Between 1500 and late 1800s colonial encounters occurred across the Americas when European powers arrived on foreign lands occupied by Indigenous people. The colonists attempting to control the lands and the Indigenous people who inhabited them both held complicated ideologies of morality and religion. Steve Inskeeps’ Jacksonland describes the treaties that undermined the Indigenous population formed through Andrew Jackson’s false sense of what was just and moral. In A Land So Strange Andres Resendez focuses on the colonist Cabeza de Vaca’s religious beliefs which led to a predetermined judgment of the Indigenous people and his duty as a colonist to free them through conversion to Catholicism even if they would lose their own freedom in the …show more content…
Spanish conquistadors were driven to the new world in hopes of cultivating the rich stores of resources. In their encounters with the Indigenous population the underlying belief held by the Spanish was that the Indigenous people whom they referred to as “Indians” would be better off enslaved and under Spanish control. This is seen when Cabeza de Vaca encountering Indigenous people for the first time states, “Indians do not have the capacity to remain by themselves.” This statement by Cabeza de Vaca reflects the prevailing misguided morality of the Spanish colonists which lead to the enslavement and removal of Indigenous freedom. This misguided sense of morality led to the enslavement of Indigenous people by the …show more content…
As described in Jacksonland these treaties were used to dismiss the property rights of the Indigenous people and separate them from the white settlers. Treaties such as those negotiated by General William Harrison, the Governor of the Indiana Territory, purchased millions of acres of land for small prices. Treaties were the document used by men like Andrew Jackson to exhibit their ideologies and values and the removal of Indigenous property rights was seen as beneficial to both parties and therefore ingrained in the morality of the Euro-Americans. The common belief held by Euro-Americans including President Jackson, as presented in Jacksonland, was that the removal of Indigenous people away from white colonists was morally sound benefiting both the Indigenous people and the white settlers even if it meant a denial of Aboriginal property rights. An example of this rejection of Indigenous property rights is seen in the compact formed between Washington and Georgia, where a provision was accepted stating that Georgian land must be completely free of Indigenous people. The moral tone of the Georgians was reminiscent of other Euro-Americans who claimed that they wanted Indigenous people removed, only because they wanted to help them. Congressman Lumpkin, exemplified this moral view when he