Columbus Day is history for another year, but the arguments caricaturing the Pilgrims remain. While it is true that coincidental issues arose from the melding of two consequences, it is not true that the pilgrims and subsequent migrants acted with intent. While it is true that migrants brought things that hurt the native population, it is not true that the natives didn't reciprocate. We seriously need to stop talking as if the native peoples of North America were virtuous and as if the settlers who came were vile, virulent vermin. We also need to stop pretending that the migrants coming here are virtuous while those of us who are naturalized over generations inherited wickedness in our DNA from our forefathers. Any time two vastly different cultures collide, upsets arise, and sometimes one suffers as a consequence. There was also kindness, neighborliness and harmony. They tell us not to judge Islam based on the acts of a few but slander and libel all European migration based on the hooliganism of a handful.
Most pioneers and pilgrims came to America for a fresh start in a free world. Lest we forget, the Mayflower Compact included tenants of religious tolerance. They weren't here to rape the land for resources like China wants to do to the moon and like everyone assumes America goes to war for oil everywhere. Yes, the Conquistadors did that. They were Spanish, and we see their descendants doing in kind, but I digress. You cannot compare the virtues of the natives with the failings of the migrants. Let's not pretend the natives didn't fight amongst themselves, have territories although they didn't have land "ownership", and that they didn't execute people to assuage their pagain gods in Azteca. I doubt very much the pilgrims specifically handed the natives blankets hoping to kill them with smallpox. We didn't even know about the Germ Theory then. You can't judge the past with present information. We didn't know they didn't have smallpox. We didn't know they didn't drink alcohol like we did. We didn't know they didn't understand the trinkets and beads for Manhattan were payment in perpetuity. They couldn't conceptualize our civilization and we couldn't conceptualize theirs because we'd never encountered such a vast gulf between two civilizations like this that didn't immediately lead to war.
The natives passed things to the newcomers that made their lives worse. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes and tobacco to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth tried smoking that particular weed, she never really understood. Other nobles did. Her cousin James wrote a wise and prescient Counterblast to Tobacco after assuming the throne as King upon her death. Today, tobacco smoking consumes untold millions in productivity and casts a toxic cloud in the face of everyone on earth. My hiking buddy spends $40,000 per year on cigarettes and alcohol. That's outrageous! Similarly, potatoes, cotton, and corn left the New World. Potatoes ended up introducing diseases to Europe that wiped out crops and devastated Ireland. Cotton eventually precipitated slave plantations. Corn, well, corn just sucks in every way. Think of how many people are made obese by Frito-Lay! Everyone focuses on the smallpox, the syphilis, and the alcoholism imported to the New World. Let's not forget that the New World exported things to Europe that destroyed European society and the offshoots their colonists founded among the natives.
Not everyone who came to the New World came here with the same intentions. Let's not forget the Conquistadors came for God, Glory, and Gold, but not really God. Far too many people lionize Mexican migrants. If we inherited the propensities of our ancestors, then Mexicans are worse than their northern neighbors. I have Nordic genes too, and the modern politicians lionize Nordic nations as bastions of peace and happiness. You can't have it both ways. I am a native American now. I was born here. Every family member I ever met was also born on American soil to parents born on American soil. What is all this nonsense about "Native peoples Day". I am native. I can't go back to Sweden or Germany or Scottland and receive full suffrage or work or get welfare. This land is my land. This land may be their land, but it is also my home now. Stop prattling about an offense I did not give against people no longer alive to be offended. True certain people came here intending to get rich, but I don't think the nobles awarded colonial charters intended to slaughter everyone and replace the native peoples with a new Europe. I don't think they were thinking longer than 10 years into the future- to move themselves up financially and politically by virtue of the colonies they founded. Most of the British, Scottish, Irish, German, Danish, and Nordic settlers came here to be left alone. They started farms and populated the wilderness. It was the Spanish, primarily, who came with ideas of Empire. Stop unjustly ascribing that attitude to all Europeans. Stop blaming the descendants of other Europeans for the offenses perpetrated by mestizos.
If the original settlers of this continent from Europe were as bad as some claim, they would have come as conquerors and erased the civilizations already extant. It is a mark of European history that warfare and subjugation of second class citizenry coincide with succession of cultures and societies. However, the pilgrims, the puritans, the hugeonauts, and scores of other groups did not travel here in mass, armed to the teeth and then pillage and plunder by pike and powder until they drove out the natives. In fact, that's what the Nordics did (although they didn't come to settle, just to pilfer), but the Nordics are held up as exemplars of how we should be by modern political potentates. My ancestors came to America hoping to start over, to start a life, to do what they pleased, to live and let live. It was the GOVERNMENTS and CORPORATIONS of the old world who came here with imperial intentions, and it is their descendants who now talk with feudalistic fantasies. They are hoping to bring that last vestige of the Old World here and make few rich and powerful on the backs of the rest. That is something the natives share too. They did the same thing. They subjugated and politicked and fought wars. They believe in territory, in warfare, in wealth, in power. They want to do as little as possible and enjoy as much as they can. They are also human. They are also imperfect. Let's not turn a blind eye to the scourge of mankind- pride, vanity, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and wrath. They are not a European monopoly. Europeans have virtues too, which you would find if you looked for them. Last week, I helped my parents move a beautiful Danish table made by my great grandfather. I would pay for a table like that. Europeans made good things too, like the United States of America.
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