Article: 963 of sgi.talk.ratical From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Subject: 500 years ago: January 16, 1493--beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade Keywords: "his"tory grinds on in the grey matter. Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 15:56:44 GMT Lines: 116 The Atlantic slave trade began 500 years ago this month. Columbus's own diary entries speak volumes about the world-mind he brought with him when he came to Turtle Island: "They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need ... and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities." -- Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States," from chp1 Oren Lyons described it very well in a speech he gave in LA in october of 1990: . . . nothing got wild here, the west didn't get wild until the white man got here. And then it got very wild. And so what we had was a clash of values and perceptions. So when our Chiefs talked with these men, these leaders, who we met from another hemisphere, their discussion didn't mesh, they passed one another. They weren't talking about the same thing. So when they sold the island of Manhattan, or, shall we say, when the Dutch "bought" the island of Manhattan, the Indian said, `I wonder why he's giving us all this, because it's free anyway. But he's a nice fellow so we'll take it and we'll share this with him too.' So the next year as the Indian came back to hunt and fish in this great hunting ground Manhattan was . . . there was a fence and they said `What's that?' They said, `Well that's the fence, I have just bought this land.' And they said, `What do you mean, "bought"?' And so began the conflict. This conception of private ownership--of property, of the blood and sinew of Mother Earth, of people, of life, of ideas--came from the euro-centric world-mind. This kind of mentality is not only destructive, it is devolutionary. It is NOT appropriate. The indigenous mind operates from the basis of "Is it appropriate?" The euro-centric mind has only ever asked "Is it possible?" In our species' present collective memory, such a world-mind did not exist here on Turtle Island as it did across the Atlantic prior to 1492. What a truly radical "way of life" was operative here as of 1492 compared to what had been happening on the european continent for millenia. The descendants of those people and that "way of life" still exist and endure here. They still struggle to live by their ancient, sacred precepts and teachings. How MUCH people like myself with a euro-centric upbringing can learn and come to understand and appreciate by teaching ourselves all we can about this more balanced and connective way of being and sharing. We must all begin to reconnect with the practice--in a daily manner--of asking the question "Is is appropriate?" This will open us up to and reconnect us with the intelligence of the heart and will offer our species the most potent healing opportunity to again be aligned in a positive, constructive manner, with our infinite potential to transcend our own self-created and self-learned limitations and boundedness. There are an infinitude of dimensions of being beyond this physical time-space world we have been taught to regard as being "all there is." The ability to conceive and be aware of such dimensions comes through reconnection with the intelligence of the heart. Our opening to a fuller humanity closes before we even discover it really exists, leaving us with an empty longing projected onto myths and dreams. Yet, as you will see, we can, with a bit of effort, confound this neural deadlock and open to this highest development. And though its inception is designed by nature for mid-adolescence, we can make this turn at any age. . . . Once we are in line with evolution's intent, we have that intent's power behind us, access to other modalities opens within us, fear and anger disappear from our life and nothing is the same. . . . -- Joseph Chilton Pearce, "Evolution's End," p. xviii -- ratitor from NativeNet: Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 14:07:07 CDT Reply-To: nn.1492%gnosys.svle.ma.us@tamvm1.tamu.edu Sender: "NATIVE-L Columbus Quincentenary Mailing List" From: NativeNet%gnosys.svle.ma.us@tamvm1.tamu.edu Subject: 16 January 1493 (Atlantic slave trade) X-To: nn.1492@gnosys.svle.ma.us To: Multiple recipients of list NAT-1492 Original Sender: Tamara BAILEY Mailing List: NAT-1492 (nn.1492@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Hugh Danforth Wisconsin 1992 Alliance 2120 University Ave., Apt. 324 Madison, WI 53705 608-233-4448 The Atlantic Slave Trade On January 16, 1493 when Christopher Columbus began his return journey to Spain after his first landing in the Americas in October of 1492, he carried with him in his ships Taino captives. On October 12, 1492 when Columbus arrived he was greeted by the Tainos. Although he said they were "very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces," he also thought they were inferior, poor and technologically backwards. He wrote "they ought to make good servants," and he offered to bring some of them back with him so they could "learn to speak." He also felt "they would easily be made Christians, because it seemed they had no religion." According to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of "The Conquest of Paradise," "No clothes, no arms (modern weapons), no iron, and now no religion--not even speech: hence they were fit to be servants and captives. It may fairly be called the birth of American slavery." Columbus saw the Tainos as a group of people that would be regularly sent to Spain or held captive on the island, "because with fifty men all of them can be held in subjection and can be made to do whatever one might wish." Columbus returned to the Americas in November 1493 with 17 ships and 1200 colonists. In February 1494 several dozen Carib captives were put aboard the first returning ship to Spain. In February 1495 when more ships were to return, 1,600 Tainos were rounded up and, according to Kirkpatrick Sale "550 of them `among the best males and females'*, were loaded in chains." The others were given to "whoever wanted them". The elimination of much of the indigenous population through genocidal destruction led to the beginning in 1505 of the shipping of Africans to be used as slaves in the Americas. In four decades, millions of native people in the Caribbean were wiped out and when slavery finally ended in 1870, according to John Noble Wilford author of the Mysterious History of Columbus, "nine to ten million blacks were forced to migrate to America as slaves." And where did it all begin? It began the day Columbus stepped on shore in this hemisphere and made an entry into his journal; an idea; and put this idea into motion January 16th, 1493. This January 16th, 1993 will be the 500th anniversary of the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade. *Michele de Cuneo, a Ligurian nobleman on the second voyage -- "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get." - Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist