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I do not understand how dissuading people from tearing out the hearts of captives and sacrificing them to the sun is shameful.
The California Indians weren't quite that savage, but some were close:
"The principal ceremonies, still enacted within recent memory, were the girls' puberty ceremony, the boys' initiation, and the annual mourning rite. In the puberty ceremony the several girls of the village who had attained the menstrual age at about the same time were stretched upon a bed of fresh and fragrant herbs in a pit previously heated by means of a large fire, and, after being covered with blankets and other herbs, were subjected to a sweating and starving process for several days and nights while the elders of the band danced around the pit singing the songs for the occasion. The ordeal ended with a procession, or a race, to a prominent cliff, where each girl inscribed symbolic painted designs upon the rock.
The boys' initiation ceremony was a preliminary to admission to a privileged secret society, the officers of which constituted the priesthood. A principal feature was the drinking of a decoction of the root of the poisonous toloache, or jimson-weed ( datura meteloides ), to produce unconsciousness, in which the initiate was supposed to have communication with his future protecting spirit.
Rigid food taboos were prescribed for a long period, and a common ordeal test was the lowering of the naked initiate into a pit of vicious stinging ants. A symbolic 'sand painting', with figures in vari-coloured sand, was a part of the ritual.
The corpse was burned upon a funeral pile immediately after death, together with the personal property, by a man specially appointed to that duty, the bones being afterwards gathered up and buried or otherwise preserved.
Once a year a great tribal mourning ceremony was held, to which the people of all the neighbouring rancherías were invited. On this occasion large quantities of property were burned as sacrifice to the spirits of the dead, or given away to the visitors, an effigy of the deceased was burned upon the pyre, and the performance, which lasted through several days and nights, concluded with a weird night dance around the blazing pile, during which an eagle or other great bird, passed from one to another of the circling dance priests, was slowly pressed to death in their arms, while in songs they implored its spirit to carry their messages to their friends in the other world. The souls of priests and chiefs were supposed to ascend to the sky as stars, while those of the common people went to an underworld, where there was continual feasting and dancing, the idea of future punishment or reward being foreign to the Indian mind. The dead were never named, and the sum of insult to another was to say '"Your father is dead.'
In connexion with childbirth most of the tribes practised the couvade, the father keeping his bed for some days, subjected to rigid diet and other taboos, until released by a ceremonial exorcism. Besides the great ceremonies already noted, they had numerous other dances, including some of dramatic or sleight-of-hand character, and, among the southern tribes, a grossly obscene dance which gave the missionaries much trouble to suppress.
Among the Gallinomero, and perhaps others, aged parents were sometimes choked to death by their own children by crushing the neck with a stick. Ordinary morality could hardly be said to exist even in theory. Infanticide and abortion were so prevalent that even the most strenuous efforts of the missionaries hardly succeeded in checking the evil. In this and certain other detestable customs the coast tribes were like the California Indians generally, whom Powers characterizes, in their heathen condition, as perhaps the most licentious race existent.
Even before the arrival of the missionaries, their blood, like that of all the coast tribes as far north as Alaska, had been so poisoned by direct or transmitted contact with dissolute sealing and trading crews, that the race was already in swift decline. The confiscation of the missions and the subsequent influx of the gold-hunters doomed the race to extinction."
No cutting out hearts - just torturing naked boys in pits of stinging ants, choking aged parents to death, routine infanticide and abortion, etc.
The California Indians weren't quite that savage, but some were close:
"The principal ceremonies, still enacted within recent memory, were the girls' puberty ceremony, the boys' initiation, and the annual mourning rite. In the puberty ceremony the several girls of the village who had attained the menstrual age at about the same time were stretched upon a bed of fresh and fragrant herbs in a pit previously heated by means of a large fire, and, after being covered with blankets and other herbs, were subjected to a sweating and starving process for several days and nights while the elders of the band danced around the pit singing the songs for the occasion. The ordeal ended with a procession, or a race, to a prominent cliff, where each girl inscribed symbolic painted designs upon the rock.
The boys' initiation ceremony was a preliminary to admission to a privileged secret society, the officers of which constituted the priesthood. A principal feature was the drinking of a decoction of the root of the poisonous toloache, or jimson-weed ( datura meteloides ), to produce unconsciousness, in which the initiate was supposed to have communication with his future protecting spirit.
Rigid food taboos were prescribed for a long period, and a common ordeal test was the lowering of the naked initiate into a pit of vicious stinging ants. A symbolic 'sand painting', with figures in vari-coloured sand, was a part of the ritual.
The corpse was burned upon a funeral pile immediately after death, together with the personal property, by a man specially appointed to that duty, the bones being afterwards gathered up and buried or otherwise preserved.
Once a year a great tribal mourning ceremony was held, to which the people of all the neighbouring rancherías were invited. On this occasion large quantities of property were burned as sacrifice to the spirits of the dead, or given away to the visitors, an effigy of the deceased was burned upon the pyre, and the performance, which lasted through several days and nights, concluded with a weird night dance around the blazing pile, during which an eagle or other great bird, passed from one to another of the circling dance priests, was slowly pressed to death in their arms, while in songs they implored its spirit to carry their messages to their friends in the other world. The souls of priests and chiefs were supposed to ascend to the sky as stars, while those of the common people went to an underworld, where there was continual feasting and dancing, the idea of future punishment or reward being foreign to the Indian mind. The dead were never named, and the sum of insult to another was to say '"Your father is dead.'
In connexion with childbirth most of the tribes practised the couvade, the father keeping his bed for some days, subjected to rigid diet and other taboos, until released by a ceremonial exorcism. Besides the great ceremonies already noted, they had numerous other dances, including some of dramatic or sleight-of-hand character, and, among the southern tribes, a grossly obscene dance which gave the missionaries much trouble to suppress.
Among the Gallinomero, and perhaps others, aged parents were sometimes choked to death by their own children by crushing the neck with a stick. Ordinary morality could hardly be said to exist even in theory. Infanticide and abortion were so prevalent that even the most strenuous efforts of the missionaries hardly succeeded in checking the evil. In this and certain other detestable customs the coast tribes were like the California Indians generally, whom Powers characterizes, in their heathen condition, as perhaps the most licentious race existent.
Even before the arrival of the missionaries, their blood, like that of all the coast tribes as far north as Alaska, had been so poisoned by direct or transmitted contact with dissolute sealing and trading crews, that the race was already in swift decline. The confiscation of the missions and the subsequent influx of the gold-hunters doomed the race to extinction."
No cutting out hearts - just torturing naked boys in pits of stinging ants, choking aged parents to death, routine infanticide and abortion, etc.
An apologist website with an agenda - hardly what I would call iron-clad veracity. Regardless what the aboriginal peoples of California did the fact of the matter is that it was their cultural mores and had been in place for thousands of years. They had a right to their heritage. The Spanish military and Catholic church decimated the original inhabitants by forcing them into hard labor serfdom for the missions and introducing European diseases. They were no more kindly and righteous than the American settlers who used a more direct approach with the Indians of the Sierra and Far Northern California Indians during the Gold Rush. In fact, more of them seem to have survived than the Mission Indians under Spanish/Mexican rule so you can draw whatever conclusion you like from that.
Again, nothing in the past excuses vandalism today.
An apologist website with an agenda - hardly what I would call iron-clad veracity. Regardless what the aboriginal peoples of California did the fact of the matter is that it was their cultural mores and had been in place for thousands of years. They had a right to their heritage. The Spanish military and Catholic church decimated the original inhabitants by forcing them into hard labor serfdom for the missions and introducing European diseases. They were no more kindly and righteous than the American settlers who used a more direct approach with the Indians of the Sierra and Far Northern California Indians during the Gold Rush. In fact, more of them seem to have survived than the Mission Indians under Spanish/Mexican rule so you can draw whatever conclusion you like from that.
That's a passage from the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1917, if I'm not mistaken. Like it or not, the earliest sources of documentation on the subject are Catholic.
The rest of your synopsis is just the usual anti-Catholic party line, riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. The Christian Indians had a very different point of view:
"Ever since morning the grief-stricken people had been waiting and listening for the tolling death-bell to announce that all was over. At its first note they came in crowds, breathless, weeping, and lamenting. It was with great difficulty that the soldiers could keep them from tearing Father Junipero's habit piece-meal from his body, so ardent was their desire to possess some relic of him. The corpse was laid at once in a coffin which he himself had ordered made many weeks before. The vessels in port fired a salute of one hundred and one guns, answered by the same from the guns of the presidio at Monterey, --an honor given to no one below the rank of general. But the hundred gun salutes were a paltry honor in comparison with the tears of the Indian congregation. Soldiers kept watch around his coffin night and day till the burial; but they could not hold back the throngs of the poor creatures who pressed to touch the hand of the father they had so much loved, and to bear away something, if only a thread, of the garments he had worn."
Regardless what the aboriginal peoples of California did the fact of the matter is that it was their cultural mores and had been in place for thousands of years. They had a right to their heritage.
That's an interesting perspective. Our cultural mores in the Christian west have been in place for 1500-1700 years. Do we still have a right to our heritage?
I didn't think so. Your cultural generosity is a one-way street.
Besides, the missions preserved everything in the native cultures not opposed to the Christian faith. The native cultures were transformed, not obliterated.
I'm sure you also agree that just because a ritual is thousands of years old - say, the rite of torturing adolescent boys in pits of stinging ants, or strangling aged parents to death - doesn't give it the right to continue. Some things are intrinsically wrong and need to be stopped.
What's funny about discussions like this is that suddenly you liberals become fierce traditionalists.
Last edited by WesternPilgrim; 05-10-2012 at 09:55 PM..
Location: San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties
6,390 posts, read 9,679,297 times
Reputation: 2622
Quote:
Ever since morning the grief-stricken people had been waiting and listening for the tolling death-bell to announce that all was over. At its first note they came in crowds, breathless, weeping, and lamenting. It was with great difficulty that the soldiers could keep them from tearing Father Junipero's habit piece-meal from his body, so ardent was their desire to possess some relic of him. The corpse was laid at once in a coffin which he himself had ordered made many weeks before. The vessels in port fired a salute of one hundred and one guns, answered by the same from the guns of the presidio at Monterey, --an honor given to no one below the rank of general. But the hundred gun salutes were a paltry honor in comparison with the tears of the Indian congregation. Soldiers kept watch around his coffin night and day till the burial; but they could not hold back the throngs of the poor creatures who pressed to touch the hand of the father they had so much loved, and to bear away something, if only a thread, of the garments he had worn."
Hagiography : idealizing or idolizing biography,, Used by the Catholic Church in lieu of facts. The account is complete BS. For a start, there was no port, there was a harbor and cargo was lightered it is doubtful that there were ever ships enough in the harbor to fire a 101 salute.
The "guns" of the Presido probably never fired 100 rounds in it's history. Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy had this to say about the presidio; "the Presidio was incapable of making resistance against a foreign invasion," its only cannon being a three pounder mounted on a carriage that was beginning to fall apart."
Pilgrim, you are singlehandedly destroying thousands of years of Catholic good works, you are making it and you look, well, not very smart.
Location: San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties
6,390 posts, read 9,679,297 times
Reputation: 2622
Quote:
Besides, the missions preserved everything in the native cultures not opposed to the Christian faith. The native cultures were transformed, not obliterated.
A flat lie, They were completely obliterated, where do you get the crap you pass off as fact? It is utter baloney.
When the missions finally closed, the indians with their culture obliterated wound up as beggars and drunks in the waste dumps of the few towns.
Regardless what the aboriginal peoples of California did the fact of the matter is that it was their cultural mores and had been in place for thousands of years. They had a right to their heritage.
This is a painting of Christian Indians performing a native dance at Mission San Jose:
That's a passage from the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1917, if I'm not mistaken. Like it or not, the earliest sources of documentation on the subject are Catholic.
The rest of your synopsis is just the usual anti-Catholic party line, riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. The Christian Indians had a very different point of view:
"Ever since morning the grief-stricken people had been waiting and listening for the tolling death-bell to announce that all was over. At its first note they came in crowds, breathless, weeping, and lamenting. It was with great difficulty that the soldiers could keep them from tearing Father Junipero's habit piece-meal from his body, so ardent was their desire to possess some relic of him. The corpse was laid at once in a coffin which he himself had ordered made many weeks before. The vessels in port fired a salute of one hundred and one guns, answered by the same from the guns of the presidio at Monterey, --an honor given to no one below the rank of general. But the hundred gun salutes were a paltry honor in comparison with the tears of the Indian congregation. Soldiers kept watch around his coffin night and day till the burial; but they could not hold back the throngs of the poor creatures who pressed to touch the hand of the father they had so much loved, and to bear away something, if only a thread, of the garments he had worn."
That's an interesting perspective. Our cultural mores in the Christian west have been in place for 1500-1700 years. Do we still have a right to our heritage?
I didn't think so. Your cultural generosity is a one-way street.
Besides, the missions preserved everything in the native cultures not opposed to the Christian faith. The native cultures were transformed, not obliterated.
I'm sure you also agree that just because a ritual is thousands of years old - say, the rite of torturing adolescent boys in pits of stinging ants, or strangling aged parents to death - doesn't give it the right to continue. Some things are intrinsically wrong and need to be stopped.
What's funny about discussions like this is that suddenly you liberals become fierce traditionalists.
Aside from all the many many stupidities of your falsifications, let's just wonder for a moment if there might be other ways to transform a culture's barbaric rites (barbaric by your definition) than wholesale enslavement, and brainwashing to effect a culture of humiliation and guilt, that stripped away the essence of the aboriginal lifestyle and culture -- which cultural essence was not defined by the practices you cite as horrid, but which practices were merely ritualistic theatre.
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