31. Champlain learns how not to treat Indigenous peoples

Amongst the Caribbean islands of the Spanish West Indies and in New Spain (Mexico), Champlain learns what not to do when in the future he establishes the first French settlement in Canada.

Throughout the history of Indian-White relations in North America, there have always been two impulses afoot. Extermination and assimilation.

So wrote Professor Thomas King of the University of Guelph in his landmark book “The Inconvenient Indian.”

King noted that the assimilation of “lesser beings” had its source in interpretation of Aristotle’s “Natural Law.” To balance this thinking, the Greek philosopher offered another concept which he called the “Natural Slave.” He defined these two laws in his work “Politics.”

…those who are as different [from other men] as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned.

Of course, just leaving the Indians alone with their own culture and language was not an option.

The bright and darks sides of the Enlightenment

Aristotle’s Politics directly affected the treatment of the Indigenous peoples of Latin America. The Valladolid Debate (1550 - 1551) took place between two Spanish philosophers, Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. It was an attempt to reconcile their opposing views of the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of New Spain.

Casas was deeply troubled by Spanish treatment of Indians and Black slaves in the Caribbean Pearl industry. Sepúlveda rejected that view arguing that slavery was justified because they were subhumans.

The Spanish rulers arranged the Debate to answer the question, “Was it was legally justifiable to wage war (a Just War) against the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially Latin and South America?”