The origins of European dominion over the New World


By: Steve Kelly

Newsflash! Property law in the U.S. is not rooted in the Constitution. America’s legal foundation for property law (possession), “anti-Indian law,” and the concept of nation-states is religious, not secular.

Where did this deep sense of entitlement, hierarchy, and dominion over unknown lands and its original sovereign peoples originate?

How was this wilderness continent, upon which its people depended – for millennia – for survival, end up being converted into “real estate” by a bunch of European Christian princes and pirates?

Most people who own real estate, work and live on this settler-colonized land we now call “America,” cannot answer the question. So, how can we discern a proper answer?

U.S. Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall, the fourth, and longest-serving chief justice (1801-1835), told us so – over 200 years ago.

The Doctrine of Christian Discovery originated in Europe in the 15th Century and is melded into the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent case, Johnson v. McIntosh (1823).

Careful decoding of the imaginative legal language in this seminal U.S. Supreme Court case reveals the fascinating history that informs present legal thinking and how we arrived at this place and time.

To grasp a deeper comprehension of how the age-old doctrines of settler-colonialism, religious discrimination and wars of conquest influence our lives today, Steven T. Newcomb’s book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (2007) is essential reading.

Old Testament stories provide the underpinnings, retold in the Roman Church’s 15th Century papal bulls. Centuries later, these Vatican policy documents helped to ‘legitimize’ the conceptual source of U.S. government legal doctrine that persists today to define nation-states, property, and anti-Indian law.

Legal precedents written in the early 19th Century remain hidden under opaque strata of human imagination, cultural conditioning, and consciousness.

In 1493, the bull Inter Caetera, issued by Pope Alexander VI, granted the monarchs of Spain ownership of roughly half the “discovered” world.  Representatives contracted by Spanish and Portuguese monarchs exploited that official church license to claim “discovered” lands, with extensive state military backing to guarantee success.

“English Royals” crafted their own (legal) rights of imagined ownership, certified by its homegrown Anglican form of “civilized Christianity.”  In 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert was granted a charter from the Crown authorizing him to “…discover and take possession of such remote, heathen, and arbarous lands, as were not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people…”

Decades later, the Crown granted others charters to conquer, loot and plunder unclaimed territory in the “New World.”

Comprehending the relationship between settler-colonialism, Old Testament stories, European monarchs and the Vatican’s holy decrees is essential to understanding the chaos and war in the world today. What is most important to understand is how the Doctrine of Christian Discovery impacts our world, here and now.

This 500-year-old religious dogma is still being used.  In the 21st century the U.S. Supreme Court continues to rationalize the “dominion” and “chosen people” dogma and mindset of the Old Testament and 15th century Christendom.

Property:

     The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying and disposing of a thing; ownership. In the beginning of the world, the Creator gave to man dominion over the earth, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air, and over every living thing. This is the foundation of man’s property in the earth… Prior occupancy of land and of wild animals gives to the possessor the property of them. Webster’s (1828).

This is the pathology of the hierarchical dominating mentality that moves all settler-colonizer societies. “Their god was on their side.”  Where have we heard that lately?  Enough of this nonsense!

Steve Kelly is an artist, gardener and environmental activist who lives in Bozeman, Montana. 

17 thoughts on “The origins of European dominion over the New World”

  1. Thanks, Mark. WWIII, if it materializes in the near future, will undoubtedly expand upon the “chosen people” doctrine driving war in occupied Palestine.

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    1. The matter of Land Patents seems to be in direct contravention of this doctrine – or possibly superseding it. Papers signed by the acting president if I recall correctly.

      What say you, Steve?

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      1. DSK,

        Surveyed lands followed these vast grants based on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, which is traceable in the west to the Old Testament (See: Story of Abraham (Abram), to 15th Century popes, to European royals, Crown-assigned agents, and then American courts, where a new variant was invented by the SCOTUS.

        IMO, the contravention is typically the anti-Constitutional interpretation, i.e., the omission of the Christian roots, usually pretended as “European.” It was not a secular mindset, but a Christian doctrine vs. “heathens” and pagans.

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        1. Those 2 (or if we take also the “original” then 3) “abrahamic” religions are fraud and criminal…

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          1. If you could prove intent, you might have a case for fraud. It is equally possible that it was all imagined, and believed metaphorically for long enough to, by common usage/consent, think it “real.” Most categories seem to happen like that, vs. the common belief in “objective truth.”

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  2. Buying off the local Sanhedrin and marrying the native royals into the fold is as vital as threat demonstrations, if not actual staged “wars”, for colonizing success; and the doctrines from on high that sell “natural” racism to the immigrant polloi are legal/moral rationale for such presumption. All in service to the exploitation of natural resources. Turning the natives into useful consumers is a latter stage. After all, if you are going to plumb the goodies under the ground, you need consumers to profit by such efforts. Getting hunter/gatherers to switch to GMO’s requires total span of control- and self-policing is the hallmark of a completely subjugated people.

    As long as the male of the species continues to organize in a top-down pyramidal power structure, this cycle will never end.

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  3. Steve, this is an outstanding post. Something not touched upon enough.

    IMO the leading candidate for the root of all evil is the Vatican. And the Jesuits are the model of a secret military force. Never forget the SS and CIA were modeled on the Jesuits. Most of my family are Catholics, and my mother is the one who pushed this idea on me early in life, having been terrorized by psychopathic nuns during the cold war in Catholic school.

    My present thinking is the Jews are misdirection from the institution above. 2000+ years of fat cat priests (Pope=Popular, the first celebrity, a star, someone to follow and see gallivanting around the streets), and never once was the Vatican looted. Think about that for a second. The Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, and created perpetual conflict on the European continent over trifling’s and nonsense. A handful of Jews vs. over a billion Catholics, please. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who is top dog. Rothchild = Red “shield” = shield – as in shielding the identity behind those holding the bank accounts, understand? The present day conflict is an excellent illustration of this principal, Jews are being hung out to dry in popular opinion. An older friend actually said to me that antisemitism is now fashionable, which a quick review of truther media would suggest is true.

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    2. Jews, Jesuits, they’re all the same set of worthless inbred psychopaths. That’s something many people, even “truthers”, don’t seem to get. They don’t mind having people place the blame on one specific group or society so long as they don’t connect the dots and realize they’re all fronts for the same criminal families that have run this realm for centuries. It’s no different to people blaming “Democrats” or “Republicans” for all of society’s ills.

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      1. This seems closer to it to me.. they would use all these groups as fronts, try to co-opt and control the top levels, and interlock them all.. although possibly they have deeper roots in one or another of them..

        And are there any factions left, or scheming against each other at the highest levels? Or has the top of the pyramid been completely unified under one family/ secret society, etc.. whether we know its/ their name or not?

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        1. I believe that at the very top of the food chain, there’s no real conflict amongst them. At most, you might have minor quarrels every now and then, but nothing serious enough that would cause any major glitches in the matrix.

          It’s why we haven’t had any real world wars going on lately, nor world governments heavily pushing back against insidious policies like lockdowns, vaccines, or corporate welfare. Otherwise, had there been any real conflict within the global elite, the response to every major passing crisis wouldn’t have been nearly unanimous.

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    3. I don’t accept the Catholics-rule-the-world idea, but this is based on trying to imagine what would happen if this were true:-

      Sufferings of Catholics would be compulsory teaching for all schoolchildren.

      Catholics would get huge sums of public money for made-up past suffering.

      Businesses and the media would be controlled by Catholics. Film, and TV programmes would constantly mention Catholics, Rome, etc.

      Abortion would be illegal. And this would be a reality in every state. And any politician, of any party, who durst to even criticize a right-to-life/anti-abortion position, would lose the next election. This is exactly what happens when any Congressman or Senator criticizes Israel.

      Catholicism and the wonders of their saints and popes would be taught in all schools and colleges.
      Anything Catholics wanted would be widely promoted.

      Criminal organizations, The Mafia, for example, would all be attributed to e.g. Jews or some other group.

      Catholics would have their own special passports, special legislation, huge numbers of their own little groups.

      There would be no talk in the media of paedophile priests. And anyone who DID, would have to profusely apologize. Talking about pedophile priests would be regarded as the same as talking about Jewish ritual murder. As it stands, not only do the media talk about it A LOT, but late night comedians repeatedly make jokes about paedophile priests. If Catholics were the most powerful, we might expect these same comedians to make jokes about the holocaust on late night TV, to the laughter of the audience.

      The Pope would NOT be kowtowing to the Jews on things like the holocaust, and there would be NO changes in the theological position of the Catholic Church, like there was with Vatican II, in which Jews were no longer to be regarded as killers of Christ.

      All modern history would be written from a Catholic viewpoint.

      Jesus Christ wouldn’t be an exclamation/swearword.

      There would be NO dispute over the public display of Christmas and even Easter decorations. There would be NO competition with public displays of menorahs for Hanakhah.

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  4. But who built the powerful Jesuit and Catholic institution? I seem to recall that most if not all of the past Pope’s were exposed as being genetic J’s.

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