Saturday, June 9, 2007

Giving Praise?

I have found the book, Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick, to be fascinating. And mainly because it is so timely. Yes, history always repeats itself and humans seem doomed to perpetuate the same old evils, generation after generation…without fail. Here’s a bit from the book, “…led by several veterans of the of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, the Puritans fell upon a Pequot fortress on the Mystic River. After setting the Indian’s wigwams ablaze, the soldiers proceeded to shoot and hack to pieces anyone who attempted to escape the inferno. At the end of the day, approximately four hundred Pequot men, women and children were dead. “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same.” Bradford wrote, “and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God.””

This was in 1637. The book continues on and soon I’m reading about the King Philip War, another exercise in terror by the Puritans/Pilgrims. The word ‘genocide’ didn’t exist then, but it was being practiced.

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