Puritan Ideals In John Winthrop's Settlers

Even those who are only passingly familiar with the horrific events that occurred during the colonization of the Americas know that the perpetrators betrayed the basic sense of compassion inherent in Christianity. However, many settlers claimed the “new” land in the name of God and asserted that they acted in perfect harmony with biblical ideals. With similar intentions, John Winthrop and his fellow settlers travelled to Massachusetts Bay to establish a colony based on Puritan ideals. While on the way to the new colony, Winthrop delivers a sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity" to dictate the ideals his Puritan colony would have to follow to please God. Indeed, Winthrop’s sermon suggests that his guidelines should be considered appropriate
Naturally, once these people came into a new a land they sought to create a similar societal structure and place themselves at the top. Heckewelder's account of the first encounter between the Lenni Lenape clan and the Dutch shows that the Dutch's sinister motive is evident from the start. After introducing alcohol to the clan (whether with the intent to be courteous or to get them drunk), the Dutch worm their way into the grace of the clan with gifts (Heckewelder 70). Next, the Dutch return after some time and ask for as much land as they could cover with the hide of a bullock so that they can sustain themselves (Heckewelder 70). The clan agrees to this modest request and the Dutch return the favor with a trick by cutting the hide "up to a long rope... so that by the time the whole was cut up, it made a great heap... It was drawn out into circular form, and being closed at its ends, encompassed a large piece of ground," (Heckewelder 71). The Dutch evidently believe that if they did not trick the Native Americans out of their land then the Dutch would lose their opportunity to be "high and eminent in power," and so confirm their status over the Native Americans (Winthrop 166). Sadly, De Las Casas provides a more chilling account of the Europeans' creation of a societal divide between the Native Americans and themselves. Similarly to the Dutch in Heckewelder's piece, "the Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will" (De Las Casas 39). Instead, the Spanish "attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged, nor pregnant women nor women in childbed" (De Las Casas 40). Not satisfied with the order of things, the Spanish continue and "took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers,