Inquiries, Inquisitions and Inequities  

            There are attempts in recent books to try to salvage the myth of Columbus and the beneficence of the European Invasion. Some of them try to maintain what could be called the "bad apple theory" of European cruelty. As if it were only a few bad apples, like Oviedo, de Soto, Coronado, Cortez, Pizzaro, Custer, Chivington, Teddy Roosevelt or other murderers who did the ill deeds, European ideologies were not at fault.  One writer who holds these views, excuses the atrocities on the grounds that  it was only a "small and pernicious cadre of Nazis [who were] guilty of all six million Jewish deaths: the colonists were personally and directly guilty for only a fraction of the Indians who died...[and the] Spanish  of the 'Black Legend'  were not directly responsible for most of the deaths in Latin America". [1] These are clever and 'objective' excuses.  But the Black Legend is not a legend and these excuses are false.[2]

            The Germans of the Nazi period, the Americans of the genocidal period and the Spanish of the Conquest largely supported the racist and imperial policies of those who did the actual murdering, just as most of the immigrants to the Americas supported African American slavery until roughly 1800-1860. The invasion of the new world is systemic and ideological: no single man or series of men could have accomplished the degree of horror that occurred without and entire social and ideological system of thought and action behind them. No one kept records of how many  times Spanish or U.S. soldiers sent disease infected blankets into Native communities or how may times local farmers killed Indians who strayed onto the lands they had stolen. Neither genes nor germs can excuse the holocausts, however much they may have been contributing factors. Even today the disease and mortality rate is much higher on Native American Reservations and African American ghettos and this is ascribable to the brutal exploitation of the white man, and not simply germs. One must seek beyond germs and genes into the minds and ideas of centuries of European culture to find the causes.

             A cursory look at some primary documents of the period would indicate that in the 17th century the Christian mentality, even in its religious and Inquisitorial aspect, is not separated from scientific curiosity. Foucault points this out that the investigative procedures of the empirical sciences originate at least in part, with  the Inquisition; "the investigative procedure, an old fiscal and administrative technique, had developed above all with the reorganization of the Church [under Innocent III and others] and the increase of the princely states at the end of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."  Foucault continues to note that the "operating model of the  'sciences of nature' " was the Inquisition.  Inquests and information gathering grew as centralized power, both in the church and the state, grew. The scientific mentality grows out of Roman and Christian administrative techniques. From the beginning it is in service of Empire, exploitation and social control.

             The confluence of scientific, political and Inquisitorial power to be achieved by administration combined with investigation is quite evident, for instance, in documents like the 1577 "Questionnaire on the Spanish American Empire".  Written by the Church under Philip II, it was a questionnaire sent to the Crown officials, Governors, Mayors, and Judges in all of the  Spanish American colonies. [3] It was intended  to determine how better to control the colonies and determine the extent of resources and Indian populations that might be exploited. The questions this documents asks are ordered by the King.  The Spanish under Philip knew that they had largely murdered off most of the Indians and wanted too better administrate the area to insure a continuation of exploitable labor and thus the supply of gold, as was discussed earlier.  The document indicates the close relation of empirical inquiry to Christian imperialism as well as a growing capitalism. The document demands answers concerning who "was the discoverer and conqueror of said Province...and by whose order and mandate was it discovered". The concern is with property rights and ownership, priority and control.  The magistrates are to assess Indian populations and whether "in former times it had greater or lesser population".  They want to know the size of the labor force. The distance from Indian and Spanish towns is to be recorded.  It asks how close the Indian villages are to "centers of religious teaching" because religion was serving already to dampen and restrict the possible resistance of those forced into labor. It asks, interestingly, about "what dominion was exercised over [the Indians] ...in heather times...what tribute they paid...against whom they carried on warfare".  The Spanish consciously imitated the Incan or Aztec systems of tribute and taxation. They want to know how to keep the Indians enslaved, and proceed in a inquesting and scientific manner how to keep them in submission and healthy enough to continue to be exploitable. They want to know how power was exercised over them previously.

             Answers are sought as to where mines and minerals, gold and silver principally, are located. "Describe trade and commerce... by which the Spanish and Native inhabitants of the town support themselves". What crops can be grown, where are the roads; what is the water supply, what plants and animals are useful; and many other similar questions, all indicating the scientific need of the Spanish to gain as total a control over the colony as possible, not only as regards its native inhabitants, but its Spanish inhabitants as well. The goal of the scientific inquiry is power, administration and control.

             Speaking of the Inquisition and scientific techniques of inquiry Foucault's notes that  one should not "forget its political origin, its link with the birth of states and of monarchical sovereignty or with its later extension and its role in the formation of knowledge...The sciences of nature, were born, to some extent, at the end of the Middle Ages, from the practices of investigation that inspired both the Inquisition and the conquest of the "New World".[4] This fact, that science has primarily developed to accompany and expand the conquest, is not a thesis easily heard in our scientific society.

            The Journals of Lewis and Clark are latter day examples of the same tendency, but in this case Christianity has been largely sublimated under the mantle of American Manifest Destiny- the supremacy of civilization, trade and science. Jefferson wanted to assess the strength of the Native Americans,  as he says in one of his letters to Lewis, and to assess the exploitable wealth and resources of the Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Purchase was itself a farce. It was land claimed unrightfully by Napoleon. It was not Napoleon's to sell of Jefferson's to buy, yet both men proceeded as if the fictional 'property' of the 'West' were theirs to haggle over. [5] Jefferson's immediate purpose in exploring the land, at least in the known documents, was to steal the fur trade from the British and corrupt the Indians by immersing them in the fur trade, a practice which had already helped to indenture or eliminate the New England Indians. The Indians, by involvement in the fur trade, were induced to destroy their own food source and become dependent on white traders.  Jefferson wanted to use commerce to defeat the Indians of the West.

             He was also seeking, through Lewis and Clark to find the largely mythical Northwest Passage. The effort to locate the Northwest Passage, which had already been pursued by the English for a  hundred years by Jefferson's time, was primarily an effort to find new avenues to exploit the East, since the Spanish and Portuguese closed off the Mediteranean and the cape of Good Hope to the passage of the English and overland routes to Asia were too expensive. There is no viable Northwest Passage to speak of, though it is now possible with ice breakers to sail north of Canada from Greenland to Alaska. But the myth of the Northwest Passage, was, from its inception, a myth that serviced greed and the desire for empire, and which employed science to these ends. [6]

            The expedition of Lewis and Clark was to further commerce and empire. In his message to Congress in 1802, Jefferson claims that the "interest of commerce place the principle object [of the expedition] within the constitutional powers and care of Congress". [7] This is the public Jefferson, but in private, it is clear from Lewis's letter to Clark asking him to join the expedition, that Jefferson had in mind obtaining the entire Western watershed of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and beyond.  Lewis states the importance of secrecy for this mission. Lewis tells Clark that they are to impress the Indians with "a just idea of the rising importance of the [United] States". [8]  Lewis and Clark are told to give Indians presents, but to simultaneously assess their strength and number. This duplicity of offering trifles, while plotting the theft of Indian land would characterize most of US government policy toward the Native Americans. Scientific and commercial goals are to be pursued alongside reconnaissance missions to gather information that will be useful in destroying Indian culture and taking their lands. Jefferson writes that "commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce [the Indians] not war". But this appears to be a superficial comment as he later advocates 'extermination'.[9] Trade was the initial excuse behind which Jefferson harbored genocidal intentions. Trade was a dissimulation that eventually led to a policy of 'assimilate or die'. The intention of the US government towards the Indians of the West, was from the beginning to steal their resources, and since the Indians themselves were in the way of this wealth, killing Indians was the logical option.

             In his  first Inaugural address Jefferson invokes the "transcendent objects..[of the] honor, the happiness and the hopes of this beloved country", he envisions the American Empire, the "rising nation...advancing to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye". This is a religious or transcendentalist vision, typical of Manifest Destiny doctrine,  later reflected in the paintings of Albert Beirstadt, Thomas Cole, Frederick Church and others, and it leads Jefferson to advocate atrocities. Jefferson later writes that the government was obliged "to pursue them [the Native Americans] to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach".[10] George Washington, like Jefferson a slave owner, said the Natives were like wolves and deserved "total ruin".

             These views cannot be separated from the religious and scientific ideologies of the time.  The Lewis and Clark Expedition is an elaborate research project that combines the American nationalistic religion, scientific inquiry and imperialism in a seamless genocidal purpose.  The purposes of Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, in the 1820's were continued and expanded upon by both Canadian and American fur trappers from the Hudson's Bay company and then the Rocky Mountain Fur company, led by William Ashley and Jedediah Smith. Ashley was a capitalist with connections to both the  US military and the government. Smith shared his purposes. Both were "Mountain men", who in the myth were supposed to have been men who sought freedom from the shackles of civilization. But this is inaccurate. The mountain men, such as Smith and Ashley, were agents of companies that sought to exploit natural resources, eliminate Indians, and which sought and received government and military aid to exterminate Indians in order to better exploit the resources of the West. Jedidiah Smith and those who followed him into California in the 1820's and 30's would decimate the beaver population by the 1840's. Ashley and Smith were the precursors of military adventurers, such as Philip Sheridan, who would seek to eliminate the Buffalo population in order to wipe out the food supply of the Plains Indians. They were also the precursors of scientific men  such as Ferdinand Hayden, who was paid by the government to conduct a geological survey of much of the West, with the knowledge thus gained being used to for the profit of miners, railroad tycoons, and military engineers, who all wanted to take Indian resources and turn it to their profit.

            One can compare the the 1577 "Questionnaire on the Spanish American Empire" to the purposes of Jefferson and later "explorers". For instance. Benjamin Bonneville, a captain in the US army, was charged by the US government in 1831 to

explore the Rocky Mountains...with a view of ascertaining the nature and character of the   various tribes inhabiting those regions: the trade which might profitably be carried out with them: the    quality of the soil, the productions, the minerals, the natural history, the climate and geography    and typography as well as the Geology. [11]

He was also to note the number of Indians in the Tribes he encounters, how many warriors, their alliances, how they made war, what they ate when at war, their weapons, maneuvers, war parties, arms and any other military information that might be useful to the government of the US. In other words, Bonneville was a spy, against Indian nations most of which were not yet official enemies of the United States.

            The surveys, charts, maps, geological explorations, and other scientific and cultural information gathered by the Spanish at first and then the English and the Americans, had in view the conquest of a continent, and the exploitation of the lands and resources that belonged to the natives who lived in the Americas. Science and power worked hand in hand to  plan and execute the takeover of Native lands, the destruction of the natives who stood in the way, and the exploitation and, in some cases, like the buffalo or the whales, the decimation of many of the environments and species that were to be found on or around these lands.

             Many of the men celebrated by self-congratulatory histories of America, from Jefferson to Bonneville, helped accomplish many atrocities against animals and Indians in the name of the Christian god, science, 'discovery' and the inevitability of "Manifest Destiny". These examples supply evidence, once again, of the now familiar pattern of the transcendent will to power and knowledge generating atrocities. Jefferson, like Jedediah Smith, sought to expand human knowledge, which meant knowledge that serves white, European humans. The Indians were not human, they believed. The drive to spread an empire across the American continent required eliminating the history and peoples who already lived there. Jedediah Smith[12] and Jefferson were more than willing to exploit Native American knowledge to find out from Indians how to cross the Rocky Mountains in search of resources, but the gave their Indian informants nothing in return. On the contrary. They sought to eliminate the very people who helped them cross the continent. Those who explored the American west did so brutally, selfishly and without conscience. In the pursuit of knowledge and wealth, and in practice these were one and the same, they killed and committed atrocities to set up an empire of science and capital.

             Francis Bacon, writing  just as the scientific method is beginning to be standardized, expresses the same relationship of science to the Inquisition and the conquest of the world. He writes: "we must put nature to the rack and compel her to bear witness"[13]  Bacon had declared that 'knowledge is power'.The feminizing of nature, as if nature were a woman on a rack tortured to make her reveal her mysteries, is a grotesque image worthy of the Nazi Doctors, or of the current genetic profiteers who want to transform life itself into a factory system.  Bacon's image of a sadistic science is an image of torture that is already indicative  of an Imperialism that puts "truth" or the world 'as it is' in its cruelty, as Machiavelli called it, before human rights, or the world as 'it should be'.[14]   The will to power; the will to truth and the will to profit: three wills all too often confused as one will, must be circumscribed by the insistence on basic human and natural rights, without which science cannot but become monstrous. It was already monstrous when Bacon envisioned its main outlines. Bacon wrote:

  Let a man only consider what a difference there is between the life of man in the most civilized   provence of Europe and in the wildest most barbaric districts of [the Amaericas]; he will feel it be  great enough to justify the saying that 'man is god to man'"[15]

             Bacon thought European science and civilization made Europeans gods over Indians, to do with them what they wished. They killed them of course, in every direction.

 Only a free inquiry consistent with human rights and ethical values could restrain science from its destructive capabilities. No such science yet exists