Although individuals could not know for certain if they were among the elect, outward good fortune, especially material wealth, was taken to be a manifestation of election; conversely, bad fortune and poverty, not to speak of dark skin, were taken as evidence of damnation. “The attractiveness of such a doctrine to a group of invading colonists … is obvious,” Akenson observes, “for one could easily define the natives as immutably profane, and damned, and oneself as predestined to virtue.”11

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' Hist…, loc. 114025