When Worlds Collided
Was the arrival of Columbus a blessing or a curse for Native Americans?
When I was in elementary school, Columbus Day was a big deal.
We learned all about how Christopher Columbus crossed the ocean blue in 1492. We learned about his three ships, the Nino, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. We learned that Columbus sailed west from Spain, doing what no man had done before.
We learned that Christopher Columbus did this, because he believed that the Earth was round. We learned that this was contrary to what most people believed in his day. We learned that most people believed that the Earth was flat, and if you sailed too far out, then you would fall off the edge of the Earth. We learned about how King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella paid for his daring adventure.
We learned that Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean islands on 12 October, and named the people there "Indians". We learned that he did this, because they looked like people from the Indies, the islands of Indonesia, whose inhabitants who had came from India. We learned that Columbus had discovered a whole new world.
We learned of how the news of the New World changed everything. We learned of how this began the immigration of first Europeans, and then later Africans, as slaves, from the Old World to the New World. We learned, that the day that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, was the day when worlds collided.
We learned about how Christopher Columbus was greatly honored for discovering the New World, and that many places were named after Columbus. This included cities like Columbus, Ohio, the country of Columbia (literally "land of Columbus") and the District of Columbia, that contains Washington, the capital of the United States.
Best of all, we learned that the discovery of Christopher Columbus was so important, that we got to take a whole day off from school. So after doing fun Columbus related arts and crafts, like making little ships, and hearing about the daring adventures of Christopher Columbus, at school, then we spent the morning of Columbus Day, watching Columbus Day parades and the like, at home. Columbus Day, October 12, was so important, because it marked the day when worlds collided.
Of course, as I grew in my education, and began to start investigating things for myself, I began to discover, that things were not as simple and peaceful, as I had been told in elementary school.
The fact is that Columbus acted as a tyrant during his time as governor over the islands, which he had discovered. Even those who loved Columbus the most among his men, admitted that he had committed terrible atrocities, when they were questioned under oath. Columbus was brutal to the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Africans, that he ruled over. However, he treated the native people of the lands that he ruled over, even more terribly than others.
For example, he gave to his friend a beautiful young native woman that his friend had captured. His friend then forced this young woman to act as his own personal prostitute, beating her naked body with a rope, any time that she did not do his bidding. Columbus did nothing to stop this treatment, and even encouraged others to capture native women for the same purposes.
He was supposed to cause as many native people as possible to become "Christians" by getting them to join the False Church of Rome. Instead, he frequently did whatever he could, to prevent them from being baptized. Only people, who had not officially been baptized into the False Church of Rome, could treated be slaves in almost all of western Europe. Once they were baptized, then they could not be made into slaves and sold.
Columbus wanted to sell them as slaves in Europe, where he perceived that he could make a tremendous profit from their sale. He realized, that it was a terrible loss of potential income to even tell the natives about the Man of Truth (Yeshua HaMashiach aka Jesus Christ), because they might get baptized right away.
In some places, Columbus all but wiped out the natives by either attacking them, often after they came out peaceably to meet with him, or by enslaving almost all of the native population. In fact, the slave policy of Columbus lead to the business of buying slaves in Africa, and transporting them to the New World with in ten years time. The Portuguese, and later others, bought slaves from Muslims in Africa, because the native population had been so decimated by Columbus, that there was now a market in the New World for Old World slaves, to carry out the ever increasing labor demands of the Spanish empire building that Columbus had begun.
So while Columbus was revered as a hero in his day, he was also one of the most hated men on Earth for his evil deeds, especially against the natives. He was eventually removed from the office of the governor of the Spanish colonies to bring about an end to his tyranny.
He was so despised for his brutality, that the new governor refused to allow his ship into the only harbor in the New World, to escape an approaching hurricane. The new governor could not trust the word of Columbus, and was certain that Columbus was lying about the storm, so he could cause trouble in the capital of Santo Domingo.
(Ironically, Columbus was telling the truth, and survived the horrible ordeal of being at sea for days in the hurricane, while the new governor died at sea, on one the twenty-nine out of thirty ships, that had sunk after sailing out of Santo Domingo, and into the hurricane.)
In time, the sins of Columbus caught up with him. He was not only stripped of his governorship after his third voyage, but also his admiral title after his fourth voyage. He was also arrested, and lost the the compensation, that he had originally been given for discovering the New World. His health continued to decline and he spent months of his last years, bedridden and in severe pain.
After twelve years of acting as a brutal tyrant in the New World, he might have finally repented of his evil deeds during the last two years of his life in Spain. He finally owned up to the evil that he had done in the New World, especially to the natives. His last act was to write a book entitled "The Book of Prophecies", where he detailed how the Father of Truth (YHVH aka God aka THE LORD) had given him success in finding the New World, so the Good News could be preached there, as a necessary step to bring about the return of the Man of Truth to Jerusalem to rule over the entire world.
Of course, the atrocities, that Columbus started against New World natives, did not end with Columbus. As more and more Europeans came over from not just Spain, but also from Portugal, France, England, and even Russia, many of them often repeated the pattern that Columbus had established.
They would sometimes attack natives, who had came to them in peace. They would sometimes enslave the natives. They would sometime drive the natives from their land to sell it to other Europeans. They would sometimes force native women into a life of prostitution. They sometimes brutally tortured and killed the natives. The truth is, that their treatment of the natives, was often downright savage.
Of course, this treatment varied greatly from one European power to the next. The French by and large attempted to build their New World empire primarily through trade and diplomacy, frequently through intermarriage with the natives. The Spanish were by and large the most brutal in their methods, and took control of the most territory, frequently forbidding intermarriage with the natives. The rest of the European powers fell between these extremes, with the English and Russians being closer to the French model of colonization, and the Portuguese being closer to the Spanish model of colonization. Later, the Americans would often move around between these extremes, depending upon who was in power in a given area, at any given time.
So, it would be fair to say, that the day that Columbus discovered the New World, began a long period of mistreatment of the natives by Europeans, to various degrees. In this regard, it seems that a great curse came upon the Native Americans when worlds collided.
For this reason, many Native Americans, and others refuse to celebrate Columbus Day. Instead, most of them celebrate something else on October 12th each year (or frequently the second Monday of October instead of the actual date). In fact, in many states and cities in the United States, a holiday celebrating Native Americans and the like is observed instead, on the anniversary of the day when worlds collided. In Canada, Thanksgiving is observed instead on that day. South of the US border, often a holiday celebrating the beginning of the resistance of the natives to Europeans, that began on the day when worlds collided, replaces Columbus Day. It is obvious, that the arrival of Columbus is perceived as the beginning of a terrible curse upon Native Americans by many people - and not just Native Americans.
However, it is not quite as tidy as that. Despite the wishful thinking of some, not all of the natives were peace loving people, until the day when worlds collided.
In many cases, Europeans who approached natives in peace, were attacked. Europeans were sometimes enslaved by natives. European women were sometimes forced to act as prostitutes to their native captors. Europeans were brutally tortured and killed by the natives. The truth is, that the treatment of the Europeans by the natives, was often downright savage.
This was not some payback for the treatment that Europeans inflicted on the natives. Long before the day when worlds collided, the natives were already treating each other like this.
In many cases, natives who approached other natives in peace, were attacked. Natives were sometimes enslaved by other natives. Native women were sometimes forced to act as prostitutes to other native captors. Natives were brutally tortured and killed by other natives. The truth is, that the treatment of the natives by other natives, was often downright savage.
The truth is, that this brutality was not born on the day when worlds collided. Columbus was at least five hundred years too late, to be the first European to make contact with the natives of the New World.
The Norwegians had began colonizing Greenland at about 980 AD. They had then began colonizing Canada by 1000 AD. The remains of their settlements in North America have been discovered in numerous places, including an entire Viking village. Artifacts like Viking helmets, have been found as far south as the Hudson River, near present day New York City. Rune stones, written clearly in Viking era runes, have been found inland as far as the middle of Oklahoma. Sometimes three of these stones, separated by tens of miles, form a straight line as a boundary marker. This could only be accomplished by people who had a compass and were familiar with using it for positioning.
The Norwegians did not leave Greenland until about fifty years before Columbus arrived in the New World. In the end, their colonies tended to be small, and they found the Native Americans, that they called the "Scraeling" (roughly "monsters" or "savages"), impossible to effectively resist, despite their superior armor and weapons. (Some of these were probably the Crees, the far northern relatives of the Apaches, who were also known for their military cunning, like the Apaches.) The Vikings could not effectively deal with the brutality of the Native Americans. The Native Americans had learned this brutality, long before they ever encountered Europeans.
This is also ample evidence, that other Europeans may have encountered Native Americans at least a thousand years before Columbus. However, none of these encounters were of long lasting importance, like the day when worlds collided.
So to determine if the arrival of Columbus was a curse or blessing to the natives of the New World, we have to first look at how well the natives of the New World were doing before the day when worlds collided.
Long before the first European contact, the natives of the New World were already doing to each other, the same kinds of things that the Europeans would later do to them. The Aztecs, the Incans, and the Mayans had all created empires by enslaving their neighbors, taking the land of their neighbors, and then forcing their neighbors to mine the silver and gold from their own land. The brutality of these native groups against their neighbors stands shoulder to shoulder with the brutality of any other group in history.
In fact, some tribes, like the Carrib and the Tonkawa were cannibals, while many other natives engaged in human sacrifice.
It is for these reasons, that Cortez was able to conquer the fifteen million strong Aztec Empire in a short amount of time with only five hundred Spanish soldiers. He had no trouble at all gaining allies from the enslaved populace of the Aztec empire, who hoped for better treatment by the Spanish. (Which they did actually get, despite the brutality of the Spanish.) The same was true for Pizarro, when he conquered the Incan Empire.
Things were no better north of the Mexican border. While there were no massive empires there by the time that the Europeans arrived, the natives were in a constant state of war with each other. This atmosphere of war persisted for generations and across centuries, where one tribe could never make any kind of lasting peace with its neighboring tribe, even to protect themselves from a greater threat. For example, when the surviving Yamasees fled to the Muskogee (Creek) tribes and Seminole tribes after being almost wiped out by the British, these tribes either killed off or enslaved every member of the Yamasee tribe down to the last man. Similar things had happened earlier to other tribes such as the Westo tribe.
Also, there is great evidence that there had once been an empire throughout much of the United States, that had died out sometime before the arrival of Columbus.
For example, landsat photos show that a massive road system once existed that branched out of Canyon De Chelly in three directions. One road went south to the area of present day Mexico City. A second road went northwest to the Puget Sound, near present day Seattle. A third road went northeast to the bottom of Lake Michgan, where present day Chicago is located. It is reasonable that there was some sort of city at the terminus of each of these roads as well. Undoubtedly, on each of these two thousand mile (3,000 km) long roads there would have been other cities as well.
Also, there was also once plenty of mound cities across the eastern United States, some with tens of thousands of people. In like manner, there were cities with large stone fortresses in the western United States, like the one at Mesa Verde. Yet, all of these were long gone or abandoned by the time that Columbus arrived.
There is definite evidence of a far reaching trade network, with conch (giant sea snails) shells being found more than a thousand miles from the ocean. Yet by the time of Columbus, all of this was gone.
Also, there was general trend of going backwards in technology.
When Pizarro encountered the Incans, he noted that they did not have the wheel, but had llamas pulling travoises to drag loads from one location to another. Yet I saw in a museum an Incan toy cart that had been discovered, that dated about five hundred years before Columbus. The Incans somehow managed to lose the wheel in that time.
The natives north of Mexico had lost all skill in mining and refining metals. The only metal that they had was copper, because copper is the only metal that can occur naturally without needing mining or refining.
Similarly, the Mayans, whose descendants still speak their language, abandoned their cities and lost their writing system about five hundred years before Columbus. They basically went from living as educated people in well organized cities to illiterate tribes.
Generally, the natives of the New World were not that healthy either. They died in alarming numbers from diseases that gave Europeans the sniffles.
I once talked at length to a Cherokee man, who had spent his entire adult life studying everything that had been discovered about the pre-Columbian natives of the eastern United States, especially the southeastern United States. I asked him about the health and average life span of Native Americans before Columbus arrived. He surprised me greatly, by telling me, that all of the evidence which had been discovered, indicated an average lifespan of about thirty-five years of age!
So in summary, the natives of the New World, were in some sort of dark ages at best, when Columbus arrived. They were in a state of constant warfare, had largely abandoned living in organized cities, had mostly became illiterate, were progressing backwards in technology, and were in poor health.
The fact is, that the majority of the natives of the New World are far better off today, than their ancestors were before the arrival of Columbus, despite the brutality of Columbus, and those who came after him.
Considering all of the evil that has been done to Native Americans and other natives of the New World, the question becomes, why has the net effect been improvement? What brought about these blessings, despite all of of the curses that came as a result of the day when worlds collided.
The truth is that the natives of the New World were not unique in their condition. The very Germanic tribes, whose descendants sat on the thrones of the countries that colonized the New World, had been in the exact same state as the natives of the New World about 1,300 years before Columbus arrived. The same thing that changed the direction of the Europeans earlier, changed the direction of the natives of the New World, when worlds collided.
So what brought about this change in direction in both cases?
They both were in their pitiful condition because of what they worshiped. Just like the Romans worshiped idols while the Germanic tribes worshiped rocks and trees, so also the natives in the cities south of the US-Mexico border worshiped idols, while the rest of the natives worshiped rocks and trees. Nothing good ever comes from worshiping idols or rocks and trees.
In both cases, their ancestors had rejected worshiping the Father of Truth in order to worship idols, because they wanted to follow after the evil desires of their own hearts (Romans 1:21-25). Since their ancestors did not keep the Father of Truth in their minds, He handed them over to a reprobate mind, that was caused them to do every evil thing imaginable (Romans 1:28-32).
In both cases, they followed the same pattern as the Jewish people did, when they turned against the Father of Truth. They corrupted themselves by worshiping the sun, the moon, the stars, and every other thing that the Father of Truth had created (Deuteronomy 4:16-19). They made idols out of trees that could not help them in their time of need (Isaiah 44:9-20). They worshiped idols made out of stone in the midst of the green trees, where they made human sacrifices (Isaiah 57:4-6). They came to look to rocks and trees as their creator, and called out to these things to save them from trouble (Jeremiah 2:27). When their condition became bad enough that they could not make idols, they just started worshiping the rocks and trees (Jeremiah 3:9).
In both cases, they began to leave their darkness when the light of the Word of Truth came into their lives (Psalm 119:130).
Despite all of the evil that Columbus did, and the evil of those who came after him, Christopher Columbus was the instrument for the Father of Truth to begin to bring about what the name of Christopher Columbus meant.
Christopher literally means "Christ bringer". No one was bringing the Good News of the Man of Truth to the New World, until Christopher Columbus encountered the New World, on the day when worlds collided.
Columbus literally means "Dove". The word "dove" speaks of the Spirit of Truth (Ruach HaQodesh aka The Holy Spirit aka The Holy Ghost), which came upon the Man of Truth, when he went into the waters of baptism (Matthew 3:16). No one in the New World had the opportunity for the Spirit of Truth to start living in them, until the day when worlds collided.
The natives of the New World could not have come into the House of Truth, without someone preaching the Word of Truth to them (Romans 10:13-15). They could not have faith in the Word of Truth, until they heard the Word of Truth (Romans 10:17). They could not begin to live a life that was pleasing to the Father of Truth, without faith in the Word of Truth (Hebrews 11:6).
The natives of the New World were lost without hope, until the day when worlds collided, set into motion the events, that made it possible for them to come into the House of Truth (Ephesians 2:12). Since that day, they can now experience the greatest blessing of all time, that of being born twice, and only dying once (Revelation 20:6)!
The Father of Truth had promised Jacob (Ya'acob aka Israel), that the Messiah of Israel would cause all of the families of the Earth to be blessed (Genesis 28:13-15). So the Man of Truth could not bring about the completion of the salvation of the human race, without the Good News being preached to the natives of the New World (Matthew 24:14).
So what Columbus, and many who came after him, may have meant for evil, the Father of Truth used to bring about the salvation of many people in the New World (Genesis 50:20). When the conditions were right, the Father of Truth gave Christopher Columbus success, so the the natives of New World could have the Spirit of Truth living in them, instead of worshiping rocks and trees (Galatians 4:4-8).
So while Columbus, and many of those who followed after him, were a curse to Native Americans, the arrival of Columbus was a great blessing to Native Americans, as well as all of the Children of Truth (those who obey The Father of Truth because they love Him). The Atlantic Ocean, that brought Columbus to the New World, carried the waters of salvation.
The Native Americans are no different than anyone else, because they are part of the same human race, and have been placed where they are, by the same Father of Truth (Acts 17:26). All people have been cursed with death from the actions of Adam, the father of the human race, and they can all be blessed with life from the actions of the Man of Truth (Romans 5:12-17).
All people can be blessed by coming into the House of Truth, when they make the Man of Truth their king, because they believe the message of the Word of Truth, that the Father of Truth raised him from the dead (Romans 10:8-10). All people, who come into the House of Truth, leave their old world and enter a new world, on the day when worlds collide (2 Corinthians 5:14-17).
Come into the House of Truth!
When I was in elementary school, Columbus Day was a big deal.
We learned all about how Christopher Columbus crossed the ocean blue in 1492. We learned about his three ships, the Nino, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. We learned that Columbus sailed west from Spain, doing what no man had done before.
We learned that Christopher Columbus did this, because he believed that the Earth was round. We learned that this was contrary to what most people believed in his day. We learned that most people believed that the Earth was flat, and if you sailed too far out, then you would fall off the edge of the Earth. We learned about how King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella paid for his daring adventure.
We learned that Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean islands on 12 October, and named the people there "Indians". We learned that he did this, because they looked like people from the Indies, the islands of Indonesia, whose inhabitants who had came from India. We learned that Columbus had discovered a whole new world.
We learned of how the news of the New World changed everything. We learned of how this began the immigration of first Europeans, and then later Africans, as slaves, from the Old World to the New World. We learned, that the day that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, was the day when worlds collided.
We learned about how Christopher Columbus was greatly honored for discovering the New World, and that many places were named after Columbus. This included cities like Columbus, Ohio, the country of Columbia (literally "land of Columbus") and the District of Columbia, that contains Washington, the capital of the United States.
Best of all, we learned that the discovery of Christopher Columbus was so important, that we got to take a whole day off from school. So after doing fun Columbus related arts and crafts, like making little ships, and hearing about the daring adventures of Christopher Columbus, at school, then we spent the morning of Columbus Day, watching Columbus Day parades and the like, at home. Columbus Day, October 12, was so important, because it marked the day when worlds collided.
Of course, as I grew in my education, and began to start investigating things for myself, I began to discover, that things were not as simple and peaceful, as I had been told in elementary school.
The fact is that Columbus acted as a tyrant during his time as governor over the islands, which he had discovered. Even those who loved Columbus the most among his men, admitted that he had committed terrible atrocities, when they were questioned under oath. Columbus was brutal to the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Africans, that he ruled over. However, he treated the native people of the lands that he ruled over, even more terribly than others.
For example, he gave to his friend a beautiful young native woman that his friend had captured. His friend then forced this young woman to act as his own personal prostitute, beating her naked body with a rope, any time that she did not do his bidding. Columbus did nothing to stop this treatment, and even encouraged others to capture native women for the same purposes.
He was supposed to cause as many native people as possible to become "Christians" by getting them to join the False Church of Rome. Instead, he frequently did whatever he could, to prevent them from being baptized. Only people, who had not officially been baptized into the False Church of Rome, could treated be slaves in almost all of western Europe. Once they were baptized, then they could not be made into slaves and sold.
Columbus wanted to sell them as slaves in Europe, where he perceived that he could make a tremendous profit from their sale. He realized, that it was a terrible loss of potential income to even tell the natives about the Man of Truth (Yeshua HaMashiach aka Jesus Christ), because they might get baptized right away.
In some places, Columbus all but wiped out the natives by either attacking them, often after they came out peaceably to meet with him, or by enslaving almost all of the native population. In fact, the slave policy of Columbus lead to the business of buying slaves in Africa, and transporting them to the New World with in ten years time. The Portuguese, and later others, bought slaves from Muslims in Africa, because the native population had been so decimated by Columbus, that there was now a market in the New World for Old World slaves, to carry out the ever increasing labor demands of the Spanish empire building that Columbus had begun.
So while Columbus was revered as a hero in his day, he was also one of the most hated men on Earth for his evil deeds, especially against the natives. He was eventually removed from the office of the governor of the Spanish colonies to bring about an end to his tyranny.
He was so despised for his brutality, that the new governor refused to allow his ship into the only harbor in the New World, to escape an approaching hurricane. The new governor could not trust the word of Columbus, and was certain that Columbus was lying about the storm, so he could cause trouble in the capital of Santo Domingo.
(Ironically, Columbus was telling the truth, and survived the horrible ordeal of being at sea for days in the hurricane, while the new governor died at sea, on one the twenty-nine out of thirty ships, that had sunk after sailing out of Santo Domingo, and into the hurricane.)
In time, the sins of Columbus caught up with him. He was not only stripped of his governorship after his third voyage, but also his admiral title after his fourth voyage. He was also arrested, and lost the the compensation, that he had originally been given for discovering the New World. His health continued to decline and he spent months of his last years, bedridden and in severe pain.
After twelve years of acting as a brutal tyrant in the New World, he might have finally repented of his evil deeds during the last two years of his life in Spain. He finally owned up to the evil that he had done in the New World, especially to the natives. His last act was to write a book entitled "The Book of Prophecies", where he detailed how the Father of Truth (YHVH aka God aka THE LORD) had given him success in finding the New World, so the Good News could be preached there, as a necessary step to bring about the return of the Man of Truth to Jerusalem to rule over the entire world.
Of course, the atrocities, that Columbus started against New World natives, did not end with Columbus. As more and more Europeans came over from not just Spain, but also from Portugal, France, England, and even Russia, many of them often repeated the pattern that Columbus had established.
They would sometimes attack natives, who had came to them in peace. They would sometimes enslave the natives. They would sometime drive the natives from their land to sell it to other Europeans. They would sometimes force native women into a life of prostitution. They sometimes brutally tortured and killed the natives. The truth is, that their treatment of the natives, was often downright savage.
Of course, this treatment varied greatly from one European power to the next. The French by and large attempted to build their New World empire primarily through trade and diplomacy, frequently through intermarriage with the natives. The Spanish were by and large the most brutal in their methods, and took control of the most territory, frequently forbidding intermarriage with the natives. The rest of the European powers fell between these extremes, with the English and Russians being closer to the French model of colonization, and the Portuguese being closer to the Spanish model of colonization. Later, the Americans would often move around between these extremes, depending upon who was in power in a given area, at any given time.
So, it would be fair to say, that the day that Columbus discovered the New World, began a long period of mistreatment of the natives by Europeans, to various degrees. In this regard, it seems that a great curse came upon the Native Americans when worlds collided.
For this reason, many Native Americans, and others refuse to celebrate Columbus Day. Instead, most of them celebrate something else on October 12th each year (or frequently the second Monday of October instead of the actual date). In fact, in many states and cities in the United States, a holiday celebrating Native Americans and the like is observed instead, on the anniversary of the day when worlds collided. In Canada, Thanksgiving is observed instead on that day. South of the US border, often a holiday celebrating the beginning of the resistance of the natives to Europeans, that began on the day when worlds collided, replaces Columbus Day. It is obvious, that the arrival of Columbus is perceived as the beginning of a terrible curse upon Native Americans by many people - and not just Native Americans.
However, it is not quite as tidy as that. Despite the wishful thinking of some, not all of the natives were peace loving people, until the day when worlds collided.
In many cases, Europeans who approached natives in peace, were attacked. Europeans were sometimes enslaved by natives. European women were sometimes forced to act as prostitutes to their native captors. Europeans were brutally tortured and killed by the natives. The truth is, that the treatment of the Europeans by the natives, was often downright savage.
This was not some payback for the treatment that Europeans inflicted on the natives. Long before the day when worlds collided, the natives were already treating each other like this.
In many cases, natives who approached other natives in peace, were attacked. Natives were sometimes enslaved by other natives. Native women were sometimes forced to act as prostitutes to other native captors. Natives were brutally tortured and killed by other natives. The truth is, that the treatment of the natives by other natives, was often downright savage.
The truth is, that this brutality was not born on the day when worlds collided. Columbus was at least five hundred years too late, to be the first European to make contact with the natives of the New World.
The Norwegians had began colonizing Greenland at about 980 AD. They had then began colonizing Canada by 1000 AD. The remains of their settlements in North America have been discovered in numerous places, including an entire Viking village. Artifacts like Viking helmets, have been found as far south as the Hudson River, near present day New York City. Rune stones, written clearly in Viking era runes, have been found inland as far as the middle of Oklahoma. Sometimes three of these stones, separated by tens of miles, form a straight line as a boundary marker. This could only be accomplished by people who had a compass and were familiar with using it for positioning.
The Norwegians did not leave Greenland until about fifty years before Columbus arrived in the New World. In the end, their colonies tended to be small, and they found the Native Americans, that they called the "Scraeling" (roughly "monsters" or "savages"), impossible to effectively resist, despite their superior armor and weapons. (Some of these were probably the Crees, the far northern relatives of the Apaches, who were also known for their military cunning, like the Apaches.) The Vikings could not effectively deal with the brutality of the Native Americans. The Native Americans had learned this brutality, long before they ever encountered Europeans.
This is also ample evidence, that other Europeans may have encountered Native Americans at least a thousand years before Columbus. However, none of these encounters were of long lasting importance, like the day when worlds collided.
So to determine if the arrival of Columbus was a curse or blessing to the natives of the New World, we have to first look at how well the natives of the New World were doing before the day when worlds collided.
Long before the first European contact, the natives of the New World were already doing to each other, the same kinds of things that the Europeans would later do to them. The Aztecs, the Incans, and the Mayans had all created empires by enslaving their neighbors, taking the land of their neighbors, and then forcing their neighbors to mine the silver and gold from their own land. The brutality of these native groups against their neighbors stands shoulder to shoulder with the brutality of any other group in history.
In fact, some tribes, like the Carrib and the Tonkawa were cannibals, while many other natives engaged in human sacrifice.
It is for these reasons, that Cortez was able to conquer the fifteen million strong Aztec Empire in a short amount of time with only five hundred Spanish soldiers. He had no trouble at all gaining allies from the enslaved populace of the Aztec empire, who hoped for better treatment by the Spanish. (Which they did actually get, despite the brutality of the Spanish.) The same was true for Pizarro, when he conquered the Incan Empire.
Things were no better north of the Mexican border. While there were no massive empires there by the time that the Europeans arrived, the natives were in a constant state of war with each other. This atmosphere of war persisted for generations and across centuries, where one tribe could never make any kind of lasting peace with its neighboring tribe, even to protect themselves from a greater threat. For example, when the surviving Yamasees fled to the Muskogee (Creek) tribes and Seminole tribes after being almost wiped out by the British, these tribes either killed off or enslaved every member of the Yamasee tribe down to the last man. Similar things had happened earlier to other tribes such as the Westo tribe.
Also, there is great evidence that there had once been an empire throughout much of the United States, that had died out sometime before the arrival of Columbus.
For example, landsat photos show that a massive road system once existed that branched out of Canyon De Chelly in three directions. One road went south to the area of present day Mexico City. A second road went northwest to the Puget Sound, near present day Seattle. A third road went northeast to the bottom of Lake Michgan, where present day Chicago is located. It is reasonable that there was some sort of city at the terminus of each of these roads as well. Undoubtedly, on each of these two thousand mile (3,000 km) long roads there would have been other cities as well.
Also, there was also once plenty of mound cities across the eastern United States, some with tens of thousands of people. In like manner, there were cities with large stone fortresses in the western United States, like the one at Mesa Verde. Yet, all of these were long gone or abandoned by the time that Columbus arrived.
There is definite evidence of a far reaching trade network, with conch (giant sea snails) shells being found more than a thousand miles from the ocean. Yet by the time of Columbus, all of this was gone.
Also, there was general trend of going backwards in technology.
When Pizarro encountered the Incans, he noted that they did not have the wheel, but had llamas pulling travoises to drag loads from one location to another. Yet I saw in a museum an Incan toy cart that had been discovered, that dated about five hundred years before Columbus. The Incans somehow managed to lose the wheel in that time.
The natives north of Mexico had lost all skill in mining and refining metals. The only metal that they had was copper, because copper is the only metal that can occur naturally without needing mining or refining.
Similarly, the Mayans, whose descendants still speak their language, abandoned their cities and lost their writing system about five hundred years before Columbus. They basically went from living as educated people in well organized cities to illiterate tribes.
Generally, the natives of the New World were not that healthy either. They died in alarming numbers from diseases that gave Europeans the sniffles.
I once talked at length to a Cherokee man, who had spent his entire adult life studying everything that had been discovered about the pre-Columbian natives of the eastern United States, especially the southeastern United States. I asked him about the health and average life span of Native Americans before Columbus arrived. He surprised me greatly, by telling me, that all of the evidence which had been discovered, indicated an average lifespan of about thirty-five years of age!
So in summary, the natives of the New World, were in some sort of dark ages at best, when Columbus arrived. They were in a state of constant warfare, had largely abandoned living in organized cities, had mostly became illiterate, were progressing backwards in technology, and were in poor health.
The fact is, that the majority of the natives of the New World are far better off today, than their ancestors were before the arrival of Columbus, despite the brutality of Columbus, and those who came after him.
Considering all of the evil that has been done to Native Americans and other natives of the New World, the question becomes, why has the net effect been improvement? What brought about these blessings, despite all of of the curses that came as a result of the day when worlds collided.
The truth is that the natives of the New World were not unique in their condition. The very Germanic tribes, whose descendants sat on the thrones of the countries that colonized the New World, had been in the exact same state as the natives of the New World about 1,300 years before Columbus arrived. The same thing that changed the direction of the Europeans earlier, changed the direction of the natives of the New World, when worlds collided.
So what brought about this change in direction in both cases?
They both were in their pitiful condition because of what they worshiped. Just like the Romans worshiped idols while the Germanic tribes worshiped rocks and trees, so also the natives in the cities south of the US-Mexico border worshiped idols, while the rest of the natives worshiped rocks and trees. Nothing good ever comes from worshiping idols or rocks and trees.
In both cases, their ancestors had rejected worshiping the Father of Truth in order to worship idols, because they wanted to follow after the evil desires of their own hearts (Romans 1:21-25). Since their ancestors did not keep the Father of Truth in their minds, He handed them over to a reprobate mind, that was caused them to do every evil thing imaginable (Romans 1:28-32).
In both cases, they followed the same pattern as the Jewish people did, when they turned against the Father of Truth. They corrupted themselves by worshiping the sun, the moon, the stars, and every other thing that the Father of Truth had created (Deuteronomy 4:16-19). They made idols out of trees that could not help them in their time of need (Isaiah 44:9-20). They worshiped idols made out of stone in the midst of the green trees, where they made human sacrifices (Isaiah 57:4-6). They came to look to rocks and trees as their creator, and called out to these things to save them from trouble (Jeremiah 2:27). When their condition became bad enough that they could not make idols, they just started worshiping the rocks and trees (Jeremiah 3:9).
In both cases, they began to leave their darkness when the light of the Word of Truth came into their lives (Psalm 119:130).
Despite all of the evil that Columbus did, and the evil of those who came after him, Christopher Columbus was the instrument for the Father of Truth to begin to bring about what the name of Christopher Columbus meant.
Christopher literally means "Christ bringer". No one was bringing the Good News of the Man of Truth to the New World, until Christopher Columbus encountered the New World, on the day when worlds collided.
Columbus literally means "Dove". The word "dove" speaks of the Spirit of Truth (Ruach HaQodesh aka The Holy Spirit aka The Holy Ghost), which came upon the Man of Truth, when he went into the waters of baptism (Matthew 3:16). No one in the New World had the opportunity for the Spirit of Truth to start living in them, until the day when worlds collided.
The natives of the New World could not have come into the House of Truth, without someone preaching the Word of Truth to them (Romans 10:13-15). They could not have faith in the Word of Truth, until they heard the Word of Truth (Romans 10:17). They could not begin to live a life that was pleasing to the Father of Truth, without faith in the Word of Truth (Hebrews 11:6).
The natives of the New World were lost without hope, until the day when worlds collided, set into motion the events, that made it possible for them to come into the House of Truth (Ephesians 2:12). Since that day, they can now experience the greatest blessing of all time, that of being born twice, and only dying once (Revelation 20:6)!
The Father of Truth had promised Jacob (Ya'acob aka Israel), that the Messiah of Israel would cause all of the families of the Earth to be blessed (Genesis 28:13-15). So the Man of Truth could not bring about the completion of the salvation of the human race, without the Good News being preached to the natives of the New World (Matthew 24:14).
So what Columbus, and many who came after him, may have meant for evil, the Father of Truth used to bring about the salvation of many people in the New World (Genesis 50:20). When the conditions were right, the Father of Truth gave Christopher Columbus success, so the the natives of New World could have the Spirit of Truth living in them, instead of worshiping rocks and trees (Galatians 4:4-8).
So while Columbus, and many of those who followed after him, were a curse to Native Americans, the arrival of Columbus was a great blessing to Native Americans, as well as all of the Children of Truth (those who obey The Father of Truth because they love Him). The Atlantic Ocean, that brought Columbus to the New World, carried the waters of salvation.
The Native Americans are no different than anyone else, because they are part of the same human race, and have been placed where they are, by the same Father of Truth (Acts 17:26). All people have been cursed with death from the actions of Adam, the father of the human race, and they can all be blessed with life from the actions of the Man of Truth (Romans 5:12-17).
All people can be blessed by coming into the House of Truth, when they make the Man of Truth their king, because they believe the message of the Word of Truth, that the Father of Truth raised him from the dead (Romans 10:8-10). All people, who come into the House of Truth, leave their old world and enter a new world, on the day when worlds collide (2 Corinthians 5:14-17).
Come into the House of Truth!
Labels: Adversity, Columbus, Native Americans
posted by The House Of Truth @ October 12, 2016
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