The Christian Genocide of Native Americans: What the Church Won’t Admit

“The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.”

— David E. Stannard, American Holocaust

Introduction: Blood Beneath the Cross

When genocide is mentioned, most minds flash to the Holocaust, Stalin’s gulags, or Rwanda’s rivers choked with corpses. Rarely does the conversation include what happened in the Americas from the late 15th century onward—a continent-wide extermination that claimed tens of millions of Indigenous lives.

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This historical silence is not accidental. It is the result of centuries of religious justification, theological whitewashing, and colonial myth-making. At the heart of this silence lies a brutal truth: the Christian Church—especially the Catholic hierarchy—played a central, sanctifying role in one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed.

In American Holocaust, historian David E. Stannard uncovers the religious foundations of this slaughter, exposing how Papal Bulls, Christian supremacy, and missionary zeal became instruments of genocide. The conquest of the New World was not simply a political or economic endeavor. It was a holy war.

Papal Bulls and the Birth of Holy Genocide

The Doctrine of Discovery: Christianity’s License to Kill

In the mid-15th century, a series of Papal Bulls (official decrees from the Pope) laid the groundwork for centuries of conquest and extermination. These include:

• Dum Diversas (1452) – Pope Nicholas V authorized the Portuguese king to "invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever" and to reduce them "to perpetual slavery."

• Romanus Pontifex (1455) – Reaffirmed the right to enslave non-Christians and take their lands.

• Inter Caetera (1493) – Pope Alexander VI granted Spain divine authority over newly discovered lands in the Americas, instructing them to convert, conquer, and subdue Indigenous peoples.

Together, these Bulls constitute what is now called the Doctrine of Discovery—a legal-religious framework used to justify the seizure of non-Christian lands and the subjugation or extermination of their inhabitants.

The logic was chillingly simple: non-Christians had no legal rights. The Pope, as Christ’s representative on Earth, granted Christian monarchs the divine right to kill, enslave, or forcibly convert anyone outside the faith.

“Convert or Die”: Faith as a Weapon

The Requerimiento: The Christian Death Warrant

To formalize their spiritual conquest, the Spanish devised a document known as the Requerimiento. It was read aloud to Indigenous populations—often in Spanish or Latin—before an invasion:

“We ask and require you... to recognize the Church as ruler and superior of the whole world... But if you do not do this... we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you... and shall take you, your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them... and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault.”

This was not diplomacy. It was a religious ultimatum. And when the Natives inevitably did not comply—unable to understand the language or the theology—the invaders declared divine justification for war.

By the Numbers: A Continental Holocaust

A Death Toll Beyond Comprehension

Stannard estimates that the Indigenous population of the Americas before European contact was around 100 million people. Within 150 years, over 90% were dead.

• Taino of Hispaniola: Reduced from 8 million to near extinction in 30 years

• Aztec Empire: Millions dead through war, forced labor, and disease

• Incas of Peru: Crushed by Spanish steel and smallpox

• California Natives (1769–1900): From 300,000 to 20,000, many through Catholic mission enslavement

While disease played a role, Stannard emphasizes that it was war, starvation, rape, forced labor, and psychological destruction—all deliberately orchestrated—that caused most of the deaths.

The Priests and the Sword: Christianity on the Front Lines

The Myth of the Gentle Missionary

Far from being passive observers, many Christian missionaries were active agents in this genocide.

🔥 Bartolomé de las Casas, one of the few voices of conscience, documented the carnage:

“They [the Spanish] made gallows just high enough for the feet to nearly touch the ground… and burned the Indians alive thirteen at a time in honor of Christ and the twelve Apostles.”

The Mission System: Forced Conversion and Cultural Rape

In places like California, Catholic missions functioned as theocratic prisons:

• Native children were baptized without consent

• Families were separated and punished for speaking their language

• Floggings, rape, and starvation were common

• Traditional spiritual practices were banned as “devil worship”

Priests like Junípero Serra—canonized by Pope Francis in 2015—oversaw the enslavement and abuse of thousands. To many Indigenous Californians, Serra is not a saint, but a spiritual colonizer whose missions destroyed entire cultures.

Christian Supremacy and Racial Doctrine

At the heart of this holy war was the belief in Christian superiority—not just spiritual, but biological and cultural.

Non-Christians were framed as:

• “Savages”

• “Children of the Devil”

• “Unfit to govern themselves”

The conquest was viewed as a sacred duty, mirroring the Biblical conquest of Canaan. The Americas were the “Promised Land,” and Indigenous peoples were the new Canaanites—meant to be slaughtered for divine inheritance.

This ideology didn’t die with the Spanish. It was passed on to:

• Puritan colonists, who justified massacres like the Mystic Massacre with scripture

• American settlers, who called it Manifest Destiny

• Christian boarding schools, whose motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”

The Ongoing Legacy: The Doctrine Lives On

Legal Ramifications

The Doctrine of Discovery still shapes U.S. and international law. In the 2005 Supreme Court case City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the Doctrine to justify denying land back to the Oneida Nation.

This genocide is not just historical. Its aftershocks are alive in:

• Land theft

• Broken treaties

• Environmental destruction of sacred sites

• Generational trauma and cultural erasure

Silence, Denial, and the Church’s Failure to Repent

No Full Apology. No Revocation. No Justice.

The Catholic Church has never officially revoked the genocidal Papal Bulls. Despite centuries of Indigenous protests, the Vatican continues to evade full accountability.

Christianity, particularly Catholicism, has canonized saints who presided over Indigenous death camps. It has built monuments to their legacy. It has rarely, if ever, returned stolen land or provided reparations.

Until this changes, every mass, every monument, every “mission” named after these colonizers stands as a blasphemous reminder of genocide in God’s name.

Toward Reckoning and Healing

This article is not a call for vengeance—it is a call for truth, accountability, and reparation. Churches and Christian institutions must:

• Revoke the Papal Bulls and Doctrine of Discovery

• Publicly apologize without conditions or caveats

• Pay reparations and return land to Indigenous communities

• Integrate the true history into church doctrine, schools, and liturgy

The Cross Still Casts a Shadow

Christianity came to the Americas not as a healer, but as a destroyer. Behind the message of salvation was a machinery of domination—a sacred empire built on conquest, slavery, and annihilation.

The blood of millions cries out not just from the past, but from the present—buried in stolen earth, in desecrated sacred sites, and in the haunted dreams of survivors’ descendants.

Until the Church confronts this sacred crime and makes it right, the cross will remain stained with the blood of the First Peoples.

“Our genocide was baptized in holy water.”
— Winona LaDuke, Indigenous activist