Native American Indian
Thoughts On Thanksgiving

John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony said in a sermon preached aboard the Arabella, en route to the New World in 1630: "...to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God" - then God "shall make us a praise and a glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: "The Lord make it like that of New England!"

Shortly after this moving sermon, the Puritans dealt treacherously with their benefactors, the Native Americans, who welcomed them and helped them to survive their first years here.

The Puritans massacred the friendly Pequots in 1637, setting fire to a village and slaughtering the villagers as they tried to escape the flames. Some 900 men, women and children were murdered by the same Puritans who claimed that their settlement was to be "the model of Christian charity".

One of the Pilgrim officers of that expedition gave insight into the Pequots they encountered: "The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side, crying 'What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for?'. They not thinking we intended war went on cheerfully."

Historian Francis Jennings wrote of Captain John Mason's attack:

"Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."

In Howard Zinns' book,A People's History of the United States, one of the Pilgrims on the expedition is quoted as saying:

"The Captain also said, We must Burn Them; and immediately stepping into the wigwam....brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire."

William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, described the carnage:

"Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and gave them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie."

Cotton Mather, one of the more odious and obdurate Pilgrim leaders, wrote:

"It was supposed that no less than 600 souls were brought down to Hell that day".

Mather, in his Annals of Christ in America, wrote:

"I do, with all conscience of truth,...report the wonderful displays of His infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness, wherewith His divine providence hath irradiated an Indian wilderness".

Indeed!

Having laid down their weapons and accepted Christianity, the Pequots were rewarded with a vicious and cowardly slaughter by their new "brothers in Christ".

Francis Jennings said:

"The terror was very real among the Indians. They drew lessons from the Peqout War: (1) that the Englishmen's most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage; (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple and mercy".

The Pilgrims justified their conquest by appealing to the Bible, Psalms 2:8:

"Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."

The use of force to take this "inheritance" was justified by citing Romans 13:2:

"Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

William Bradford, called a man of "more than ordinary piety, wisdom and courage" by no less an authority on Godliness than Cotton Mather, wrote in 1642:

"Wickedness Breaks Forth - Marvelous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow and break forth here, in a land where the same was so much witnessed against and so narrowly looked unto, and severely punished when it was known, as in no place more, or so much, that I have known or heard of; insomuch that they have been somewhat censured even by moderate and good men for their severity in punishments. And yet all this could not suppress the breaking out of sundry notorious sins.. Especially drunkenness and uncleanness. Not only incontinency between persons unmarried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some married persons also. But that which is worse, even sodomy and buggery (things fearful to name) have broke forth in this land oftener than once.

I say it may justly be marveled at and cause us to fear and tremble at the consideration of our corrupt natures, which are so hardly bridled, subdued and mortified.....But one reason may be that the Devil may carry a greater spite against the churches of Christ and the gospel here,....I would rather think thus, than that Satan hath more power in these heathen lands, as some have thought, than in Christian nations, especially over God's servants in them."

The twisted theology of these so-called men of God is indicative of a pervasive sickness of their minds and wretchedness in their souls. Their confused and tortured thought processes made it possible for them, in their warped minds neccessary for them, to inflict the "will of God" on the unsuspecting Indians and whoever else opposed their harsh doctrine and unforgiving authority. Seeing that the Pequots were slaughtered in 1637, and the "Wickedness" didn't break forth until 1642, shows just how confused and contorted in their thinking, and in their interpretation of godliness, these vicious scoundrels were.

Roger Williams, who was one of the more enlightened souls among the Pilgrims, was banished from Massachuetts for his "radical" notions about Christianity. Williams recalled his banishment:

"When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land and wife and children in the midst of a New England winter....)"

Williams went on to found Providence, Rhode Island, which became the chief refuge for freethinkers in New England. Williams was better inclined toward the Indians than most. Writing about the Indians he said:

"All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their (the Indians) wars to be defensive."

The English drive for wars of conquest was said by Williams to be driven by:

"a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage. This is one of the gods of New England, which the living and most high Eternal will destroy and famish."

The Puritans, who according to the revisionist propaganda found in American school textbooks were fleeing religious intolerance, showed no tolerance for those who dared go against their severe doctrine. The peace-loving Quakers were imprisoned, banished, whipped, had their tongues cut out or were hanged for offending the sensibilties of these so-called seekers of religious freedom. Cotton Mather wrote to the captain of a ship, proposing that a ship full of Quakers be scuttled at sea.

The Puritans practiced human sacrifice in order to appease their angry God. When crop failures, disease, famine and other natural disasters occured, the ignorant and extremely superstitious Pilgrims took these events as a sign of God's displeasure . Unfortunate and innocent souls were accused of witchcraft, blamed for the various calamities, and were then cruelly tortured to death by their bloodthirsty inquisitionists. One of the alleged witches was 5 years old, a special set of handcuffs had to be made to fit her little wrists.

The Pilgrims felt justified in all their evil deeds because they were fighting supposed "red devils" and "emissaries of Satan". Their fanaticism was based on Fundamentalist dogma, and was fueled by the same siege mentality, mass hysteria and paranoia found in all dangerous cults. The Bible is used by such groups to enable the dysfunctional need of their leaders to always have the last word in an argument, the Bible supposedly providing the final authority. The "Word of God" grants the ultimate means of control to the group leaders over their flock of followers, who are referred to as "sheep". The so-called "Good Book" is brandished as an instrument of destruction whenever justification for murder is required, an instrument of control whenever fear is needed to keep the subjects properly disciplined.

In the long history of fanaticism and violence perpetrated by religious zealots, the hypocrisy and utter treachery of the Puritans stands as a testament to intolerance, avarice and ethnic cleansing. Their fearful self-loathing, their revulsion and contempt for Nature, their abject terror of the wrath of an angry God and their hatred of their fellow man combined to create a murderous frenzy of genocide and mayhem.

Not even Charles Manson and Jim Jones combined could compare with that murderous Doomsday cult - the Pilgrims.

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