Mornin', Paul--

Any student of pre-Columbian America knows that warfare was prevelant among the many Amerindian peoples. The Aztecs were particularly brutal in their treatment of subject peoples. Ironically, this aided the Spanish under Cortez, because the valuable help of subject tribes made the Spanish conquest of Mexico possible.

However, the Europeans had another philosophy as their alleged guiding light: Christianity. The atrocities committed against villages (as opposed to battle with bands of warriors, who we can safely presume could put up a fight, even though technologically outmatched) were documented at the time by Europeans themselves, many of them missionaries. The most famous of these was Fray Bartolomeo de las Casas, a Dominican missionary.

In the interpretation of laws against assault, battery, rape and murder, European law (and by extension, American law) has long recognized the importance of intent to commit a crime. European settlements in the New World -- as witnessed by contemporary sources -- sought to justify atrocities by denying the humanity of the victims: calling them heathens, pagans, etc. Thus, "intent" became moot in the minds of those committing the crimes, for one could no more murder a pagan than one could murder a dog. Sad, yes, but surely not a criminal matter, as the victim was not fully human.

This is a pattern of behavior they learned in the Old World, prosecuting religious wars against their own neighbors which persisted into the Renaissance and beyond. The Kingdom of Spain expelled the Jews the same year Columbus discovered America. The Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre on August 24, 1572, and the English had their own rounds of heretic murders during the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James I, ending with a Civil War that deposed Charles I in favor of a religious dictatorship.

Europeans who persecuted Native peoples did not deny their acts in the New World. Instead they denied that their Christian morality applied to their victims, just as other Europeans had justified their atrocities at home.

This is part of the reason we have a First Amendment. It was bought with the blood of millions. Some of them were Native Americans.

I'll get off my soapbox now. :)

Regards--
Mary Anne