Basic HTML Version
Vignettes of American lndian
life reveal a Papago versus Pima
baseball game in southern Ari–
zona and Navajos modernizing
li fe on their reservation in northern
Arizona.
Coping with.
Culture Shock
in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.
God wamed: "Know therefore, that
tbe Lord your God
is
not giving you
this good land to possess because of
your
righteousness; for you are a
stubborn people" (Deuteronomy
9:6, RSV). God expected the people
whom He chose to be an example
and a help to other nations. He ex–
pected them to obey His laws.
"Hollow" Christianity
l ronically, many white Europeans
fted their homelands because they
detested religious suppression. Sup-
PlAIN TRUTH Febrvary 1973
posedly, they could not worship
God according to the Biblical for–
mula. Yet upon arriving in the New
World, they relentlessly determined
to proselyte the natives, even at gun
point.
The New World was looked upon
as "the land of the free," but white
settlers and their descendants me–
thodically broke almost every treaty
made and systematically destroyed
the bornes of the Indian braves. In–
dians broke many treaties, too,
which marked them as no more
righteous than the whites.
Today, it is popular to praise the
virtues ofminorities and equally un–
popular to point up their misdeeds.
Yet it is wholly unfair to extoll or
condemn minorities or majorities on
the basis of numbers alone.
A
fairer metbod of evaluating in–
dividuals and even societies is found
in the wise saying of Jesus: "By their
fruits you shall know them."
The point being made is that both
whites and Jndians are guilty of a
whole series of mistakes, for which
botb groups have suffered in various
ways. And
in
the area of religioo
45