The Genius Mind Remembers American History: Part 2 - Wars and Witches

The Genius Mind Remembers American History: Part 2 - Wars and Witches

Opening Disclaimer: I confess that I will be very nonfactual in this description of our great nation, and a bit nonsensical. Almost no part of this rambling tale has been fact-checked, intentionally, with the exception of maybe a few dates and other inconsequential details. Don't reference me for your history paper, but if you do, let me know what grade you get.

Note: for this post, I skimmed this Wikipedia article for dates of important events that I remember learning in elementary school, so I think it deserves a reference.

Somewhere along the line, American history was divided up into chunks of importance, which get all the major focus whenever history is taught. It seems the between times often get left out.

Or rather, American History is often formulated in such a way as to contain several "major events" that help maintain a consistent pro-oppressor mythology, and the events in between, which don't contribute to the myth (or that negate it) are left out.

Today's lesson is one of these not-so-important-to-the-myth eras: the period in between the start of colonization and the American Revolution. Sure, you hear little bits and pieces about it, and there's plenty of information available should you desire to know more. But knowledge isn't the goal of these posts. Rather, I'm trying to destroy the myth.

I'll assign this period as spanning from the 1620s to 1760s, so about 140 years that gets about the same dedication in books (and here) as the ten years span of 1773-1783. Surely peacetime has more important lessons than wartime, right?

Except war never really stopped. During this time, the European invaders were almost always at odds with the Native Americans (and with each other), and massacres were pretty common. So, yeah. Remember the sins of the forefathers lest we repeat them. It's generally wrong to go to someone else's home, kill them or chase them away, and claim it for your own. Not to say there wasn't violence on both sides; the Native Americans fought to defend their homeland, and there were some pretty bloody incidents.

In case anyone has any concerns that I'm being Anglophobic, it wasn't just the Brits. Around this time, many cities and colonies were established, by many different countries, including (in no particular order): Sweden, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. A few were founded or heavily populated by minority religious sects, such as the puritans and Quakers. This is the origin of the melting pot mythology. America: the place where everyone* is welcome. *unless your religion is different from the town you live in, or if you're black, native, or general PoC. It's always been a caste system, with European bodies idealized. Think it's changed? Look at disparity between immigration quotas (thanks to the 1920's racists).

Not all of these colonies survived to become states. Some failed, some were joined with other states (Like New Haven, which became part of Connecticut), and some were divided. Around this time, some of the present-day political problems were first established into law. For example, the Dutch brought slavery to America, and African slaves, and the other settlers were quick to adopt this practice. This highly racial discrimination is evident in some of the era's legislature. Maryland was the first, in 1638, to mention slavery in law.

19 years later, the Dutch New Amsterdam (now known as New York) decided to allow Jews to become citizens. Seems fairly cool until you realize that means that before then, being Jewish meant that you weren't allowed to be a citizen.

Oh yeah, and all the issues with Native Americans. So race conflict has been with this country since its forcible invasion.

And of course, all of these groups fought amongst themselves, so war was pretty commonplace.

The issue with allowing religious government centers is evident in my next topic: Salem, founded 1626. In 1692-3, what happened became the permanent legacy of Salem in the public mind. Ruled by puritans, Salem went into a period of mob justice which involved killing "witches". Now, I know it's not standard to learn history from puritan textbooks, but it turns out some of mine were (I'll go into that in a different post). And here's the way it was framed: The witch trials were an unfortunate side-effect of the righteous cause of eliminating the unbelievers and pagans. You read that right. The first account of the witch-trials that I ever read was in favor of them. Yes, these books still get published today, and people still believe these things. In reality, mobs killed innocent people. And even if they were witches, their beliefs are not deserving of death.

This is one of the main reasons that the Establishment clause exists. The founding fathers looked back on the witch-trials in horror, and did what they could to make sure that government persecution of religion was disallowed. Separation of Church and State is a concept that arose directly out of witch hunts.

In 1693, there also was the introduction of rice cultivation. Not an important event, but since it seems like there's this idea that bread is American while rice is Asian, I think it's important to note that rice has been in this country since before we decided it was a country. So rice is as American as apple pie (also an import, thanks, the Dutch!).

Moving along. Lots of local government issues and rebellions happened in this period, including Bacon's rebellion, which isn't all that important but we seem to remember that it's a thing more than the other, lesser known rebellions. Maybe because bacon.

British consolidation of the east coast (except Florida) occurred before 1750, and they gained control of Florida from Spain in 1763.

Around this time,  during the 9 years from 1754-1763, the British and French, due to their lasting continental conflicts and irrational hate for each other, decided to fight in the colonies. New France and New England (very original, guise) forces fought, alongside allied Native American tribes. Some tribes did fight for the British (contrary to popular conception).

Turns out, the French weren't nearly as bad to the natives as the British, so they had more allied natives. And that's why we call it the French and Indian War. Also because by sheer numbers, without the Native Americans, the French settlers would have been wiped out. So French Canadians, you have Native Americans to thank for your very existence.

Sorry there's not as much humor in this post, partly due to the fact that joking about murder of natives and religious dissidents isn't quite morally acceptable, partly due to my limited knowledge of this time. Like I said before, this period of time is often skimmed over in favor of the revolution.

A lot of important things happened in this period, and when looking up precise dates, I discovered a lot of things I hadn't heard about (and thus, I didn't write about them). So I'd encourage you to check out the wiki page with all the dates and see if there's any gaps in your historical knowledge too. Solve the mythtery of why most of the history of this period isn't public knowledge.