“John Winthrop declared that the decimation of Indians by smallpox manifested a Puritan destiny: God was ‘making room’ for the settlers and ‘hath hereby cleared out title to this place.’”
- A Different Mirror, Ronald Takaki (40)
I found this quote to be extremely interesting especially after today’s discussions. Here was the leader of the Puritan movement to America, saying something so “unreasonable” in today’s ears. It seems crazy to hear of someone wanting to “be better people” going about talking about deaths as reason to take land.
Here they were escaping to gain freedom, only to take away from others and have little care in the matter. It shows how poorly the native people were thought of by these supposedly religious and kind people. It also shows how strongly the Puritans thought that the devil resided in the native people. I know that these thoughts on the native people occurred by many other groups of colonists, but it the book and this moment in history shed a poor light on the Puritan people.
Here's a nice picture of John Winthrop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop
Here's a nice picture of John Winthrophttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop
Katie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the image!
One of the questions Foner pursues is this: who is included in a freedom, or who has access to it. Another way into the matter you raise is to ask: how did the Puritans understand the "qualifications" for a particular sort of freedom?
LDL