An Indigenous Assessment
by Katheleen Kern for
Mennonite Weekly Review dated
August 3, 2005
Kathleen Kern, of Webster, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker
Teams.
The July 7 bombings of the London subways and bus coincided with my
having recently listened to several audiobooks on the history of
indigenous peoples in North America, or “Turtle Island” as some
indigenous communities refer to it.
As I listened to people make generalizations about Islam — based on
the violence of Muslims claiming to be Al Qaeda operatives — I found
myself thinking about what generalizations a 19th-century indigenous
historian or political analyst might have made about Christianity.
Based on indigenous peoples’ encounters with Christians, the
commentary of the indigenous scholar might have read like this:
“Although apologists for Christianity claim their spiritual chief,
Jesus Christ, commanded his followers to show compassion to allies and
enemies, the Christian invasions of Turtle Island show that Christianity
is a genocidal, deceitful and larcenous religion.
“The Christians’ disregard for human life was evident when they
arrived on the eastern part of this continent and found that an epidemic
had wiped out several nations. Did the devout ‘Pilgrims’ weep for the
lost Wampanoag, Patuxet and Massachuset civilizations? No. One of their
number, John Winthrop, noted with satisfaction in his diary that ‘God
hath hereby cleared our title to this place.’
“In 1637, residents of a Pequot village on the Mystic River ran to
its banks to greet a raiding party of Puritan Christians with, ‘What
cheer, Englishmen, what do you come for?’ The Puritans burned the
village and slaughtered its inhabitants. William Bradford described the
massacre: ‘Those that escaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some
hewed to peeces, others run through with their rapiers. . . . 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 scent
thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the
prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to
inclose their enemies in their hands . . .’
“John Underhill, who commanded the expedition, wrote later, ‘Sometimes
the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their
parents. . . . We had sufficient light from the word of God for our
proceedings.’
“Several decades later, in 1675, Puritans trapped 600 people of the
Narragansett nation in their longhouses and burned them alive. A Puritan
priest, Cotton Mather, referred to the massacre as a ‘barbecue’ in a
sermon celebrating the event.
“More recently, Col. John M. Chivington — a Christian priest of the
apparently bloodthirsty Methodist sect — perpetrated the massacre of
Cheyenne and Arapahoe civilians at Sand Creek while their warriors were
away hunting buffalo. Prior to the bloodbath, he proclaimed, ‘I long to
be wading in gore’ and ‘I have come to kill Indians and believe it is
right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill
Indians.’ The 900 soldiers and vigilantes under Chivington’s command
slaughtered 163 women, children and old men.
“One soldier said later, ‘It looked too hard for me to see little
children on their knees begging for their lives [having] their brains
beat out like dogs.’ A pregnant woman was cut open and her unborn child
thrown to the ground. The Christian soldiers and paramilitaries
mutilated the corpses and cut the men’s and women’s genitals off for
trophies, attaching them to their hats and saddles.
“Despite the denunciations of these atrocities by moderate Christian
leaders, history teaches us that militant Christianity poses a threat to
peace-loving peoples everywhere.
“Moreover, dialogue with the Christian invaders seems fruitless, when
one considers that they have never honored a single treaty they made
with any of the nations on Turtle Island.”