Native Americans

Kill the Indian, Christianize The Man

May 12, 2019 Sacred Liberty

The efforts to help Native Americans include the campaign to ban their spiritual practices and convert their children to Christianity. Adapted from Sacred Liberty In 1866, the “good guys” were the Christians who merely wanted to annihilate the Native Americans’ religion. It was a strange turning point in white America’s relationship with the Indians. The Native Americans had been pushed farther west. Disease and war had dramatically reduced their numbers. The buffalo population had been so decimated that the Indian…

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Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America by Benjamin Franklin

May 22, 2017 Religious Freedom Archive Comments 0 Comment

Benjamin Franklin A sympathetic description of the patience and civility of the Indians, Including on matters of faith. Savages we call them, because their Manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility. They think the same of theirs. Perhaps if we could examine the Manners of different Nations with Impartiality, we should find no People so rude as to be without Rules of Politeness, nor any so polite as not to have some Remains of Rudeness The…

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Plain Truth: or, Serious Considerations On the Present State of the City of Philadelphia, and Province of Pennsylvania (Benjamin Franklin, 1706)

May 22, 2017 Religious Freedom Archive Comments 0 Comment

Benjamin Franklin 1706 In “A Tradesman of Philadelphia,” Franklin waded into a vexing religious/political dilemma of his time. Pennsylvania was controlled by Quakers, who were pacifists. But Indians, allied with the French, were raising the Pennsylvania border towns, scalping and terrorizing citizens. Franklin complimented the sincerity of the Quakers while nonetheless calling upon other Pennsylvanians to pay for the colony’s defense. It is said the wise Italians make this proverbial Remark on our Nation, viz. The English feel, but they…

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Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753

May 22, 2017 Religious Freedom Archive Comments 0 Comment

Benjamin Franklin May 9, 1753 Philadelphia May 9th. 1753 Sir I received your Favour of the 29th. August last and thank you for the kind and judicious remarks you have made on my little Piece. Whatever further occurs to you on the same subject, you will much oblige me in communicating it. I have often observed with wonder, that Temper of the poor English Manufacturers and day Labourers which you mention, and acknowledge it to be pretty general. When any…

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Father Andrew White’s First Impressions of Maryland & Its Native Inhabitants

May 22, 2017 Religious Freedom Archive Comments 0 Comment

Andrew White 1634 Father White was a Jesuit priest, and originally wrote this narrative in Latin. Maryland was initially colonized by Catholic dissenters from England, under a grant from King Charles I to Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, whose father, Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, had been a favorite of King James I and had been his Secretary of State until he declared his Catholicism At length, sailing from this, we reached what they call Point Comfort,…

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