When Two Worlds Met: Through European Eyes
Stanley-Whitman House
Farmington
Nov. 16, 2023
The European colonization of the Americas is one of those world-altering events in history. There were nearly 60,000 indigenous peoples living in New England in 1600. Today, despite explosive population growth in the region, only 47,000 people identify as Native American.
The destruction of indigenous tribes paved the way for the 13 colonies that formed the foundation of the United States today. But how did the people of that era justify policies and actions that were so cruel and inhumane?
Gail White Usher, an educator and historian, laid out the words of the men and women of the era in her lecture titled When Two Worlds Meet: Through European Eyes.
The lecture was the third in a seven-part series that “examines the time of early contact between Indigenous Peoples and European explorers and settlers of Northeast America.” The first two lectures focused on the perspective of indigenous people. This one took its material directly from the settlers themselves.
For many of the Europeans, they justified their actions and attitudes toward indigenous people with racism and bigotry. Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer who founded Quebec, described native peoples as being “of no great worth.”
Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister and educator who was one of the most influential men in early America, was even harsher in his words, describing the indigenous men as “abominably slothful” and all natives as “the verist ruins of mankind which are to be found anywhere upon the face of the earth.” He wrote that Satan himself had led indigenous people to America. See his words below.
Racism and religious fervor combined into a particularly toxic mix. A document in the Milford Town Records from 1639 reads, “the earth is the Lord’s … the earth is given to the Saints … we are the Saints.” Sentiments such as these caused men like the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Edward Johnson, to claim that European diseases decimating indigenous people was actually God’s will, as shown in the photo below.
Yet there were also Europeans from that time who recognized the humanity of indigenous people. They spoke out against the evils being committed against them. David Pieterzen DeVries, a Dutch settler for the Dutch East India Company, provided a harrowing account and condemnation of the kind of war Europeans were waging against indigenous people, as pictured below:
Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, a French-American author whose accounts of life on the American frontier became popular in Europe, went a step further, acknowledging the “many instances” in which he felt indigenous people were superior to Europeans:
I learned in college that history can be deceiving. Looking back, we may think that the way things turned out is the only way they could have turned out. After all, if another way were possible, wouldn’t our ancestors have chosen it?
But in reality, what we consider history was the present for our ancestors. Multiple ideas, plans and schemes competed amongst each other. Usher’s work with firsthand colonial accounts shows the contest between Europeans who at least wanted to treat indigenous people with respect, and those who saw little value in their culture and lives.
I asked her about that. Why did Europeans choose to conquer the indigenous people of the Americas instead of cooperating with them?
Her answer was depressing in its simplicity: greed.
Merchants, adventurers and even the devout saw an opportunity for wealth and fame in the New World, and they allowed their desire for riches to override every other concern. She described it as a conquistador mentality, in which colonizers felt entitled to the land and its natural resources. They saw indigenous people either as targets for enslavement, or obstacles to be destroyed.
Another way that history is deceiving is that we’ve convinced ourselves that everything works out if you wait long enough. Slavery was abolished, Nazi Germany was defeated, America won the Cold War, etc. It seems that good outcomes are guaranteed, but the current status of indigenous people puts the lie to that assumption as well. The responsibility remains to right an historic, hundreds-years-old wrong that was done to indigenous people. We have a choice, just as the European colonizers had one. What will we choose?
