Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Follow the Drinking Gourd

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Follow the Drinking Gourd
  • Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:57:51 EDT


> 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>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page