How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
In the journal of the Royal Geographic Society, Fawcett wrote that "the wretched policy which created a slave trade, and openly encouraged a reckless slaughter of the indigenous Indians, many of them races of great intelligence," had imbued the Indians with "a deadly vengeance against the stranger" and constituted one of "the great dangers of South American exploration." (8.21)
Fawcett is forward thinking for his time—and for today's time. He realizes that one reason some of the South American natives are violent against explorers is that explorers were once violent against them.
Quote #5
Many theologians debated whether these dark-skinned, scantily clad peoples were, in fact, human; for how could the descendants of Adam and Eve have wandered so far, and how could the biblical prophets have been ignorant of them? (14.17)
These theologians seem to forget that Adam and Eve themselves were the most scantily clad of them all. And considering they lived in a time before SPF protection, they were probably pretty dark-skinned themselves. Womp womp.
Quote #6
In the process, however, [Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican friar], contributed to a conception of the Indians that became an equal staple of European ethnology: the "noble savage." According to Las Casas, the Indians were "the simplest people in the world," "without malice or guile," "never quarrelsome or belligerent or boisterous," who "are neither ambitious nor greedy, and are totally uninterested in worldly power." (14.18)
Both the road to hell and the road to harmful racial stereotypes are paved with good intentions. Um, or, well, at least sometimes. Most of the time the intentions are just pretty bad.