[Homestead] Follow the Drinking Gourd

Clansgian at wmconnect.com Clansgian at wmconnect.com
Mon Apr 28 21:57:51 EDT 2008


> Sounds humane, eh? The primary moral crime I see is that free human  
> beings in a foreign continent were captured and hauled by ship to  
> America where they were sold to the highest bidder.

I'm not defending it, Gene, I only want you be condeming the proper thing.  
Forget "Roots" for the moment.  The Africans that were traded on the coast were 
the result of tribal warfare, civil warfare, and all sorts of skullduggery.  
Many of the people had been in surfdom and servitude status for centuries 
where they came from.  Most in fact, then as now an armed free person makes a poor 
and costly target for slavery.

It is quite true that the market (or demand) for slaves caused much of the 
mayhem in Africa.  But recall the story of the Amistad.   When the people were 
declared to be not in the status of slaves, several returned to Africa only to 
find that their entire village and family had been wiped out in their absence. 
 19th century Africa was a place of turmoil, not the "the village, the quiet 
village, the loin sleeps tonight" that is often imagined.

It is much like the question brough up about Europeans invading the new 
world.  It  did happen.   Much is made about the removal of the Cherokee, which was 
an autrocity by any measure, but how many people know that at the time of the 
removal, the Cherokee had been in the Southern Appalachians only about 2000 
years.  They originally lived in the Great Lakes area and speak (it is a living 
language) an Iriqoian language.  In Bev's area they displaced Muskeegee 
speaking people, but around here they displaced the previous inhabitants so 
thoroughly that no body even knows who they were.  We have the pre Cherokee artifacts 
and evidence of a sudden disappearance, but apparently they were wiped out.

Placing white Europeans as the only ones instigate slavery, invasion, and 
genocide is drawing a very artificial line.   </HTML>



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