Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny encouraged what is called westward expansion basically taking over lands where plains tribes had lived in balance for hundreds of years in the Boulder Valley. People believed incorrectly that they had this divine right to expand. Protestant rhetoric said the land of Turtle Island was divinely destined to be expanded to spread democracy and civilization. Ignoring the current civilization of indigenous peoples living in harmony with the land. Land became a thing rather than a living ecology of plants, animals and people thriving together. The indigenous people in the area: Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute, lived so in balance, that it appeared to be a wilderness and uninhabitable until settlers moved in with their christian religious beliefs and cultures and decided this wild beauty was to be killed and tamed in order to physically and spiritually feel safe by following a god separated from the earth. Later this same religious blindness created the doctrine of discovery traced back to the 15th century granting european powers the right to claim newly discovered lands and subjugate the people there. It provided theological justification and colonization which still functions today around the world and is called progress.