Let’s Get Racist: The Mark of Cain

This post is obvious satire.

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” But the LORD said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. Genesis 4:13-15

If you’re familiar with America’s racist history, you’re somewhat religious, and you’re old enough to actually remember, there were some interesting doctrines preached in Protestant churches to justify the slavery of black Africans. Today, those doctrines have fallen by the wayside in all but a few Mormon cults, and the Aryan Nation.

The first was the Mark of Cain. It’s the idea that the first murderer in human history was cursed with black skin1 by God, because skin that’s the same color as the dirt from which God made man – that is also resistant to sunburn, aging, and skin cancer – is such a huge inconvenience…you know?

The second was the Curse of Ham. It’s called the Curse of Ham, incorrectly and on purpose (because you need to get as many brown people under that umbrella as possible), but actually it’s the curse on his son Canaan. And it was Canaan that settled the land of Canaan we’re all so familiar with. The land of Canaan where Abraham settled. The land of Canaan the Israelites returned to and conquered after their enslavement in Egypt. The land that makes up modern day Israel which is so obviously not in Africa.

Ham is often billed as the “father of the black race” because according to the bible, most of his descendants settled Africa after Noah’s flood. The names of some of those sons of Ham were “Mizraim” and “Cush” (Gen 10:6). In the bible, the Hebrew word for “Cush,” is often translated as “Ethiopian,” or “black” and is used to refer to anyone of black African descent. Mizraim is the Hebrew word for Egypt.

“Can the Ethiopian [Cushite] change his skin, or the leopard his spots? … ” Jeremiah 13:23

It’s the first of these false doctrines I’ll be addressing, and explaining why the concoctors of this myth could have been on to something, if they didn’t have it so completely ass-backwards.

Some things to note about the Curse on Cain:

1. Cain would be driven from the presence of the Lord and become a wanderer (explorer).
2. Cain received a mark from God so that people wouldn’t kill him, or would be afraid to kill him.
3. Anyone who killed Cain or his descendants, would receive seven times the vengeance met on them. Meaning that for any one of Cain’s people killed, at least seven of your people get killed.
4. Cains descendants were always inventing shit, usually shit used to kill other people.

Now, does that sound like black people to you? Let’s address each of these points.

1 & 2. First Contact

I will provide historical accounts of first contact between white people, and brown people of many different civilizations.

Each first contact that took place was from Europeans wandering from their homes looking for new lands to conquer.

Arawaks of the Bahamas

Arawak woman by John Gabriel Stedman

Christopher Columbus was the first to make contact with the Arawak Indians2 of the Bahamas. Fortunately for us, Columbus kept an extensive log of what happened during the expedition. His original logs were written for the King and Queen of Spain, which he gave to the royals upon his return to Barcelona in 1493. Queen Isabella ordered a copy made of Columbus’ logs which today is called the “Barcelona Copy.” The Barcelona Copy was returned to Columbus, who then took it with him on his second expedition to the Indies. When he died, it was passed on to his son Fernando. An abstract of this copy was made by Spanish Priest, Bartolome de las Casas, 24 years after Columbus had died. It is from this second copy, that I quote.

His original logs, and the Barcelona Copy were eventually lost, but we still have the abstract, written by Las Casas.

It should be noted that Columbus’ log begins with, “In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ…”

“In the morning, I ordered the boats to be got ready, and coasted along the island toward the north- northeast to examine that part of it, we having landed first at the eastern part. Presently we discovered two or three villages, and the people all came down to the shore, calling out to us, and giving thanks to God. Some brought us water, and others victuals: others seeing that I was not disposed to land, plunged into the sea and swam out to us, and we perceived that they interrogated us if we had come from heaven. An old man came on board my boat; the others, both men and women cried with loud voices – ‘Come and see the men who have come from heavens. Bring them victuals and drink.’ There came many of both sexes, every one bringing something, giving thanks to God, prostrating themselves on the earth, and lifting up their hands to heaven … I do not, however, see the necessity of fortifying the place, as the people here are simple in war-like matters, as your Highnesses will see by those seven which I have ordered to be taken and carried to Spain in order to learn our language and return, unless your Highnesses should choose to have them all transported to Castile, or held captive in the island. I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased. Christopher Columbus, Sunday, October 14, 1492

They chose to name the first island on which they landed “San Salvador.” Columbus seized seven of the people he encountered by force, to take them back to Spain. The very next day, two of them escaped.

“A large canoe was alongside the Niña, and one of the men of the island of San Salvador, who was on board jumped into the sea and got into the canoe. In the middle of the night before, another swam away behind the canoe, which fled, for there never was boat that could have overtaken her, seeing that in speed they have a great advantage. So they reached the land and left the canoe. Some of my people went on shore in chase of them, but they all fled like fowls and the canoe they had left was brought alongside the caravel Niña, whither, from another direction, another small canoe came, with a man who wished to barter with skeins of cotton. Some sailors jumped into the sea, because he would not come on board the caravel, and seized him. I was on the poop of my ship, and saw everything. So I sent for the man, gave him a red cap, some small beads of green glass, which I put on his arms, and small bells, which I put in his ears, and ordered his canoe, which was also on board, to be returned to him. I sent him on shore, and presently made sail to go to the other large island which was in sight to the westward. I also ordered the other large canoe, which the caravel Niña was towing astern, to be cast adrift; and I soon saw that it reached the land at the same time as the man to whom I had given the above things. I had not wished to take the skein of cotton that he offered me. All the others came round him and seemed astonished, for it appeared clear to them that we were good people. The other man who had fled might do us some harm because we had carried him off, and for that reason I ordered this man to be set free and gave him the above things, that he might think well of us, otherwise, when your Highnesses again send an expedition, they might not be friendly. Christopher Columbus, Monday, October 15, 1492

In an act of deception, Columbus gave a trader gifts and sent him back to the island, so the inhabitants would think the Spaniards were not dangerous, and to offer a conflicting story to the man who had been kidnapped and later escaped.

Aztec Empire

The prevailing theory since the sixteenth century regarding first contact between the Moctezuma II (Aztec Emperor) and Hernan Cortés (Spanish Conquistador) was that Moctezuma considered Cortes to be the prophesied return of Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec god. It’s what I was taught in history class, but keep in mind I went to a private Christian school that also taught the civil war was not about slavery, but “states rights” and that the earth was 6000 years old. Nevertheless, wrong or right, it has basis in truth, which the Hopi first contact will add credence to.

A recorded speech from Moctezuma II to Cortes is where most of the support from this idea comes from, but critics think these are post-conquest histories made to appeal to the hubris of the then Spanish rulers.

Funny enough, if you watch The Road to El Dorado, you see these historical theories alluded to throughout the film, which would fly way over the heads of the intended child audience.

Much of the idea of Cortés’ being seen as a deity can be traced back to the Florentine Codex written down some 50 years after the conquest. In the Codex’s description of the first meeting between Moctezuma and Cortés, the Aztec ruler is described as giving a prepared speech in classical oratorial Nahuatl, a speech which, as described in the codex written by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún and his Tlatelolcan informants, included such prostrate declarations of divine or near-divine admiration as:

“You have graciously come on earth, you have graciously approached your water, your high place of Mexico, you have come down to your mat, your throne, which I have briefly kept for you, I who used to keep it for you.”

and:

“You have graciously arrived, you have known pain, you have known weariness, now come on earth, take your rest, enter into your palace, rest your limbs; may our lords come on earth.” Quetzalcoatl, Wikipedia

Hopi Native Americans

In Hopi culture, “Pahana” represents a white prophet, often called the “Lost White Brother of the Hopi.”  Upon first contact with the Spanish Hopis put them to the test to see whether or not they were gods.

The legend of the Pahana seems intimately connected with the Aztec story of Quetzalcoatl, and other legends of Central America. This similarity is furthered by the liberal representation of Awanyu, the horned or plumed serpent, in Hopi and other Puebloan art. This figure bears a striking resemblance to figures of Quetzacoatl, the feathered serpent, in Mexico. In the early 16th century, both the Hopis and the Aztecs believed that the coming of the Spanish conquistadors was the return of this lost white prophet. Unlike the Aztecs, upon first contact the Hopi put the Spanish through a series of tests in order to determine their divinity, and having failed, the Spanish were sent away from the Hopi mesas.

One account has it that the Hopi realized that the Spanish were not the Pahana based upon the destruction of a Hopi town by the Spanish. Thus when the Spanish arrived at the village of Awatovi, they drew a line of cornmeal as a sign for the Spanish not to enter the village, but this was ignored. While some Hopi wanted to fight the invaders, it was decided to try a peaceful approach in the hope that the Spanish would eventually leave. However, Spanish accounts record a short skirmish at Awatovi before the Hopis capitulated. Frank Waters records a Hopi tradition that the Spanish did ignore a cornmeal line drawn by the Hopis and a short battle followed. Hopi Mythology, Wikipedia

Mayan Empire

Like the Aztecs and the Hopi, the Mayans also had a feathered serpent deity. He was named “Kukulkan,” and though this time the serpent god didn’t have much to do with first contact, here’s how it went:

On 30 July 1502, during his fourth voyage, Christopher Columbus arrived at Guanaja, one of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras. He sent his brother Bartholomew to scout the island. As Bartholomew explored the island with two boats, a large canoe approached from the west, apparently en route to the island. The canoe was carved from one large tree trunk and was powered by twenty-five naked rowers. Curious as to the visitors, Bartholomew Columbus seized and boarded it. He found it was a Maya trading canoe from Yucatán, carrying well-dressed Maya and a rich cargo that included ceramics, cotton textiles, yellow stone axes, flint-studded war clubs, copper axes and bells, and cacao. Also among the cargo were a small number of women and children, probably destined to be sold as slaves, as were a number of the rowers. The Europeans looted whatever took their interest from amongst the cargo and seized the elderly Maya captain to serve as an interpreter; the canoe was then allowed to continue on its way. This was the first recorded contact between Europeans and the Maya. Spanish Conquest of the Yucantan, Wikipedia

Benin Empire

Today, a common phrase in southern Nigeria is “Oyinbo na Spirit”, that is to say, “White people are spirits” or “ghosts”. It’s used both as a pejorative of disgust with western culture, and as compliment or amazement at western technological prowess.

Dates of first contact between Portugal and Benin are debated to be 1458, 1472, or 1486 a.d. First contact was probably made in 1472, but the first officially recorded contact was by João Afonso de Aveiro in 1486, who died there (probably of Malaria – later English expeditions lost as many as 4 and 5 men a day to Malaria because the Europeans did not have a natural immunity).

Future study of the Portuguese records might yield clearer information, but here’s the little we do know:

One of these representatives, Duarte Pires reported home to the King of Portugal:

“Sir when these priests arrived in Benin, the delight of the King of Benin was so great that I do not know how to describe it. So it was that at the end of one year, the king gave his son and some of this noblemen, the greatest in his kingdom, so that they might become Christians. And also he ordered a church to be built in Benin, and they made them Christians, straight-way. And also they are teaching them to read, and your highness will be pleased to know, that they are very good learners.”

Oral tradition recorded a more puzzled reaction from the average West African:

“When the first Europeans came we only heard that some ‘white things’ have come. When we saw them we were afraid, because we had never seen white human beings. To think them as animals was also strange, because we have never seen animals that walk on two legs like us.”Nigeria & West Africa, Wendy McElroy

“The king of Benin sent as ambassador to King João one of his captains, a negro from a seaport town called Gwato, because he desired to learn more about Europe, whose people were regarded there [in Benin] as an unusual novelty.” 1486 Ruy de Pina: Discovery of Benin – Tr. from J.W. Blake, Europeans in West Africa (London, 1942),  vol. 1, 78-9 (online source)

Kingdom of Kongo

Nzinga a Nkuwu, King of Kongo

In Kongo as well, you see a willingness to trade and peaceful interaction with Europeans.

In 1483, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão sailed up the uncharted Congo River, finding Kongo villages and becoming the first European to encounter the Kongo kingdom. During his visit, Cão left his men in Kongo while taking Kongo nobles and bringing them to Portugal. He returned with the Kongo nobles in 1485. At that point the ruling king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, converted to Christianity. Cão returned to the kingdom with Roman Catholic priests and soldiers in 1491, baptizing Nzinga a Nkuwu as well as his principal nobles, starting with the ruler of Soyo, the coastal province. At the same time a literate Kongo citizen returning from Portugal opened the first school. Nzinga a Nkuwu took the name of João I in honor of Portugal’s king at the time, João II.Kingdom of Kongo, Wikipedia

Records of first contact between darker skinned people and white people is hard to come by, but from all that I was able to find, and all that I can remember from history class, the dark skinned people – upon first contact – took white men to either be gods, spirits, something to fear, or an interesting curiosity.

Sounds a lot like, “Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.”

On the other side, the white men viewed the darker skinned ethnicities as savages, primitives, animals, and their objects of violence and enslavement.

3. Seven times vengeance

To address point three, every civilization I listed above was destroyed by Europeans within weeks and years of first contact.

• The Taíno Arawaks of the West Indies were completely exterminated by 1609 a.d., going from a population of three million, to zero in 117 years.
• The Aztecs were slaughtered by Hernan Cortés, to the point where we’re unable to translate much of their language, because all their libraries and codices were systematically destroyed and burned.
• The Hopi sovereign territory, hunting grounds and burial grounds are now relegated to Indian Reservations.
• The Mayans were conquered without provocation by Pedro de Alvarado, one of the generals of Hernan Cortés.
• Benin City was razed to the ground by the British in 1897 as a response to the King defending himself against them previously.
• During the Berlin Conference of 1884, Africa was divided among the Europeans by German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark in a peaceful back-room deal among European leaders to avoid war among European nations. The Kingdom of Kongo was colonized by the Belgians and was later known as the Belgian-Congo, where the indigenous people were put into forced labor and were mutilated if they did not meet slave-production quotas.

The Spanish Priest I mentioned earlier, Bartoleme de las Casas, who provides us with the most commonly cited copy of Columbus’ logs, who himself was a settler of Hispaniola and Cuba, wrote many other books. One was titled, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.

He was formerly in charge of a plantation with Indian slaves, but his stay and participation in the conquests of Hispaniola and Cuba changed his heart, and he renounced slavery and returned to Spain to campaign against the injustices of slavery.

He writes:

“We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.”

“With my own eyes I saw Spaniards cut off the nose and ears of Indians, male and female, without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it. …Likewise, I saw how they summoned the caciques and the chief rulers to come, assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were taken captive and burned.”

“They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.”

“..there were 60,000 people living on this island [Hispaniola], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it…”

“I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.”

Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack lasted two hours and resulted in 2500 dead, and 1000 wounded. America responded by entering World War II with an official congressional declaration of War upon Imperial Japan. A large part of that war involved the firebombing of Japanese (and European) cities and two Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

90,000 – 146,000 people, died in Hiroshima alone, about half of which died on the first day. About 30,000 – 80,000 died in Nagasaki.

3500×77 = 269,500. 146,000+80,000 = 226,000. On the surface, this means nothing, but these numbers will be explained in the next example.

16 hours after the first bomb on Hiroshima, U.S. President Harry Truman called for Japan’s surrender saying:

“Expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Harry S. Truman

9-11

On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers – 15 of whom were citizens of Saudi Arabia, 2 from the UAE, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon – flew four commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and one that ended up being a failed attempt – maybe on the White House. Killing about 3000 in total. In response, the USA invaded Afghanistan and Iraq…not Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Lebanon, or the UAE all of whom are ostensibly US allies. But somebody had to pay…

As of my writing this, 4491 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, and between 151,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis. In 2013, a research team from the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser University and Mustansiriya University, in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Health put the number at about 500,000. These are people who died between 2003 and 2011 as a direct or indirect result of the U.S. invasion.

Lamech, Cain’s sixth generation descendant – and also a murderer – wasn’t kidding when he said, “If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.” (Genesis 4:24)

2977 Americans killed. 2977×77 = 229,229 dead Arabs required as vengeance. Yep, that’s within 151,000 and 1,000,000. Though it seems the descendants of Cain have increased the vengeance coefficient since the times of Lamech.

If any lesson is to be learned here, it’s that you must never, EVER, kill white people.

4. Always inventing things to kill people

If you read about the line of Cain you see that they were constantly inventing things.

• Cain himself built the first city (Gen 4:17).
• Jabal invented tents and animal husbandry (Gen 4:20).
• Jubal (Jabal’s brother) invented stringed instruments and pipes (Gen 4:21).
• Tubal-Cain was the inventor of metallurgy, and crafted tools out of bronze and iron (Gen 4:22).

Medieval Jewish Rabbi, Shlomo Yitzchaki (more commonly known as Rashi), translates the meaning behind Tubal-Cain as “he who spices the craft of Cain,” the craft of Cain being murder. In his commentary on Genesis 4, he notes that Tubal-Cain “spiced and refined the Cain’s craft to make weapons for murderers.”

We can thank the spirit of Tubal-Cain for the the rifle, the machine gun, grenades, missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet a thousand times over…or did black people invent any of those things?

The line of Seth who were shepherds, were content with their God and with nature. In contrast, the line of Cain was always searching and never content, ever yearning to bend nature and other men to his will.

What was the mark?

Fortunately, for researchers who really wants to get to the bottom of this mystery, the curse on Cain wasn’t the last time God put a mark on anyone. For the next example, look no further than the story of Miriam and Moses.

Moses, according to the biblical story, was raised by Egyptian royalty, and according to Josephus was responsible for conquering the nearby Ethiopian city of Hermopolis. In the book of Numbers, we see Moses marrying possibly his second wife, who is a Cushite (Ethiopian).

His sister, Miriam, has a racist response to this interracial marriage between a Hebrew and an Ethiopian, and speaks against Moses. In response, God himself strikes her with leprosy.

“Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?” they asked. “Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” And the LORD heard this. (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.) At once the LORD said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Come out to the tent of meeting, all three of you.” So the three of them went out. Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When the two of them stepped forward, he said, “Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them. When the cloud lifted from above the tent, Miriam’s skin was leprous –it became as white as snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had a defiling skin disease, and he said to Moses, “Please, my lord, I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Numbers 12:1-11

Here we see the very next time in the bible God cursed someone by marking their skin, he turned it “white as snow.” Let that sink in.

Conclusion

It’s one thing to be racist and another to be an idiot, but they do tend to go hand in hand. The men who invented the original doctrine of the Mark of Cain were certifiably incompetent, because – as I’ve shown – they can’t even get their own theory right.

But ask them to invent some new shit to kill people, and you can be sure they’ll dot every “i” and cross every “t.”

Racism is stupid, but to repurpose the immortal words of Union General, William Tecumsah Sherman, “[Racism] is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

Happy Columbus Day!