19c5c4fd   
   XPost: alt.sports.football.pro.sf-49ers, alt.atheism, alt.fan.art-bell   
      
   Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving   
   Revolutionary Worker #883, November 24, 1996   
      
   Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the   
   Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast   
   after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real   
   history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people   
   and the theft of their land by European colonialists--and of the   
   ruthless ways of capitalism.   
   * * * * *   
      
   In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North   
   American coast, delivering 102 Puritan exiles. The original Native   
   people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In   
   1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took   
   24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague   
   wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast,   
   destroying most villages completely.   
      
   The Puritans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth   
   Plantation" near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet.   
   They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named   
   Squanto had survived--he had spent the last years as a slave to the   
   English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists' language   
   and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the   
   first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace   
   treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.   
      
   These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia   
   settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves.   
   Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the Puritans not only   
   survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that   
   would give them almost two decades of peace.   
      
   John Winthrop, a founder of the Massahusetts Bay colony considered   
   this wave of illness and death to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a   
   friend in England, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so   
   pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are   
   swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God   
   hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in   
   these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our   
   protection."   
      
   The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will of the   
   Wampanoag allowed the Puritans to survive their first year.   
      
   In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William   
   Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first   
   harvest of 1621.   
      
   How the Puritans Stole the Land   
   But the peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant that   
   the Puritans would have 15 years to establish a firm foothold on the   
   coast. Until 1629 there were no more than 300 Puritans in New England,   
   scattered in small and isolated settlements. But their survival   
   inspired a wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing   
   Massachusetts towns north of Plymouth: Boston and Salem. For 10 years,   
   boatloads of new settlers came.   
      
   And as the number of Europeans increased, they proved not nearly so   
   generous as the Wampanoags.   
      
   On arrival, the Puritans discussed "who legally owns all this land."   
   They had to decide this, not just because of Anglo-Saxon traditions,   
   but because their particular way of farming was based on individual--   
   not communal or tribal--ownership. This debate over land ownership   
   reveals that bourgeois "rule of law" does not mean "protect the rights   
   of the masses of people."   
      
   Some Puritans argued that the land belonged to the Indians. These   
   forces were excommunicated and expelled. Massachusetts Governor   
   Winthrop declared the Indians had not "subdued" the land, and   
   therefore all uncultivated lands should, according to English Common   
   Law, be considered "public domain." This meant they belonged to the   
   king. In short, the colonists decided they did not need to consult the   
   Indians when they seized new lands, they only had to consult the   
   representative of the crown (meaning the local governor).   
      
   The Puritans embraced a line from Psalms 2:8. "Ask of me, and I shall   
   give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts   
   of the earth for thy possession." Since then, European settler states   
   have similarly declared god their real estate agent: from the Boers   
   seizing South Africa to the Zionists seizing Palestine.   
      
   The European immigrants took land and enslaved Indians to help them   
   farm it. By 1637 there were about 2,000 British settlers. They pushed   
   out from the coast and decided to remove the inhabitants.   
      
   The Birth of   
   "The American Way of War"   
   In the Connecticut Valley, the powerful Pequot tribe had not entered   
   an alliance with the British (as had the Narragansett, the Wampanoag,   
   and the Massachusetts peoples). At first they were far from the   
   centers of colonization. Then, in 1633, the British stole the land   
   where the city of Hartford now sits--land which the Pequot had   
   recently conquered from another tribe. That same year two British   
   slave raiders were killed. The colonists demanded that the Indians who   
   killed the slavers be turned over. The Pequot refused.   
      
   The Puritan preachers said, from Romans 13:2, "Whosoever therefore   
   resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that   
   resist shall receive to themselves damnation." The colonial   
   governments gathered an armed force of 240 under the command of John   
   Mason. They were joined by a thousand Narragansett warriors. The   
   historian Francis Jennings writes: "Mason proposed to avoid attacking   
   Pequot warriors which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable   
   troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of   
   the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish   
   the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre   
   would be his objective."   
      
   The colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic   
   River. At sunrise, as the inhabitants slept, the Puritan soldiers set   
   the village on fire.   
      
   William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote: "Those that escaped the   
   fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run   
   through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and   
   very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at   
   this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the   
   fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory   
   seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God,   
   who had wrought so wonderfully for them."   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)