american-holocaust

52 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTdeity, as was being done in Europe, with theocratic approval, at preciselythe same time that the Aztecs were sacrificing enemy warriors.Conversely, other social practices of certain native Americans in thepre-Columbian era-from methods of child rearing and codes of friendshipand loyalty, to worshiping and caring for the natural environmentappearfar more enlightened than do many of the dominant ideas that weourselves live with today. (Even in the sixteenth century the conqueringSpanish wrote "with undisguised admiration" of Aztec childrearing customs,notes historian J.H. Elliott. "Nothing has impressed me more," commentedthe Jesuit Jose de Acosta, "or seemed to me more worthy of praiseand remembrance, than the care and order shown by the Mexicans in theupbringing of their children.") 96 If these attitudes and behaviors varied inemphasis from one native group to another, one characteristic of America'sindigenous peoples that does seem almost universal, transcending thegreat diversity of other cultural traits, was an extraordinary capacity forhospitality. We have noted this in our discussion of the Iroquois and theIndians of California, but in fact, the native peoples' affectionate and fearlesscordiality in greeting strangers was mentioned by almost all the earliestEuropean explorers, from Vespucci in South America in 1502, wherethe Indians "swam out to receive us . . . with as much confidence as ifwe had been friends for years," to Cartier in Canada in 1535, where theIndians "as freely and familiarly came to our boats without any fear, as ifwe had ever been brought up together." 97And these were more than ceremonial, more than passing generosities.Indeed, without the assistance of the Indians in everything from donatedfood supplies to instruction in the ways of hunting and fishing and farming,the earliest European settlements, particularly in North America, couldnot have taken root. As Edmund S. Morgan has shown, with regard toRoanoke in the 1580s:Wingina [the local chief] welcomed the visitors, and the Indians gave freelyof their supplies to the English, who had lost most of their own when theTyger [their ship) grounded. By the time the colonists were settled, it wastoo late to plant corn, and they seem to have been helpless when it came toliving off the land. They did not know the herbs and roots and berries of thecountry. They could not or would not catch fish in any quantity, becausethey did not know how to make weirs. And when the Indians showed them,they were slow learners: they were unable even to repair those that the Indiansmade for them. Nor did they show any disposition for agriculture.Hariot admired the yields that the Indians got in growing maize; but theEnglish, for lack of seed, lack of skill, or lack of will, grew nothing forthemselves, even when the new planting season came round again. SuperiorEnglish technology appeared, for the moment at least, to be no technologyat all, as far as food production was concerned. 98