Byran Fischer: Pocahontas shows what could have been
After noting Pocahontas's conversion to Christianity, marriage to John Rolfe, and trip to England, Fischer writes:
In other words, she both converted and assimilated. She became both a Christian and an American (technically, of course, an Englishman). She melded into European and Christian civilization and made her identity as a Christian and an Englishman her primary identity. She was the first manifestation of what became our national slogan, “E Pluribus Unum,” “Out of many, one.”
At least Fischer finally acknowledges that Indians can become Christians. In his first column, he suggested the two groups were incompatible and alien to each other. Glad to see you alleviated your ignorance, Fischer.
We know Pocahontas's story only from the British viewpoint. We have no real idea what she thought or felt. Maybe she was too young and naive to realize what she was doing. Maybe she converted and got married only to keep the peace between the Indians and British. Maybe she did it to spite the Indians who considered her a troublemaker or a sellout. Maybe she pretended to accept Christianity because she loved John Rolfe and he insisted on it. Maybe she was a golddigger who married Rolfe only for his money and status. Maybe she considered herself an Indian first and a Christian second.
And maybe the British didn't care about her conversion. Maybe they paraded her around England as a showpiece, a performing pet, to prove they were getting along with the Indians. That way, their royal and commercial backers would support more expeditions to America.
Really, you have to be naive to think anyone had pure motives in this story. Since Fischer believes the Bible's fairy tales, he may be that gullible. The rest of us aren't.
Christian Indians were massacred
Even if Pocahontas's motives were pure and the results were ideal, a single case tells us nothing. Now that Fischer has recognized that Indians can become Christians, how about surveying the long history of Christian Indians? That would be much more revealing than this questionable anecdote.
An early example of Indians converting to Christianity was the "Praying Indians" of New England. To find out what happened to them, see Pilgrims Initiated Genocide, Praying Towns in After the Mayflower, and King Philip's War in After the Mayflower. Three words should suffice: Deer Island Massacre.
Nipmucs add history to memorial to Deer Island internment
"They were taken away in chains," said Mary Anne Hendricks, a Natick Nipmuc who lives in Quincy.
"They were loaded in horse-drawn carts and taken to Watertown," Ellis said. "From there, they were put in canoes" and taken to three ships in Boston Harbor that ferried the Natick Nipmucs to their internment on Deer Island.
"When the forced removals were complete, there were about 500 people out there," Ellis said. "Less than half survived. They were put out there to die.
Critics keep slamming Fischer
Once again, let's let the column's commenters tackle Fischer:
Assimilation works when you move to a different geographical area and adjust to their local customs. It doesn't work when other people come into your geographical area and force YOU to adjust to THEIR customs.
The Cherokee assimilated and converted to Christianity. How do you explain their tragic fate? Or will you even publish this comment since it contradicts what you've said?
Really. You wonder why Native American's did not agree to this "Assimilation" call it what it was. The colonist conquered the nation and ousted the Native American people. They took what was NOT there's and you make it sound so enticing. History is just text told by those that tell it. Nothing more.
Dr. Warren Throckmorton tells us more about what happened to Christian Indians, including the Cherokees mentioned above:
Bryan Fischer speaks with forked tongue
Fischer's thesis is most clearly devastated by the experience of the Cherokees in the south after the Revolutionary War. The Cherokees signed a treaty with the federal government in 1794 and then settled into a peaceful period where they built roads and villages. They welcomed Christian missionaries which led to many converts among the Cherokee in Northern Georgia and Tennessee. In his book on American Christianity, Noll describes "a slow but steady acceptance of the Christian faith." Noll continues the sad tale (in italics):
During the administration of President Andrew Jackson, however, the evangelism of the missionaries and the work of selective cultural adaptation by the Cherokees both received a fatal blow. After the discovery of gold in Northern Georgia about the time of Jackson's election in 1828, the lust of the White settlers for Cherokee land grew even stronger than before. Jackson and his agents for Indian affairs were eager to give it to them. The result was a forced removal of the Cherokees from Georgia to the West. Despite the fact that the Cherokees had adapted to American ways with remarkable skill, the removal proceeded with ruthless finality. The missionaries, who had come to the Native Americans as bearers of civilization as well as of Christianity, faced a terrible dilemma. They now were forced to watch their country, supposedly the embodiment of Christian civilization, turn violently against a people that had responded to their message.
The United States, bearing the gifts of Christian faith and republican politics, destroyed a tribal people that was working to accept those gifts. Some missionary spokesmen, unlike Worcester, Butler, and the Joneses, played a signal part in that destruction. Such spokesmen were good culture Christians. The agents of Andrew Jackson's Indian policy were democrats. Together they did the devil's work in the name of the Lord and of his "chosen country."
Noll's description is haunting. He repeatedly demonstrates that the Cherokee and other native peoples followed the way of Pocahontas but they were not rewarded with Fischer's "seamless and bloodless" assimilation. Instead, men, women and children were uprooted and brutally forced to march hundreds of miles, many to their deaths, because they were Native Americans. At the time, some Christians, seeing the evil, engaged in civil disobedience to try to prevent the forced relocation. In the present, why can't the American Family Association stop revising history and acknowledge this sad and painful chapter in our history?
Summing up Fischer's message to Indians:
"We gave you 500 years to convert and you haven't done it yet. Why not?! The Great White Father (God, the US government, Bryan Fischer) thinks you're spoiled, rotten children (unlike that good girl Pocahontas). And after all the civilization we gave you, too. Repent, sinners, lest ye be damned!"
For more on Fischer's hateful hypocrisy, see Fischer Defends Pro-Genocide Column and Fischer's Passion for Killing.
Below: "I died at 22, but at least I died a Christian!"