Conquest Justification through Political Mythology

William B. Hesseltine stated that “attachment to an ideas, a cause, or a county, when such attachment calls for the sacrifice of security and life, blinds the person feeling that attachment to whatever virtue there may be in the opposing…” (Venebles XI). The most toxic political myth that has been used for the justification of conquest in America is one that spread quickly in the nineteenth century and led to and consequent population spread westward across the continent. This was the European idea of their religious endowment to the land of the “New World”. I consider this the most toxic political myth, because it was used to legitimize oppression toward Natives long after the initial conquest of America.

The original religiously influenced form of justification came with the Requerimiento. This proclamation required the Natives to convert, saying if they chose otherwise, their families and property would be taken. After this came the Encomienda, which was the exchange of the Indian’s land and labor for Christian instruction (Venebles 6). This idea seemed more ethical than the Requerimiento, especially to Bartholome de Las Casas who proclaimed that “Men want to be taught, not forced” (Venebles 24).

England soon became the most powerful entity in the “New World”, and the Puritans considered their success to be in part due to “God clearing the countryside for his chosen people” with illnesses. (Venebles 88).  Although the Puritan ideas served as a basis for early oppression, the major justification for violence came in the nineteenth century, when the natural laws promised by the God of the Enlightenment were interpreted into the idea of manifest destiny. This idea furthered the thought that it was the destiny of Americans to expand its control of the North American continent, and fulfill their God’s moral mission,” by spreading democracy and their superior ideas and technology across the continent to the west. Along with spreading democracy and religion, a multitude of natural resources were desired by those who pushed westward to settle on native lands.

The “doctrine of discovery” was a justification that was used in Spain’s conquest, and further legitimized in court who owned the land of the continent. In 1823, the Supreme Court Case of Johnson v. Macintosh ruled that the land that had been sold by a Native American to Johnson was not to be recognized, because the “discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy” (Prucha 35). This notion of “discovery” allowed several subsequent court rulings, which methodically removed the Indians from their lands for the spread of Europeans and their descendants. 

Prucha, Francis Paul. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of  Nebraska, 1975. 

Venebles, Robert W. American Indian History. Vol. 1. Santa Fe: Clear Light, 2004.