God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the Condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.

God of Israel

the Puritan had made a covenant with God to establish a truly Christian community,

Puritan

Our hands, which before were tied with gentleness and fair usage, are now set at liberty by the treacherous violence of the savages.

And not being content with taking away life alone, they fell after again upon the dead, making, as well as they could, a fresh murder, defacing, dragging, and mangling the dead carcasses into many pieces, and carrying away some parts in derision

Yea, such was the treacherous dissimulation of that people who then had contrived our destruction

Powhatan

The New England climate and soil made large-scale plantation agriculture impractical, so the system of large landholders using masses of slaves or indentured servants to grow labor-intensive crops never took hold.

He launched a surprise attack and in a single day (March 22, 1622) killed 347 colonists, or one-fourth of all the colonists in Virginia.

The reliance on new imports of slaves increased the likelihood of resistance, however, and escaped slaves managed to create several free settlements, called quilombos.

Spanish missionaries brought Indians into enclosed missions, whereas Jesuits more often lived with or alongside Indian groups.

When Oñate sacked the Pueblo city of Acoma, the “sky city,” the Spaniards slaughtered nearly half of its roughly 1,500 inhabitants, including women and children. Oñate ordered one foot cut off of every surviving male over 15 and he enslaved the remaining women and children.1

Dutch women maintained separate legal identities from their husbands and could therefore hold property and inherit full estates

The French preference for trade over permanent settlement fostered more cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships with Native Americans than was typical among the Spanish and English

Powhatan

He navigated Indian diplomacy, claiming that he was captured and sentenced to death but Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, intervened to save his life

The Crown granted missionaries the right to live among Timucua and Guale villagers in the late 1500s and early 1600s and encouraged settlement through the encomienda system (grants of Indian labor).

European explorers, meanwhile, had hoped to find great wealth in Florida, but reality never aligned with their imaginations.

English traders fomented Indian war in order to purchase and enslave captives, and planters justified the use of an enslaved workforce by claiming white servants were “good for nothing at all.

“I can’t think there is any intrinsic value in one color more than another, nor that white is better than black, only we think it so because we are so.”

Conquest

Slaves and Indians occupied the lowest rungs of the social ladder

Much of the city was built on large artificial islands called chinampas which the Aztecs constructed by dredging mud and rich sediment from the bottom of the lake and depositing it over time to form new landscapes

. In central America the Maya built massive temples, sustained large populations, and constructed a complex and long-lasting civilization with a written language, advanced mathematics, and stunningly accurate calendars

Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the human and material wealth of the New World.

three crops in particular–corn, beans, and squash, the so-called “three sisters”–provided nutritional needs necessary to sustain cities and civilizations.

. But native populations adapted: they fished, hunted small mammals, and gathered nuts and berries. Native peoples spread across North America

Montezuma was killed along with a third of Cortes’s men in la noche triste, the “night of sorrows.”

Pigs ran rampant through the Americas, transforming the landscape as the spread throughout both continents.

After two years of conflict, a million-person strong empire was toppled by disease, dissension, and a thousand European conquerors.

But without the rich gold and silver mines of Mexico, the plantation-friendly climate of the Caribbean, or the exploitive potential of large Indian empires, North America offered little incentive for Spanish officials.

As time went on, the wife became pregnant. Her and her husband were very, very happy.

The milk in the breasts of the women with infants dried up and thus in a short while the infants perished.

Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days.

not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.

But I should not say "than beasts" for, thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect;

Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemic

Men typically hunted and women typically gathered and prepared wild foods. Rich and diverse diets fueled massive population growth across the continent.

When crop yields began to decline, farmers would simply move to another field and allow the land to recover and the forest to regrow before they would again cut the forest, burn the undergrowth, and restart the cycle

Portuguese established forts along the Atlantic coast of Africa during the fifteenth century, inaugurating centuries of European colonization there

Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemics and so when Europeans arrived, carrying smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, measles, and hepatitis, plagues decimated native communities. Death rates tended to be highest near European communities who traveled with children, as children tended to carry the deadliest diseases.9 Many died in war and slavery, but millions died in epidemics. All told, in fact, some scholars estimate that as much as 90 percent of the population of the Americas perished within the first century and a half of European contact

By presuming the natives had no humanity, the Spaniards utterly abandoned theirs.

Native cultures understood ancestry as matrilineal: family and clan identity proceeded along the female line, through mothers and daughters, rather than fathers and sons.

One single building, Pueblo Bonito, stretched over two acres and rose five stories.

Cahokia experienced what one archeologist has called a “big bang” around the year 1050 that included “a virtually instantaneous and pervasive shift in all things political, social, and ideological.”4

“They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor the sins of murder or theft,

Obatala, another god, reflected upon this situation, then went to Olorun for permission to create dry land for all kinds of living creatures to inhabit.

When Obatala returned to his home in the sky for a visit, Olokun summoned the great waves of her vast oceans and sent them surging across the land.

He was given permission, so he sought advice from Orunmila, oldest son of Olorun and the god of prophecy.

The new people built huts as Obatala had done, and soon Ife prospered and became a city

Everyday she had something new that she had to have. These were the results of being pregnant and carrying her child.

So pretty soon, the otter decided he said, “ I think there is some dirt or mud way, way down at the bottom of the ocean. IF we brought up some of that mud, perhaps we could put it on turtle’s back and perhaps this creature from the sky world could live and sustain herself on the back of turtle.”

In the sky world, there were beautiful, beautiful trees and wonderful plants with bright colors and delicious fruits to be eaten.

they flew underneath her and sure enough they caught her

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.