Posted on 05/09/2008 6:05:00 PM PDT by indcons
Empire building isn't for sissies.
Just ask the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century. Before attacking Indian settlements, they were required to read a summons called the Requerimiento, which spelled out the consequences of resistance: "I assure you that, with the help of God, I will attack you mightily. I will make war against you everywhere and in every way ... I will take your wives and children, and I will make them slaves ... I will take their property. I will do all the harm and damage to you that I can ... I declare that the deaths and injuries that occur as a result of this would be your fault and not His Majesty's, nor ours."
The Indians, of course, had no idea what was being shouted at them, and for the sake of expediency, Hernando De Soto never bothered with the Requerimiento. He preferred to loot the local maize supply, then impress available natives into service as porters and guides. Any natives who tried to escape were attacked by dogs or burned at the stake. In conquering the settlement of Mavila, De Soto's army succeeded in massacring between 2,500 and 3,000 Indians -- a single-day death toll that rivals Antietam.
The Indians at least had weapons. Spanish fleet commander Pedro Menéndez, after capturing two parties of unarmed French Huguenot settlers on the Florida coast, condemned hundreds of them to immediate death by stabbing. Among the few spared: those who converted on the spot to Catholicism and a few musicians "to play for dancing." The river where French blood ran still bears the name Matanzas, Spanish for "slaughters."
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
GGG ping?
Problem with the attack on the Huguenots was it violated the treaties of amity and commerce between France and spain. Ergo, it was cold blooded murder.
In the end the commander who commited this outrage was supposedly disposed of like trash.
In any case, for all his efforts the Spanish attempt to settle the East Coast failed.
The slaughter of the French at Matanzas inlet is a story of “gun control.”
The Spanish from St. Augustine were actually outnumbered, but the French had been shipwrecked by a hurricane, and their gunpowder and fuse matches for their firelocks were ruined.
But even with bare steel they might have prevailed. But the Spanish pulled a huge bluff, and said they would be repatriated if they surrendered all of their arms, including swords. Then the Spanish ferried the French in small groups in longboats across the Matanzas inlet, marched them over a dune, and quietly put them to the sword. Then they went back for the next disarmed load, and repeated the process until all of the French (except a few as noted above) were slaughtered.
That’s why this is a gun control story.
Appreciate the additional context, muawiyah
Hey Travis McGee....how are you? Long time since we have met on a thread, I think.
I moved from SoCal to NE Florida last year, so this Matanzas story is “local.”
Convert (to Catholicism) or be enslaved, huh? I’m surprised. Aztecs never bothered to convert anyone. In fact, it wasn’t possible to do anything would result in anything short of slavery. It was be killed in battle, or surrender, be sacrificed to the gods and eaten. These are Muslim methods, of course, except Muslims usually conquered and looted before giving the conquered the option of converting. And converting still meant the losers in battle ended up slaves.
For a hair-raising tale of Cortez and his conquest, read Bernal Diaz's "The Conquest of New Spain". Diaz was a soldier with Cortez and talked of the many battles with the Indians. He related how one officer was wounded seven times but only one was severe in that "the air and blood bubbled out of his chest when he breathed." (The guy survived.)
Wounds were treated and cauterized by searing it with a hot brand, followed by a liberal application of fat. At one point they ran out of fat, so cut some out of a fallen Aztec. When I read that, I thought, "You DON'T want to mess with these guys."
The disparity of arms was amazing. He repeatedly talks of "three musqueteers or crossbowmen and 5,000 Indian auxiliaries were sent to attack . . ." No wonder less than 400 conquered the vast Aztec empire (which was also built on blood and brutality, sometimes surpassing that of the Spaniards.)
What separated England from its European counterparts, . . . was not luck or planning but simply persistence. England, . . . could afford to send over wave after wave of colonists, giving its settlements the influx of human resources they needed to stave off extinction.
Another, perhaps better reason, was that England viewed the New World as a colony - selling them manufactured goods and getting raw products in return (much like the world does today with the U.S.). France, on the other hand, was happy to leave the Indians alone and just milk them for furs and other raw products.
Case in point would the Tale of the defrocked ,disgraced,debunked, former Emory Professor of History Michael Bellesiles attached to the publication of his book: Arming America in which he just made up facts to suit his notions of history.
(I have accepted the resignation of Michael Bellesiles from his position as Professor of History at Emory University, effective December 31, 2002.
Although we would not normally release any of the materials connected with a case involving the investigation of faculty misconduct in research, in light of the intense scholarly interest in the matter I have decided, with the assent of Professor Bellesiles as well as of the members of the Investigative Committee, to make public the report of the Investigative Committee appointed by me to evaluate the allegations made against Professor Bellesiles (none of the supporting documents, however, are being made public). The text of the report is now available online at www.emory.edu/central/NEWS/.
Emory considers the report authoritative.)
I tend to put some of the tales in this account into the same Bellesilesian category until proven otherwise. Example:
The empire of the famous Powhatan (known to his people as Wahunsenacawh) extended from North Carolina to Maryland, and he ruled it with as tight a fist as George III's, exacting tribute from 15,000 subjects. Indian tribes were at constant war; fathers were even known to feed their baby daughters to dogs to keep them from being captured. It was "an impoverished and Hobbesian world," says Horwitz, "where all struggled against all for survival." A Spanish traveler found one tribe reduced to eating spiders, worms and deer dung.
WHAT SPANISH TRAVELER? WHAT YEAR? UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES?
The original aboriginal immigrants were no more or no less demented than any other group before or after. They were cannibals when cannibalism was necessary, savages when savagery was necessary and they adopted as much technology as they could as fast as they could whenever they could.
They just were not very good at it.
Best regards,
Somebody please point out to the author that "round" and "flat" are not mutually-exclusive.
Murder of prisoners is hardly new. The Union prison at Elmira, N.Y. was notorious for the deliberate killing of prisoners.
Isn't that considered the oldest prison in the U.S.? I don't know if I recall correctly.
Oldest? Can’t say. Maybe worst.
The Union prison in Elmira was the Union equivalent of the Confederate prison in Andersonville, possibly worse. It was also temporary during the Civil War.
The oldest prison in the US is usually considered to be the former Eastern Correctional Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA, opened in 1829 and closed in the 1970’s.
“Is everything we know about American history wrong?”
No.
But too much of it is.
Because of:
1. P-ss-Poor History Teachers that learned their trade at (snicker!)
major Universities/”Schools of Education”.
AND/OR
2. Students that are either slackers and/or uninspired by their
teachers/parents.
(here I will RE-post some information I uncovered about the sheer
utter ignorance some of our fellow citizens have about American History)
Exhibit A for The Prosecution (in favor of the title proposition),
available at —
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2005&month=04
“Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are”
David McCullough, Historian
Our Failure, Our Duty
We are raising a generation of young Americans who are by-and-large
historically illiterate. And it’s not their fault. There have been
innumerable studies, and there’s no denying it. I’ve experienced it
myself again and again. I had a young woman come up to me after a
talk one morning at the University of Missouri to tell me that she
was glad she came to hear me speak, and I said I was pleased she
had shown up. She said, ”Yes, I’m very pleased, because until now
I never understood that all of the 13 colonies —the original
13 colonies—were on the east coast.“
Now you hear that and you think: What in the world have we done?
How could this young lady, this wonderful young American, become a
student at a fine university and not know that?
I taught a seminar at Dartmouth of seniors majoring in history,
honor students, 25 of them. The first morning we sat down and I said,
”How many of you know who George Marshall was?“ Not one. There was
a long silence and finally one young man asked, ”Did he have, maybe,
something to do with the Marshall Plan?“ And I said yes, he certainly did,
and that’s a good place to begin talking about George Marshall.
I hope there are no good ones.
In the popular mind the United States failed to free Quebec from England's rule ~ and even highly qualified historians let that one through.
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks indcons. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
“Wounds were treated and cauterized by searing it with a hot brand, followed by a liberal application of fat. At one point they ran out of fat, so cut some out of a fallen Aztec. When I read that, I thought, “You DON’T want to mess with these guys.””
It’s even more interesting when you consider how they got to be so tough. The Spanish conquistadors got their name from their centuries long war to reconquer the Iberian Peninsula from Islam. That’s the kind of hardcore you need to be in order to win against the Muslims.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.