Posted on 05/15/2007 6:15:58 AM PDT by NYer
Faith in God has animated the life and culture of these nations for more than five centuries. From the encounter between that faith and the indigenous peoples, there has emerged the rich Christian culture of this Continent, expressed in art, music, literature, and above all, in the religious traditions and in the peoples’ whole way of being, united as they are by a shared history and a shared creed that give rise to a great underlying harmony, despite the diversity of cultures and languages. At present, this same faith has some serious challenges to address, because the harmonious development of society and the Catholic identity of these peoples are in jeopardy. In this regard, the Fifth General Conference is preparing to reflect upon this situation, in order to help the Christian faithful to live their faith with joy and coherence, to deepen their awareness of being disciples and missionaries of Christ, sent by him into the world to proclaim and to bear witness to our faith and love.
Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.
Ultimately, it is only the truth that can bring unity, and the proof of this is love. That is why Christ, being in truth the incarnate Logos, “love to the end”, is not alien to any culture, nor to any person; on the contrary, the response that he seeks in the heart of cultures is what gives them their ultimate identity, uniting humanity and at the same time respecting the wealth of diversity, opening people everywhere to growth in genuine humanity, in authentic progress. The Word of God, in becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, also became history and culture.
The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past.
Act 17:22-31 So Paul, standing in the middle of the Are-op'agus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead."
Three comments:
I understand a lot of the tribes in America had a lot of useful information/skills. Their traditional religions just seem satanic.
Source? That's an absurd statistic if I've ever seen one.
Source? That's an absurd statistic if I've ever seen one.
Sorry to have to break this to you, but this is common knowledge.
You want a source" Here are two:
Sherburne Cook, The Population of the California Indians 1769-1970. University of California Press, 1976.You might also try Wikipedia. Their article though does not break out the mission population from the state as a whole, nor does it specifically break out the mission era, as I have. Wiki still shows the following:Sherburne Cook, The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization. University of California Press, 1976.
The Native California population reached its nadir of around 25,000 at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on Kroeber's estimate of 133,000 people in 1770, this would represent a decrease of more than 80%. Using Cook's revised figure, it would constitute a decline of more than 90%.
You had said that the death rate among (and I quote) “California mission Indians” was 90%.
But like you said, those figures you cite are not for the “California mission Indians”, they are for California’s native population as a whole.
Also, the missions were secularized in the early 1830s. According to that graph on Wikipedia, the population of the California Indians was at 250,000 in 1830, down from over 300,000 in 1770 but still nowhere near 90% of a drop. When the missions were secularized and turned over to the state, that’s when the native California population plunged down about as much as you mentioned.
Your figures seem right, but your sources show that it was the collapse of the missions that caused the plunge and not the mission era itself.
Well, as a protestant I think the pope is utter humbug anyway! If I had to choose btw being a catholic and a tree worshipper, I’d choose the tree: the I at least would get fresh air :D
remember: God is in everything, including the trees: it’s a shorter route btw ourselves in the nature and the big man upstairs than inside a hypocritical church! Go take a hike in the mountain and see for yourselves!
Actually, I said: "The death rate among the California mission Indians during the mission era (1769-1834) was about 90%."
But like you said, those figures you cite are not for the “California mission Indians”, they are for California’s native population as a whole.
Also, the missions were secularized in the early 1830s. According to that graph on Wikipedia, the population of the California Indians was at 250,000 in 1830, down from over 300,000 in 1770 but still nowhere near 90% of a drop. When the missions were secularized and turned over to the state, that’s when the native California population plunged down about as much as you mentioned.
Your figures seem right, but your sources show that it was the collapse of the missions that caused the plunge and not the mission era itself.
Actually you are incorrect. The death rate for the mission areas was about 90% during the mission era (1769-1834). Most of the rest of California was little effected at that time, and the populations in non-mission areas were relatively intact.
The Gold Rush and post-Gold Rush eras brought devastation to the non-mission areas, letting the rest of the state catch up with the population declines that had previously been experienced by the mission areas.
The Wikipedia article I cited does not break the figures out by mission area/non-mission areas, nor does it break out mission era/post-mission era.
The figure I cited of about 90% death rate for the mission areas is correct. All you have to do is look at the population statistics at the missions. After the first few years, death rates exceed birth rates, and only extensive new baptisms kept the populations stable. When available converts dwindled, so did the missions. By 1810-1820, most missions were losing population quickly.
Other sources:
Randall Milliken, A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810. Ballena Press, 1995.
Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850. University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
The Aztec calendar had it right ~ End of the World.
The English undertook a propaganda campaign against the Spanish regarding New World settlement. It was fairly successful but it wasn't correct.
BTW, the GERM THEORY OF DISEASE didn't get pegged to the wall until the 1800s.
The Iriquois were broken as a military force, and the Mohican, their ancient enemies, were almost wiped out.
Hanta virus can do the job all by itself.
This could happen again.
But that Wikipedia source does not show what you are claiming. The total California population dropped from (I’m ballparking from the graph) 310,000 in 1770 to 250,000 in 1830. That’s a drop of 20% during that period for all of California.
The very end of this article cites Merriam’s figures for the missions specifically:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10369a.htm
“According to a careful estimate made by Merriam, the original Indian population of the mission territory, eastwards to the San Joaquin and lower Sacramento rivers, was approximately 50,000 souls. About 30,000 were domiciled in the missions at the time of confiscation.”
So it dropped from 50k to 30k during the mission period...a loss of 40%.
We’re still not at 90%. I’d like to see the raw numbers that are giving you that high of a percentage.
As far as I know, the Iroquois population remained fairly constant at least in the period of the Iroquois wars in the mid-1600s...but that was because they were adopting members of other tribes to replace losses to war.
I believe it was the Hurons who suffered a more precipitous decline.
Don't they know that they're Native Americans now?
Not in Brazil.
“Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.”
This paragraph was inserted by the author, although it does not come from the “offended” people. It makes me think that this paragraph is the real purpose of the “news” article.
That was a joke.
The very end of this article cites Merriam’s figures for the missions specifically:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10369a.htm
“According to a careful estimate made by Merriam, the original Indian population of the mission territory, eastwards to the San Joaquin and lower Sacramento rivers, was approximately 50,000 souls. About 30,000 were domiciled in the missions at the time of confiscation.”
So it dropped from 50k to 30k during the mission period...a loss of 40%.
We’re still not at 90%. I’d like to see the raw numbers that are giving you that high of a percentage.
Merriam's (1905) population estimates have long since been superceded by Cook's. Cook settled on the figure of 310,000 for the total aboriginal population of California.
Cook (1976:42) gives an estimated aboriginal population for the mission area at 64,500.
But Cook also provides an estimate of the population of California at about 1845 -- "perhaps, liberally, as 150,000" (Cook 1976:44). For the whole state then, before the Gold Rush, the population had declined to 48% of its aboriginal figure.
Considering that the non-mission areas had been little effected to this date, you can see how badly effected the mission areas were.
The overall population declines varied among missions. Sandoz (2004) gives the figures 65,000 originally, dropping to 17,000 by 1832, a decline to 26% for all missions. This figure is high because it reflects many Indians brought in from the outside the mission areas to supplement the local populations, who had been dying at a very high rate. I still think my figure of 90% death rate (10% survival rate) in the mission areas during the mission era is correct.
To these Protestant ears; it sounds quite sacreligious!
My, my! What happened to the Indians (no offense) happens to all peoples of the world. We colonized Africa, and they have all our diseases, plus aids to deal with. Of course, the occasional genocide occurs, and we get blamed for that too. The European peoples have been the downfall of many cultures that should have been left alone to progress at their own rates. It is obvious to most any student of history that the Great Britain/western Europe people are a hodgpoge of different races and cultures, as they were overrun by many nations in their history. The Romans and the Moors to name a couple. As to the Pope, well...he believes what he believes, and he has millions of followers. Here in the good old U S of A, we have leaders with no religion to speak of, and they try to tell us what is good for us, and we call it politics. Belief systems are personal, and it would be a heck of a nicer world if people would keep their beliefs to themselves. To think that we are in the middle of a ‘jihad’ because we are non-believers in a particular faith is just plain rediculous. And, if you asked the average Muslim what he thought about it all, he would likely not even care to discuss it. Let’s face it, we are mostly secular. The loonies exist in all societies, but we don’t really have to take them seriously until they start killing people they don’t even know.
Then why are you baptized? If nature were sufficient, we wouldn't need the sacraments.
-A8
Well, you really have shown that you've got what it takes to post those words on FR, but do you have what it takes to do the Catholic Challenge???? :o)
The Catholic Challenge: go into any Catholic church and just sit down for a few minutes once a day, for thirty days, and report back.
Let's separate the men from the boys here! :oD
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