Pocahantas = love story across battlelines where the conqueror is 'civilized' by the noble savage and eventually takes the 'native's' way of life. (The Hork-Bajir chronicles from Animorphs basically does the same, only it genderflips the characters and adds a second army of conquerors to fight.)
>>So it wasn't just a bunch of savages carrying spears and wearing skirts of leaves, waiting for a white person to take them away to do agricultural jobs in a faraway land. <<
I have a whole monologue on "the history of slavery in the Americas," though it focuses more on the origins in the European and Western Civilization traditions that led to the rise of chattel slavery...I should write it down somewhere. (Also, while I am aware that many African people were participating in the slave trade in the age-old "wage war on your neighbors and enslave the survivors" way, I am not familiar enough with the histories and cultures to feel like an authority on them.)
>>The Pilgrims were religious fanatics who practiced a religion which commmanded them to forcibly convert everyone else on Earth. <<
They also rented to Shakespeare and refused to renew his lease because theatre was sinful, and during the brief time they were in charge of the English government they cancelled Christmas for being 'too pagan.' There's a reason I've described them as "thinking everything fun is sinful."
>>And all the differing sects who founded colonies were just as unholy as the savages.<<
That's actually why we have religious freedom - not because someone had this great idea of freedom, but because none of the oddball & extremist sects had enough power to force everyone else to convert. So everybody just ended up in the awkward standoff that we call religious freedom...
>>And when the Pilgrims first set foot on land in New England, they looked for a place where the Native Americans had camped, because they knew there would be food stored there, and the Puritans stole the food because they had underestimated how long the sea voyage would take, and they were running out of food.<<
Hunh. One of the stories I'd heard was that they found a village that had died out because of plague (brought by earlier settlers) and dug up some of the graves. Maybe that was a different group?
(To be fair, I can't really blame someone for stealing food when starving...but they don't have to be jerks about it too.)
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dancing_serpent
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-09-10 12:55 am (UTC)>>So it wasn't just a bunch of savages carrying spears and wearing skirts of leaves, waiting for a white person to take them away to do agricultural jobs in a faraway land. <<
I have a whole monologue on "the history of slavery in the Americas," though it focuses more on the origins in the European and Western Civilization traditions that led to the rise of chattel slavery...I should write it down somewhere. (Also, while I am aware that many African people were participating in the slave trade in the age-old "wage war on your neighbors and enslave the survivors" way, I am not familiar enough with the histories and cultures to feel like an authority on them.)
>>The Pilgrims were religious fanatics who practiced a religion which commmanded them to forcibly convert everyone else on Earth. <<
They also rented to Shakespeare and refused to renew his lease because theatre was sinful, and during the brief time they were in charge of the English government they cancelled Christmas for being 'too pagan.' There's a reason I've described them as "thinking everything fun is sinful."
>>And all the differing sects who founded colonies were just as unholy as the savages.<<
That's actually why we have religious freedom - not because someone had this great idea of freedom, but because none of the oddball & extremist sects had enough power to force everyone else to convert. So everybody just ended up in the awkward standoff that we call religious freedom...
>>And when the Pilgrims first set foot on land in New England, they looked for a place where the Native Americans had camped, because they knew there would be food stored there, and the Puritans stole the food because they had underestimated how long the sea voyage would take, and they were running out of food.<<
Hunh. One of the stories I'd heard was that they found a village that had died out because of plague (brought by earlier settlers) and dug up some of the graves. Maybe that was a different group?
(To be fair, I can't really blame someone for stealing food when starving...but they don't have to be jerks about it too.)