US Immigrant and Ethnic History

US Immigrant and Ethnic History

Racialization of Savagery

According to Takaki the rise of capitalism as a fundamental dimension of English colonialism coincided with the emergence of a radically new conceptualization of the Native as part of God's created order. Takaki claimed that once it became necessary for the indigenous peoples to be removed from the lands that they occupied, the idea that they could be saved from their debased existence by becoming aware of the essence of their own humanity disappeared. What replaced this idea was a notion that "race" acted as the condition for the possibility of salvation. Now, instead of the Indians being conceived of as human beings who were merely culturally primitive, and thus redeemable, they came to be understood as beings whose racial characteristics marked them as creatures beyond the possibility of redemption. Quite simply, they were thought of as "lower beings" whose natures were inherently adulterated, and for whom "Christian moral principles would not apply.”

Takaki also claimed that this "racialization of savagery" provided the religious rationalization for the barbaric removal of the Indians from the land that they had occupied for so long:

English settlers usually gained dominance over Native Americans, forcing them into the frontier areas or killing them off. Few whites seemed concerned about the genocidal consequences of this brutal expansion. It is often noted that some English settlers relied on friendly Native Americans to survive the first devastating years, but the new settlers soon turned on their neighbors. In New England, for example, a war with the Pequots in 1637 ended when whites massacred several hundred inhabitants of a Pequot village and sent the survivors into slavery.

It is often thought that there was no attempt by the English settlers to enslave the Native peoples of America in order to facilitate their own capitalist expansion. Although this is not the case, it is true that American Indians never represented more than 5 to 10 percent of the slave population at any given time. What prevented the English from enslaving the vast majority of the Natives was their powerlessness to control these indigenous peoples without killing them. Most often, if captured the Indians would escape and disappear into the wilderness that they knew so well.

The inability of the English to control most of the Native peoples by making them slaves left the colonialists in a peculiar position. Although the removal and extermination of the Indians allowed for the acquisition of the land that was needed for capitalist expansion, it also left the English with an inadequate labor force. In order to supply the laborers needed to work the land that had been acquired, the colonialists initially turned not to slavery but to a system of indentured servitude. This was especially true in the northern colonies where the settlers depended heavily on the use of indentured servants for labor. These engages, who defined a major part of the non-slave labor force during the colonial period, "contracted" with the land owners to work ...