Hominids, of whatever variety, all seem to share a sanctimonious and egoistic nature. We are right. They are wrong. What I know is true. What you know is false. My opinion has merit. Yours has none. I am intelligent. You are an idiot. The enemy "loots" captured cities but we "liberate" captured cities. When they kill our kind, they are butchers and murderers. When we kill them, it is a righteous assault upon evil. (Note the current fad: the Hitler of the month.) When we win, it is a great battle. When they win, it is a massacre. And so it goes.
A horse is never called a slave. When a hominid takes the place of a horse, or other beast of burden, we refer to him as a slave. Black people have enslaved Black people. Black people have enslaved White people. White people have enslaved White people and White people have enslaved Black people. Let's not forget to include the Yellow people. The one with the upper hand makes the rules and forms the laws and definitions. At some point in history, all are guilty, except in their own mind.
I believe that the treatment meted out to the American Black slave was due largely to one of the most rapacious sets of notions ever to infect the brain of man -- Christianity. Since its inception, heretics were hounded without mercy. (Christianity is not alone in this respect.) As early as 382 A.D., laws were established making heresy punishable by death. This was 1000 years before the Inquisition. In that span of time, tolerance was expanding and thus provided the nourishment for a growth in the number of heretics. This should come as no surprise for when punishment wanes, criminals come to the fore. Tolerance invites that which is tolerated.
A particular noisy bath of heretics was known as the Albigenses. Their presence caused Pope Innocent III to go into a tizzy and he decided to embark upon a war of extermination. With Dominique as the first Inquisitor-General, things really got jumping, especially since the Church had an ample supply of spies all eager to earn the favor of God by sniffing out a heretic here and there. One so accused could look forward to taking a slow boat to hell. Torture of the most gruesome kind was used to extract confessions. Upon confession, some horrible death -- if you managed to live thorough the interrogation -- was in store. Every part of the body had to be destroyed because the Devil dwelt everywhere within.
Heretics are in league with the Devil as we all know. Thus, the treatment of a heretic was actually a battle with the Devil. The Devil always placed his mark upon his crew. The marks were of two kinds (1) visible, such as a mole or wart, and (2) invisible! (Heads I win. Tails you lose.) These marks were supposed to be insensitive to pain and the possessor also enjoyed other attributes, such as being able to breath under water. In the American colonies, witchcraft was just another variety of heresy. An accused woman would be tossed into a body of water, hands bound. If she drowned, it was proof that she was innocent. If she didn't, it was proof that she was guilty and hence, she was burned alive.
The probing for those insensitive Devil's marks was done with long needles. Once a spot was selected, it was tested by ramming the needle into it. If one screamed, then that was not a Devil's mark and so the search continued. The "invisible" marks required much more effort. This consisted of stabbing any particular spot which pleased the professional "prickers", who, by the way, were paid for results. They were always successful since a point in the ordeal was reached when the victim became relatively immune to pain. In order to aid in the inspection, the body was completed shaved of all hair and one of the favorite female regions to probe were the genitals. After all, isn't that the source for most of mankind's mischief?
Keep in mind that all of this captivating entertainment involved White people and their unfortunate White victims. If one did not accept whatever as one's god, then he was outside of the pale -- a pagan. And that was what was growing in abundance on the Ivory Coast of Africa where the Niger River flowed. The whole place was inhabited by pagans. (We owe the term "nigger" to this river in the same manner as we called "Mohawks" the people who lived along that New York State river. An Amerasian tribe camped in the region of a certain lake. The Dutch called this lake "Sennecaas", which was a corruption of a Mahican word. The people living around that lake came to be known as Senecas.)
The Amerasian never had anything resembling the European Inquisition, so their murders, tortures and mayhem, were mostly for sporting reasons or tests of manhood. (If an enemy showed cowardice in battle, his capture meant the most severe of tortures would be reserved for him. Brave, captured enemies were usually killed outright or adopted. In the Pacific theater of WW II, the Japanese had no pity for cowards, no matter who. Cowards are people who surrender and so American prisoners were usually tortured before execution. Very understandable, if you are Japanese.) The Iroquois were particularly savage in this regard with the Mandans using extreme torture as an initiation rite. Well, if one cannot find an "enemy" people to mutilate, then one can always select his neighbor.
The Australian Aborigines were all alone on the continent but they did manage to dream up an interesting puberty rite for their young men. He was held down by the elders while a flint stone was used to split open his urethra. The performer's fingers were then inserted into the slit which was enlarged by forcefully tearing the flesh apart. This made you a man. Crocodile Dundee (Paul Hogan), take note.
OK, the Amerasians were a murderous people and so were the Europeans. They came together on this continent and did they put all of their ideas of torture and butchery behind? Of course not. Both sides roasted, dismembered and slaughtered each other. It was nothing new -- just a change of victim. As I mentioned in the beginning, each believed the other was the evil party. Both sides were correct, you know.
The slave trade had its profiteers. Some were upright Englishmen while others were Jews and Arabs plus anyone with dollar signs for eyeballs. Black people even owned slaves here in America. Blacks were considered pagans. There's that religious knell again! What could be lower than a devil-filled pagan? This then, was the attitude which was quite prevalent and was the rationalization which accompanied the practice of physical abuse with whipping being the usual form. If a slave was not working hard enough, it was probably because of the Devil and a good whipping would drive him out so that righteous work could continue. (Abuse of all forms of life continues to this day.) It was just another flavor of the "kill-devil" behavior. As a historical note, I shall mention that kindly Christopher Columbus rounded up hundreds of the natives of the West Indies and sold them to the highest bidder in Seville, Spain.
In 1808, the slave trade dried up but that did not end slavery. It only meant that fresh slaves were no longer available. It was at this time when American slave-traders dreamed up the idea of breeding them for profit, or simply to keep their numbers stable. (Our Darkies now voluntarily breed themselves for profit. It is called "welfare.") A young White buck, not inclined to "tap" his betrothed, found no aversion in practicing his undulations on the younger females in the slave corral. So began the mixing of the blood of these two diverse species.
The Aztecs butchered not only their enemies, but their own kind, in rituals claimed to appease one or more of their gods. Europeans, forever prone to "kill the devil," used various methods of bone-breaking, dismemberment, etc. as a way to "kill-devil" at the time of the Inquisition, since the Devil inhabited each and every body cell of his disciples. This attitude survives and it is only necessary to invoke D'evil for millions of lemmings to embark upon a killing rampage. It's always the other guy, isn't it?
As an old friend of mine once said, "It's not religion that is bad. It's when it is organized that it poses a threat to sane people."
There are no peoples whose hands are clean. The horrors inflicted by the Red Men were balanced by those of the White man. Whatever the Nazis did, their opponents replied in kind. It's time to stop wailing over the past, whether it's slavery or the "holocaust". Let the damned past be. In conflicts, there are no "good guys."
Robert Frenz
12 July 1999