“When white man arrived, we had the land and they had the bible. They told us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the bible.” -Indigenous humor
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
“When white man arrived, we had the land and they had the bible. They told us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the bible.” -Indigenous humor
Like what they said at Malpais Pueblo about the conquistadores coming in. Coronado iirc.
They had a priest with them packing a crucifix. A cross means something different to the Pueblo nations. Through the native translator they had with them, they managed to get across that this was God nailed to a cross and that they put Him there.
The Zun(y)i thought they were some really sick bastards.
They were right.
So, who wrote this saying?
It’s a joke. Humorous with a large bite to it.
Unfortunately, it is also true. Many believe that they are “saving” people by imposing their idea of God on them.
And while the missionaries are busy baptizing the Savages the soldiers and their Wealthy Sponsors are busily taking the land.
They do it so often there’s no way of knowing WHICH tribe or land gave birth to the saying.
It offends me, as a Christian. Not that people would say such things. But that they would be right.
Do you know, the Irish were the first people in Northern Europe to accept Christianity? The English, more than 1200 years later, sent soldiers to conquer and missionaries to convert the Irish.
Does that sound ridiculous? It should. Once “Christendom” was established in Northern Europe people started fighting wars to define which Church would be The State Church.
Because, you see, one can’t have a “bridge between church and state” as the Moron Bush said, without having one church to be the Official Church.
Some of the wars had numbers and years associated with them, like the 30 years war and the 100 years war.
While the Crusades were still officially on, and the Crusaders had won a few important trading concessions that introduced West Asian thought to Europe and East Asian Rats and Bubonic Plague, more than decimating Europe, three times decimation… and in the middle of wars to decide, again, which church would be THE church, a centuries long Christian on Christian crime spre…
A group of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Knights decide to find a faster way to get to East Asia and bring home more rats and plague, and instead ran into two continents and several hundred islands where the people had never heard of the Bible, Guns, Refined iron, distilled beverages, .. and smallpox and measles.
People to be educated in the nuances of Holy War as expressed by the loving Knights of Columbus. (The name came later, but they WERE commissioned as a crusade)
And Columbus and his merry band of pirates expressed so much Christian Love to the natives, that approximately 90 percent of the population died from the new diseases, and Columbus and his Holy Knights brought back syphilis to Spain. What a wonderful tale of the Salvation of The New World, yes? All done in the name of God.
The English, a century later, came and brought with them the notion so freakin’ stupid that it deserves a third syllable, it was stee-upid. They had figured out that the land was NOT anywhere near Asia, the people really weren’t “Indian” and thus they were vexed, a quandary did in fact hold them…
Where did these Indians originate? They were clearly not mentioned in Leviticus. Therefore we were instead the only logical conclusion. We were demons in human form, constructs of Satan with no souls.
The English conquistadores never really did calm their stupid collective ass down, they’ve gotten the notion that they’re the only heirs to the Kingdom of David and Solomon, magically anointed when
or some pseudo religious trash that makes that sound intellectual by comparison.
And that they, in order to save the entire world, have to first teach them to speak English and when the people resist they’ll simply slaughter them.
In the name of God of course.
They even found a way to get their ships to actual India, slaughtering a few million people along the way during the Napoleonic wars and started insisting that the people in India dress and speak and pray English.
And like they and the Spanish and other Enlightened Europeans did in America, they tried to break the Savages of some of their ungodly habits. Like Bathing.
And to enlist the Native population here into their Wars of Conquest loosely based on Biblical belief. So they could fight wars with other Christian Kings over which Church would be the one to direct the enslavement and exploitation of American Indians.
Quite a lovely history which, really, I’m not exaggerating. In fact it’s rather understated, subdued and light-hearted compared to the REAL story.