What was punishment like? Did they really burn people for witchcraft or was that merely an Enlightenment-era myth?

In other words, the Natives were severely weakened following the epidemic of the disastrous colonies that came before the Puritans.

So at least one of the factors that led to American colonization was religious persecution and a desire to worship freely. That certainly seems reflected in our 1st Amendment.

Out of curiosity, were they aware of the Eastern Orthodox Church and how did they feel about it? This is an interesting question to me as an Orthodox Christian.

Interesting. It goes to show how stereotypes can often be false as not even the Puritans were as puritan as we tend to think of them.

So they were iconoclasts and they believed in sola scriptura, two big Protestant beliefs which still seem to influence a lot of American Christians today.

We also learned in a previous reading that the Spanish had a concept of "blood purity," dividing their people into different categories with slaves and full-blooded Indians at the bottom. Did this idea influence England's own racial ideas at all?

Greed took over. No longer were the colonists satisfied with just getting by but now they wanted to expand for the sake of profit, even at the expense of the indigenous peoples.

So the colonists got extremely lucky with tobacco and before you know it the free market took over and economics were booming.

At the expense of their lifespan, I imagine. It is a great irony that such an unhealthy killer would be the savior of the colony.

I wonder how many of Jamestown's problems could have been averted or at least lessened if the population was more useful and willing to work.

Either very determined or very stupid, to go about building a colony despite the indigenous peoples warning you about how lousy the land is. Perhaps reflective of a European superiority complex? That the English thought they knew better than the Natives?

Sounds similar to American segregation of minorities prior to the Civil Rights Movement. It is interesting to see how the English shaped our attitudes and culture

From there we get the classic pirate stories and stereotypes from figures like Black Beard, who were formerly privateers that found themselves out of work after victory over the Spanish.

So there was also a religious element to English colonization, the motivation to convert to the indigenous peoples so that Protestantism would spread, and to undermine Spanish Catholicism.

English colonization was also motivated by a rivalry with Spain.

So rapid population growth combined with the subsequent social issues were among the factors that led the English to colonization. Noted.

Ouch. And that is the kicker--the moment when the colonists finally believe that they can do whatever they want with the Natives.

So in other words, were the colonists only nice to the Natives because they wanted to convert them to Christianity?

It is a sad irony for the Natives that their resistance, the moment when they finally stood up to the colonists, backfired and just made their lot even worse in the end.

Study Question Answers:

1) At first, the colonists seemed to view the Powhatan Confederacy as a group of noble barbarians at best who were be shown kindness only insofar as it brought about their Christian conversion. Though after the attack, their feelings seem to decline rapidly with the utilization of terms like "savages" and criticizing them for violating the laws of God, man, and nations. From there I would say they probably view the Natives as little more than wild animals.

2) He feels that they are free to completely conquer the Powhatan, steal their lands, and expand the colony at the Powhatans' expense. Not only that, but he also feels that they are free to utterly "destroy" them. Genocide perhaps?

This seems very similar to American culture today what with the notion of a "Christian nation" that many politicians hold, where they tend to blame our nation's problems on what they perceive as a lack of godliness while advocating a return to Christianity or at least their idea of Christianity as the solution to said problems. It is interesting to see how history can inform our culture so much even to the present day.

I'm no theologian, but the idea that one can make an agreement with God seems kind of peculiar to me, as if the Divine could really be held down by any agreements with us. Our arms are too small to box with God.

So in other words, Puritanism at least in part was a kind of knee-jerk reaction to many of the social ills in England?

This seems to be the basis for our free market economy in the United States where business is often conducted through agreements and contracts with other parties for the sake of mutual gain.

Study Question Answers:

1) A "covenant" was a contractual agreement between two parties that rested upon mutual consent and responsibility. In other words, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. For the Puritans it was often understood through a religious lens, as their entire theology rested upon the idea that they were called out by God to live a particular way in order to be blessed.

2) The Puritans are apparently entering into a covenant with God himself. The agreement seems to be that if the Puritans live an all around holy life categorized by adherence to strict morals, charity to the poor, diligent hard work, and respect for their neighbors among other things, that God will bless their community. But that if they fail, God will unleash his wrath upon them.

I believe that King Affonso initially let the Portuguese enslave his subjects because he did not realize how powerful their hunger for slaves was. Perhaps he thought that it would only be a one time thing, and that through appeasing them once, they would eventually leave his people alone and move on. In fact, we see that the precise reason he started to request regulation was because the Portuguese were taking more slaves than he could manage to provide, violating their original agreements, and enslaving even African royalty.

Study Question Answers:

1) Many of the Aztec Empire's semi-independent city states and neighbors yearned for independence and/or were growing weary of Aztec rule, so this combined with the fact that some of them saw Cortez as long anticipated god motivated them to aid the Spanish in bringing down the Aztecs.

2) It was called the "Sistema de Castas" and operated off of a concept of blood "purity." At the top were Espanoles--Iberian born Spaniards--followed by New World born Spaniards called "criollos," then mestizos which were mixed race peoples, and finally slaves and full-blooded Indians at the bottom.

Each of these stories seem to mention a flood or water in some way or another. Interesting.

Seems to imply two things, namely that humans are deformed but also that God cares about us as he feels we are his responsibility due to drunkenness.

"Like himself" seems to imply that image and likeness thing as in the Genesis story.

I find the fact that each of these creation stories involve a tree in one way or another to be very interesting.

1) They literally fell from the sky where they were received by the animals--particularly waterfowl and a great turtle--who took care of them (a girl) and prepared the Earth for her. 2) Once again, they received the woman as she fell from the sky and then prepared the Earth for her and her future descendants (humanity). 3) They traveled West and East, creating mountain ranges, rivers, forests, and to some extent animals. Originally one of the twins' animals were too large, so the other twin made them smaller.

Reminds me of the huge megafauna that went extinct following the Ice Age. Perhaps this story was inspired by their extinction in lieu of the smaller animals who followed them?

Humans created animals

This is very interesting to me because as an Orthodox Christian, we traditionally pray facing the East. East seems to carry some sort of universal importance manifested in the world's religious traditions.

Similar to Judaism/Christianity where humans start out really good prior to a fall from grace.

Again, God gave man "dominion" over the Earth according to this story.

Probably the most relevant passage in this story since it teaches that humans are not only at the top of the food chain made in God's image and likeness, but literally have "dominion" over the Earth, for better or for worse.

There are a lot of references to "light" in this story. I wonder if it carries some deeper theological significance or something.

In light of the Religious Studies class I took last semester, this is one of the most significant sentences in the history of religion since it marks the transition from polytheism to monotheism. Whereas in the former there was no clear distinction between nature and super nature as both God/the gods were of the same substance as the Earth, in the latter God is described as a creator and thus there is a clear distinction between creator and creation.

The video lecture sort of expands on this point by stating that at the time of European arrival, most Native societies were locked in an intense rivalry and political decline with each other.

Columbus didn't think of the longterm consequences? That perhaps telling the Spanish that these were such an "innocent" people with gold wouldn't encourage them to take advantage of them?

Which in turn is what led to Columbus' discovering the Americas as the Spanish monarchy sent him on a mission to discover a faster trade route to Asia.

I wonder how, if at all, this relates to the fact that Native American ancestry was matrilineal and if perhaps promiscuity could have been utilized as a way to expand kinship.

Something big had to have happened for the population to grow that much in a single generation. What was it?

Due to the ease and effectiveness of farming for them, I would hypothesize that their societies produced a lot more art, religious ideas, and other cultural things due to leisure via the pyramid hierarchy of needs.

This is interesting because it implies that nature shapes culture. It makes me wonder how our own present day environment and natural factors have affected our culture and heritage.

What motivated them to migrate?