This Day in Chickamauga History - January 8
The Doctrine of Discovery is unleashed upon Indigenous, non-Christians around the World.
1454, January 8: The Bull Romanus Pontifex (Nicholas V) January 8, 1454
https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/the-bull-romanus-pontifex-nicholas-v/#the-bull-romanus-pontifex-nicholas-v-january-8-1454
“Nicholas, bishop, servant of the servants of God. for a perpetual remembrance.
The Roman pontiff, successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Jesus Christ, contemplating with a father’s mind all the several climes of the world and the characteristics of all the nations dwelling in them and seeking and desiring the salvation of all, wholesomely ordains and disposes upon careful deliberation those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls. This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work.
The bull Romanus Pontifex of January 8, 1455, by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal, authorized “King Alfonso . . . to invade, search out, capture, vanquish,
and subdue all Saracens and pagans [as well as whatever] dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them.” Bull
Romanus Pontifex, supra note 57, at 23; see also 1 MARQUES, supra note 28, at 163.
1779, January 8: Letter from Governor Patrick Henry to Governor Richard Caswell Concerning the Reduction of the Chickamogga Settlements.
1793, January 8: The Chickamauga engaged in extensive diplomatic negotiation with Spanish colonial officials. Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, governor of the Natchez District, wrote to Baron de Carondelet, governor of Louisiana, to describe his meeting with Chickamauga chiefs, including Bloody Fellow, which took place between December 18, 1792 and January 1, 1793. Among items discussed was a request for a Spanish fort to be built on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. Bloody Fellow also complained bitterly about “the usurpations that the Americans have carried out on his lands and even more of the deception which they were dealt in the Hopewell Treaty.” Both parties displayed maps delineating territorial claims and boundaries. 6
6 Manuel Gayoso de Lemos to Baron de Carondelet, Natchez, January 8, 1793. Trans. in Charles A. Weeks, Pathsto a Middle Ground. (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2005), pp. 203-206. One such map, “Confederaciónde las tribus indias de los Montes Apalaches, ríos Ohio y Mississipi, ataque deCumberland por los Chiraquíes y Creek” can be found in the ArchivoHistórico Nacional, Madrid. Estado, MPD.20.