When Christopher Columbus arrived on the shores of the New World, he did so propelled by an apocalyptic vision in which he saw his voyage as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.154 Though he was pushed by his devotion to the evangelical mission, he was also guided by a motive seemingly inseparable from his religious one, "Let Christ rejoice upon earth as he rejoices in heaven, as he foresees that so many souls of so many people heretofore lost are to be saved; and let us be glad not only for the exaltation of our faith, but also for the increase of temporal prosperity, in which not only Spain, but all Christendom is about to share."155 From the very beginning, the Spaniards were driven by mixed motives.156 Central to Columbus's mission was an "increase of temporal prosperity," "...If I am supported by some little assistance from them, I will give them as much gold as they have need of, and, in addition spices, cotton, and mastic, which is found only in chios, and as much aloes-wood, and as many heathen slaves as their majesty may choose to demand... 157 (italics mine)
It is important to understand the purpose of these early Spanish explorations into the New World; they were as much efforts to build the Spanish Empire as they were to spread the gospel. The Bull of Grenada, granted in 1486 by Innocent VII to Ferdinand and Isabella, spelled out the terms of the mission, "For the more precarious that freely embraced combat for the sake of immortal God, the greater their insistence on diligent and expert pressing of the contest and the better they realize that, beyond the salvation of their souls, the Apostolic See grants them the most abundant recompense.158 Ponce de Leon's 1512 patent from the Spanish authorities provided that any Indians that he might discover in the Americas should be divided among the members of his expedition that they should "derive whatever advantage might be secured thereby." 159 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon's 1523 cedula authorized him to "purchase prisoners of war held as slaves held by the natives, to employ them on his farms and export them as he saw fit, without the payment of any duty whatsoever upon them." 160
The first recorded European contact with the people of the Cherokee Nation was with the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. When De Soto landed in Florida with his soldiers in 1539, he brought with him Spanish Mastiffs, chains, and iron collars for the acquisition and exportation of Indian slaves.161 Hundreds of men, women and children were captured by de Soto and transported to the coasts for shipment to the Caribbean and to Spain.162 A Cherokee from Oklahoma remembered his father's tale of the Spanish slave trade, "At an early state the Spanish engaged in the slave trade on this continent and in so doing kidnapped hundreds of thousands of the Indians from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to work their mines in the West Indies."163
The "old ways" of the Cherokee society embraced a social and political system rooted in harmony, equality, and promotion of the common welfare. However, now the Cherokee faced a great threat from Europeans who believed themselves both racially and religiously superior. In addition, the Europeans would use such ideology to build both fame and fortune. In the new world of the colonial period, the traditional worldview of the Cherokee faced a consumptive ideology of conquest and colonialism.
Racism and religious intolerance were critical components in the European dispossession and enslavement of Native Americans in the colonial period.164 Originating in the Aristotelian notion of "natural rights," the concept of "white supremacy" as it developed in the sixteenth century was rooted in the classic traditions of philosophical idolatry.165 As opposed to the ideas of "balance" and "reciprocity" central to the native vision of the world, the European ideal established hierarchy as the basic nature of humanity and slavery the corresponding result of that natural hierarchy, "Those, therefore, who are as much inferior to others as are the body to the soul and beasts to men, are by nature slaves. He is by nature born slave who...shares in reason to the extent of apprehending it without possessing it."166
In 1555, a disputation was held in Valladolid, Spain, to determine the disposition of the peoples of the new world. Juan Gines de Sepulveda, theologian in the tradition of John Major, debated with Bartholomeo de las Casas, the so-called "champion of the Indians." Sepulveda argued the superiority of the Spaniard to the indigenous people, "In wisdom, skill, virtue and humanity, these people are as inferior to the Spaniards as children are to adults and women to men; there is a great a difference between savagery and forebearance, between violence and moderation, almost -- I am inclined to say -- as between monkeys and men."167
Las Casas argued against this ideology, "They [the Indians] are not ignorant, inhuman, or bestial. Rather, long before they had heard the word Spaniard they had properly organized states, wisely ordered by excellent laws, religions, and customs. They cultivated friendship, and bound together in common fellowship, lived in populous cities in which they wisely administered the affairs of both peace and war justly and equitably, truly governed by laws that at very many points surpass ours, and could have won the admiration of the sages of Athens." 168 When the disputation was over, Las Casas had won the day in Valladolid. However, the moral argument of Las Casas was soon swept aside by a European continent facing a vast world with countless treasures, inhabited by a people who could, themselves, become a commodity in the open market.169
What was originally the "black legend" of Spanish ethnocentrism and genocidal cruelty quickly became common practice in Europe relations with the peoples of the Americas as political, economic, and religious sentiment fueled colonial expansion.170 Though initially shocked by Sir John Hawkins's first slavery venture in 1562-1563, Queen Elizabeth quickly changed her mind -- "not only did she forgive him but she became a shareholder in his second slaving voyage."171 By the middle of the seventeenth century, the traffic in slaves from Europe, Africa, and the Americas became a mainstay of the colonial economic enterprise. Behind the mercantile enterprise was a moral sanction of the pervasive ideology of conquest and colonialism.
154 "David in his will left Solomon 3,000 quintals of gold from the Indies to aid in building the temple; and, according to Josephus, it was from these same lands. Jerusalem and the Mount of Zion are now to be rebuilt by Christian hands, and God through the mouth of the prophet in the fourteenth Psalm said so." Columbus hoped to use the riches from the Americas to finance a new Crusade in order to recover Jerusalem from the hands of the infidels. [Christopher Columbus, "Columbus's Lettera Rarissima to the Sovereigns" in Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Translated and edited by Samuel Eliot Morrison, New York: The Heritage Press, 1963, 383-384]. 155 Christopher Columbus, "Letter to Gabriel Sanchez" in Old South Leaflets, Volume II, Number 34 (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, n.d.), 7. 156 "Civil and sacred interests were intertwined in a system so thorough and so complex as scarcely to be separated, so permanent and pervasive that organic union escapes any but a careful observer." W. Eugene Shiels, King and Church: The Rise and Fall of the Patronato Real (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1961), 9. 157 Columbus, "Letter to Gabriel Sanchez," 6. 158 "Bull of Grenada" in Shiels, p. 66. 159 Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish Settlements within the Present Limits of the United States: 1513-1561, (New York: Bolton and Ross, 1905), 162. 160 Lowery, 169. 161 Jameson, 160. 162 Bourne, 60, 94-9, 103-105. 163 J.B. Davis, "Indian Territory in 1878," Chronicles of Oklahoma IV (1926): 264. 164 "...It has become evident through long experience that nothing has sufficed to bring the said chiefs and Indians to a knowledge of our Faith (necessary for their salvation), since by nature they are inclined to idleness and vice, and have no manner of virtue or doctrine." "The Laws of Burgos," 1512 in Lewis Hanke, ed., History of Latin American Civilization: Sources and Interpretations, 2 Vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1967), 135. 165 Gustavo Guttierez, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, Translated by Robert Barr, (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), 291. 166 Aristotle quoted in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 152. See also James Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indian (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970). 167 Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Democritus Alter (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto Francisco de Vitoria, 1984), 33. See also Jose A. Fernandez-Santamaria, "Juan Gines De Sepulveda On The Nature Of The American Indians" Americas 1975 31(4): 434-451. 168 Bartholomeo de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians Translated, edited and annotated by Stafford Poole (Dekalb: Northern University Press, 1974), 42-43. 169 For excellent discussions of this issue, see John Henrik Clark, "Race: An Evolving Issue In Western Social Thought" Journal of Human Relations 1970 18(3): 1040-1054; Louis Ruchamps, "The Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial America" in The Journal of Negro History 52 (1967), 251-273. 170 Wilbur R. Jacobs, "Columbus, Indians, And The Black Legend Hocus Pocus" American Indian Culture and Research Journal 1993 17(2): 175-187. 171 Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1523-1865 (New York: 1962), 22.