continued. Indian tribes were used against one another, and never seemed able to join together in fighting the English. Jennings sums up: The terror was very real among the Indians, but in time they came to meditate upon its foundations. They drew three lessons from the Pequot War: (1) that the Englishmens most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple or mercy and (3) that weapons of Indian making were almost useless against weapons of European manufacture. These lessons the Indians took to heart. A footnote in Virgil Vogels book This Land Was Ours (1972) says: The official figure on the number of Pequots now in Connecticut is twenty-one persons. Forty years after the Pequot War, Puritans and Indians fought again. This time it was the Wampanoags, occupying the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, who were in the way and also beginning to trade some of their land to people outside the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their chief, Massasoit, was dead. His son Wamsutta had been killed by Englishmen, and Wamsuttas brother Metacom (later to be called King Philip by the English) became chief. The English found their excuse, a murder which they attributed to Metacom, and they began a war of conquest against the Wampanoags, a war to take their land. They were clearly the aggressors, but claimed they attacked for preventive purposes. As Roger Williams, more friendly to the Indians than most, put it: All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive. Jennings says the elite of the Puritans wanted the war the ordinary white Englishman did not want it and often refused to fight. The Indians certainly did not want war, but they matched atrocity with atrocity. When it was over, in 1676, the English had won, but their resources were drained they had lost six hundred men. Three thousand Indians were dead, including Metacom himself. Yet the Indian raids did not stop. For a while, the English tried softer tactics. But ultimately, it was back to annihilation. The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. A Dutch traveler in New Netherland wrote in 1656 that the Indians. affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have died. When the English first settled Marthas Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one. Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples. Roger Williams said it was a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage. This is one of the gods of New England, which the living and most high Eternal will destroy and famish. Was all this bloodshed and deceit-from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro, the Puritans-a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made-as it was made by Stalin when he killed peasants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgment be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly That quick disposal might be acceptable (Unfortunate, yes, but it had to be done) to the middle and upper classes of the conquering and advanced countries. But is it acceptable to the poor of Asia, Africa, Latin America, or to the prisoners in Soviet labor camps, or the blacks in urban ghettos, or the Indians on reservations-to the victims of that progress which benefits a privileged minority in the world Was it acceptable (or just inescapable) to the miners and railroaders of America, the factory hands, the men and women who died by the hundreds of thousands from accidents or sickness, where they worked or where they lived-casualties of progress And even the privileged minority-must it not reconsider, with that practicality which even privilege cannot abolish, the value of its privileges, when they become threatened by the anger of the sacrificed, whether in organized rebellion, unorganized riot, or simply those brutal individual acts of desperation labeled crimes by law and the state If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the dec ision themselves We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death What did people in Spain get out of all that death and brutality visited on the Indians of the Americas For a brief period in history, there was the glory of a Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere. As Hans Koning sums it up in his book Columbus: His Enterprise . For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class. Beyond all that, how certain are we that what was destroyed was inferior Who were these people who came out on the beach and swam to bring presents to Columbus and his crew, who watched Cortes and Pizarro ride through their countryside, who peered out of the forests at the first white settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts Columbus called them Indians, because he miscalculated the size of the earth. In this book we too call them Indians, with some reluctance, because it happens too often that people are saddled with names given them by their conquerors. And yet, there is some reason to call them Indians, because they did come, perhaps 25,000 years ago, from Asia, across the land bridge of the Bering Straits (later to disappear under water) to Alaska. Then they moved southward, seeking warmth and land, in a trek lasting thousands of years that took them into North America, then Central and South America. In Nicaragua, Brazil, and Ecuador their petrified footprints can still be seen, along with the print of bison, who disappeared about five thousand years ago, so they must have reached South America at least that far back Widely dispersed over the great land mass of the Americas, they numbered approximately 75 million people by the time Columbus came, perhaps 25 million in North America. Responding to the different environments of soil and climate, they developed hundreds of different tribal cultures, perhaps two thousand different languages. They perfected the art of agriculture, and figured out how to grow maize (corn), which cannot grow by itself and must be planted, cultivated, fertilized, harvested, husked, shelled. They ingeniously developed a variety of other vegetables and fruits, as well as peanuts and chocolate and tobacco and rubber. On their own, the Indians were engaged in the great agricultural revolution that other peoples in Asia, Europe, Africa were going through about the same time. While many of the tribes remained nomadic hunters and food gatherers in wandering, egalitarian communes, others began to live in more settled communities where there was more food, larger populations, more divisions of labor among men and women, more surplus to feed chiefs and priests, more leisure time for artistic and social work, for building houses. About a thousand years before Christ, while comparable constructions were going on in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Zuni and Hopi Indians of what is now New Mexico had begun to build villages consisting of large terraced buildings, nestled in among cliffs and mountains for protection from enemies, with hundreds of rooms in each village. Before the arrival of the European explorers, they were using irrigation canals, dams, were doing ceramics, weaving baskets, making cloth out of cotton. By the time of Christ and Julius Caesar, there had developed in the Ohio River Valley a culture of so-called Moundbuilders, Indians who constructed thousands of enormous sculptures out of earth, sometimes in the shapes of huge humans, birds, or serpents, sometimes as burial sites, sometimes as fortifications. One of them was 3 12 miles long, enclosing 100 acres. These Moundbuilders seem to have been part of a complex trading system of ornaments and weapons from as far off as the Great Lakes, the Far West, and the Gulf of Mexico. About A. D. 500, as this Moundbuilder culture of the Ohio Valley was beginning to decline, another culture was developing westward, in the valley of the Mississippi, centered on what is now St. Louis. It had an advanced agriculture, included thousands of villages, and also built huge earthen mounds as burial and ceremonial places near a vast Indian metropolis that may have had thirty thousand people. The largest mound was 100 feet high, with a rectangular base larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In the city, known as Cahokia, were toolmakers, hide dressers, potters, jewelry makers, weavers, salt makers, copper engravers, and magnificent ceramists. One funeral blanket was made of twelve thousand shell beads. From the Adirondacks to the Great Lakes, in what is now Pennsylvania and upper New York, lived the most powerful of the northeastern tribes, the League of the Iroquois, which included the Mohawks (People of the Flint), Oneidas (People of the Stone), Onondagas (People of the Mountain), Cayugas (People at the Landing), and Senecas (Great Hill People), thousands of people bound together by a common Iroquois language. In the vision of the Mohawk chief Iliawatha, the legendary Dekaniwidah spoke to the Iroquois: We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each others hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace and happiness. In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families. The concept of private ownership of land and homes was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither mendicants nor paupers. Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common. Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives families. Each extended family lived in a long house. When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husbands things outside the door. Families were grouped in clans, and a dozen or more clans might make up a village. The senior women in the village named the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils. They also named the forty-nine chiefs who were the ruling council for the Five Nation confederacy of the Iroquois. The women attended clan meetings, stood behind the circle of men who spoke and voted, and removed the men from office if they strayed too far from the wishes of the women. The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society. Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. They were taught equality in status and the sharing of possessions. The Iroquois did not use harsh punishment on children they did not insist on early weaning or early toilet training, but gradually allowed the child to learn self-care. All of this was in sharp contrast to European values as brought over by the first colonists, a society of rich and poor, controlled by priests, by governors, by male heads of families. For example, the pastor of the Pilgrim colony, John Robinson, thus advised his parishioners how to deal with their children: And surely there is in all children. a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon. Gary Nash describes Iroquois culture: No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails-the apparatus of authority in European societies-were to be found in the northeast woodlands prior to European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behavior were firmly set. Though priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong. He who stole anothers food or acted invalourously in war was shamed by his people and ostracized from their company until he had atoned for his actions and demonstrated to their satisfaction that he had morally purified himself. Not only the Iroquois but other Indian tribes behaved the same way. In 1635, Maryland Indians responded to the governors demand that if any of them killed an Englishman, the guilty one should be delivered up for punishment according to English law. The Indians said: It is the manner amongst us Indians, that if any such accident happen, wee doe redeeme the life of a man that is so slaine, with a 100 armes length of Beades and since that you are heere strangers, and come into our Countrey, you should rather conform yourselves to the Customes of our Countrey, than impose yours upon us. So, Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europes, accompanied by song, dance, and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature. John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace. Perhaps there is some romantic mythology in that. But the evidence from European travelers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, put together recently by an American specialist on Indian life, William Brandon, is overwhelmingly supportive of much of that myth. Even allowing for the imperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, for that time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization.
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