Kapitel 1: Kolumbus, die Indianer und menschliche Fortschritte Arawak Männer und Frauen, nackt, tawny, und voller Wunder, tauchte aus ihren Dörfern auf die Inseln Strände und schwamm, um einen genaueren Blick auf die seltsame große Boot. Als Columbus und seine Seeleute an Land kamen, Schwerter tragend, sprachen seltsam, die Arawaks liefen, um sie zu grüßen, brachten ihnen Nahrung, Wasser, Geschenke. Später schrieb er darüber in seinem Protokoll: Sie. Brachte uns Papageien und Bälle aus Baumwolle und Speeren und viele andere Dinge, die sie für die Glasperlen und die Falkenglocken tauschten. Sie handelten alles, was sie besaßen. Sie waren gut gebaut, mit guten Körpern und schönen Ausstattungen. Sie tragen keine Waffen und kennen sie nicht, denn ich zeigte ihnen ein Schwert, sie nahmen es an den Rand und schneiden sich aus Unwissenheit. Sie haben kein Eisen. Ihre Speere sind aus Rohr gefertigt. Sie würden gute Diener machen. Mit fünfzig Männern konnten wir sie alle unterjochen und machen, was wir wollen. Diese Arawaks der Bahama-Inseln waren ähnlich wie Indianer auf dem Festland, die bemerkenswert waren (europäische Beobachter sollten immer wieder sagen) für ihre Gastfreundschaft, ihren Glauben an das Teilen. Diese Züge zeichneten sich nicht im Europa der Renaissance aus, wie sie von der Religion der Päpste dominiert wurde, der Regierung der Könige, der Geldsumme, die die westliche Zivilisation und ihren ersten Botschafter in Amerika, Christoph Kolumbus, markierte. Sobald ich in den Indischen Inseln angekommen bin, habe ich auf der ersten Insel, die ich gefunden habe, einige der Eingeborenen mit Gewalt genommen, damit sie lernen und mir Informationen darüber geben können, was es in diesen Teilen gibt. Die Informationen, die Columbus am meisten wünschte, waren: Wo das Gold war, hatte er den König und die Königin von Spanien überredet, eine Expedition in die Länder zu finanzieren, der Reichtum, erwartete er auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks, der Indies und Asiens Und Gewürze. Denn wie andere informierte Leute seiner Zeit wusste er, dass die Welt rund war und er nach Westen segeln konnte, um in den Fernen Osten zu gelangen. Spanien wurde vor kurzem vereint, einem der neuen modernen Nationalstaaten, wie Frankreich, England und Portugal. Seine Bevölkerung, vor allem arme Bauern, arbeitete für den Adel, die 2 Prozent der Bevölkerung und besaß 95 Prozent des Landes. Spanien hatte sich an die katholische Kirche gebunden, alle Juden vertrieben, die Mauren vertrieben. Wie andere Staaten der modernen Welt, suchte Spanien Gold, das wurde das neue Zeichen des Reichtums, nützlicher als Land, weil es alles kaufen konnte. Es gab Gold in Asien, es wurde gedacht, und sicherlich Seiden und Gewürze, denn Marco Polo und andere hatten vor Jahrhunderten wunderbare Dinge von ihren Überland-Expeditionen zurück gebracht. Nachdem nun die Türken Konstantinopel und das östliche Mittelmeer erobert und die Landstraßen nach Asien gesteuert hatten, war ein Seeweg notwendig. Portugiesische Seeleute arbeiteten sich um die Südspitze Afrikas herum. Spanien entschied, auf einem langen Segel über einem unbekannten Ozean zu spielen. Als Gegenleistung für die Rückgabe von Gold und Gewürzen, versprachen sie Columbus 10 Prozent der Gewinne, Gouverneur über neu gefundene Länder, und der Ruhm, die mit einem neuen Titel gehen würde: Admiral des Ozeans Meer. Er war Kaufmannskaufmann von der italienischen Stadt Genua, Teilzeitweber (der Sohn eines erfahrenen Webers) und Experte Seemann. Er machte sich auf mit drei Segelschiffen, von denen der größte Santa Maria war. Vielleicht 100 Fuß lang und neununddreißig Besatzungsmitglieder. Kolumbus hätte es nie nach Asien geschafft, das Tausende von Meilen weiter entfernt war, als er es sich vorgestellt hatte und sich eine kleinere Welt vorstellte. Er wäre durch diese große Weite des Meeres verdammt gewesen. Aber er hatte Glück. Ein Viertel des Weges kam auf ein unbekanntes, unbekanntes Land, das zwischen Europa und Asien - dem Amerika - lag. Es war Anfang Oktober 1492 und dreiunddreißig Tage, seit er und seine Mannschaft die Kanarischen Inseln vor der Atlantikküste von Afrika verlassen hatten. Jetzt sahen sie Äste und Stöcke im Wasser schwimmen. Sie sahen Vögel. Das waren Zeichen von Land. Dann, am 12. Oktober, sah ein Matrose namens Rodrigo am frühen Morgen Mondschein auf weißen Sand, und schrie. Es war eine Insel auf den Bahamas, dem Karibischen Meer. Der erste Mann, der Land sah, sollte eine jährliche Rente von 10.000 Maravedis für das Leben bekommen, aber Rodrigo bekam es nie. Columbus behauptete, er habe ein Licht am Abend vorher gesehen. Er bekam die Belohnung. So nähern sich Land, wurden sie von den Arawak-Indianern, die schwammen, um sie zu begrüßen. Die Arawaks lebten in Dorfgemeinschaften, hatten eine entwickelte Landwirtschaft von Mais, Yams, Maniok. Sie konnten spinnen und weben, aber sie hatten keine Pferde oder Arbeitstiere. Sie hatten kein Eisen, aber sie trugen winzige Goldschmuck in ihren Ohren. Das hatte enorme Konsequenzen: Er führte Kolumbus dazu, einige von ihnen auf dem Schiff als Gefangene zu nehmen, weil er darauf bestand, dass sie ihn zur Quelle des Goldes führten. Dann segelte er nach Kuba, dann nach Hispaniola (der Insel, die heute aus Haiti und der Dominikanischen Republik besteht). Dort führten Bits des sichtbaren Goldes in den Flüssen und eine Goldmaske, die von einem lokalen indischen Häuptling Kolumbus vorgestellt wurden, zu wilden Anblicke von Goldfeldern. Auf Hispaniola, aus Holz von der Santa Maria. Die Columbus errichtet, ein Fort, die erste europäische Militärbasis in der westlichen Hemisphäre. Er nannte es Navidad (Weihnachten) und links neununddreißig Besatzungsmitglieder dort, mit Anweisungen zu finden und zu speichern das Gold. Er nahm mehr indische Gefangene und setzte sie an Bord seiner zwei verbleibenden Schiffe. Auf einem Teil der Insel bekam er einen Kampf mit Indianern, die sich weigerten, so viele Bögen und Pfeile zu tauschen, wie er und seine Männer wollten. Zwei wurden mit Schwertern durchlaufen und verblutet. Dann nahmen die Nina und die Pinta Segel für die Azoren und Spanien. Als das Wetter kalt wurde, begannen die indianischen Gefangenen zu sterben. Columbuss Bericht an den Gerichtshof in Madrid war extravagant. Er bestand darauf, dass er Asien (es war Kuba) und eine Insel vor der Küste von China (Hispaniola) erreicht hatte. Seine Beschreibungen waren Teil der Tatsache, Teil Fiktion: Hispaniola ist ein Wunder. Berge und Hügel, Ebenen und Weiden, sind fruchtbar und schön. Die Häfen sind unglaublich gut und es gibt viele weite Flüsse, von denen die Mehrheit Gold enthält. Es gibt viele Gewürze, und große Minen aus Gold und anderen Metallen. Die Indianer, berichtet Columbus, sind so naiv und so frei mit ihren Besitzungen, dass niemand, der sie nicht miterlebt hat, es glaubt. Wenn Sie um etwas bitten, das sie haben, sagen sie nie nein. Im Gegenteil, sie bieten zu teilen mit jedermann. Er schloß seinen Bericht, indem er um eine kleine Hilfe von ihren Majestäten bat, und im Gegenzug würde er sie von seiner nächsten Reise so viel Gold bringen, wie sie brauchen. Und so viele Sklaven, wie sie fragen. Er war voller religiöser Reden: So gewinnt der ewige Gott, unser Herr, denen, die seinen Weg über offenbare Unmöglichkeiten folgen. Wegen Kolumbuss übertriebener Bericht und Versprechen erhielten seine zweite Expedition siebzehn Schiffe und mehr als zwölfhundert Mann. Das Ziel war klar: Sklaven und Gold. Sie gingen von Insel zu Insel in der Karibik und nahmen Inder als Gefangene. Aber als Wort verbreitet der Europäer Absicht fanden sie mehr und mehr leere Dörfer. Auf Haiti fanden sie, dass die in Fort Navidad zurückgelassenen Matrosen in einem Kampf mit den Indianern getötet worden waren, nachdem sie die Insel in Gangs umherstreiften, die nach Gold suchten und Frauen und Kinder als Sklaven für Sex und Arbeit aufnahmen. Nun, von seiner Basis auf Haiti, schickte Columbus Expedition nach Expedition ins Innere. Sie fanden keine Goldfelder, mussten aber die Schiffe, die nach Spanien zurückkehrten, mit einer Art Dividenden ausfüllen. Im Jahre 1495 gingen sie auf einen großen Sklavenangriff, runderten fünfzehnhundert Arawak-Männer, Frauen und Kinder, setzten sie in Stifte, die von Spaniern und Hunden bewacht wurden, und wählten dann die fünfhundert besten Exemplare aus, um auf Schiffe zu laden. Von diesen fünfhundert starben zweihundert unterwegs. Der Rest kam in Spanien lebendig an und wurde von dem Archidiakon der Stadt zum Verkauf gebracht, der berichtete, dass die Sklaven, obwohl sie am Tag ihrer Geburt nackt waren, keine Verlegenheit mehr zeigten als Tiere. Später schrieb Columbus: "Lasst uns im Namen der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit alle Slaves senden, die verkauft werden können. Aber zu viele der Sklaven starben in Gefangenschaft. Und so hatte Columbus, der verzweifelt war, die Dividenden an diejenigen zurückzuzahlen, die investiert hatten, sein Versprechen zu erfüllen, die Schiffe mit Gold zu füllen. In der Provinz Cicao auf Haiti, wo er und seine Männer sich riesige Goldfelder vorstellten, befahlen sie alle vierzehn Jahre oder älter, alle drei Monate eine gewisse Goldmenge zu sammeln. Als sie es brachten, bekamen sie Kupfermarker, die um den Hals hingen. Inder, die ohne eine Kupfermarke gefunden wurden, hatten ihre Hände abgeschnitten und verblutet. Die Indianer hatten eine unmögliche Aufgabe erhalten. Das einzige Gold herum war Staub, der aus den Bächen gesammelt wurde. So flohen sie, wurden verfolgt mit Hunden und wurden getötet. Beim Versuch, eine Armee des Widerstandes zusammenzustellen, sahen sich die Arawaks Spaniern gegenüber, die Rüstungen, Musketen, Schwerter, Pferde hatten. Als die Spanier Gefangene hielten, hängten sie sie oder verbrannten sie. Unter den Arawaks begannen Massenselbstmorde mit Cassava-Gift. Säuglinge wurden getötet, um sie vor den Spaniern zu retten. In zwei Jahren, durch Mord, Verstümmelung oder Selbstmord, war die Hälfte der 250.000 Indianer auf Haiti tot. Als klar wurde, dass es kein Gold mehr gab, wurden die Indianer als Sklavenarbeit auf riesigen Grundstücken, später als encomiendas bekannt, genommen. Sie wurden in einem wilden Tempo gearbeitet und starben durch Tausende. Im Jahre 1515 gab es vielleicht fünfzigtausend Indianer. Um 1550 gab es fünfhundert. Ein Bericht des Jahres 1650 zeigt keine der ursprünglichen Arawaks oder ihre Nachkommen auf der Insel verlassen. Die Hauptquelle - und in vielen Dingen die einzige Quelle - von Informationen über das, was auf den Inseln nach Kolumbus geschah, war Bartolome de las Casas, der als junger Priester an der Eroberung Kubas teilnahm. Eine Zeitlang besaß er eine Plantage, auf der indische Sklaven arbeiteten, aber er gab das auf und wurde ein heftiger Kritiker der spanischen Grausamkeit. Las Casas transkribiert Columbuss-Zeitschrift und begann in den fünfziger Jahren eine multivolume Geschichte der Indies. Darin beschreibt er die Indianer. Sie sind beweglich, sagt er und können lange Strecken schwimmen, besonders die Frauen. Sie sind nicht völlig friedlich, weil sie von Zeit zu Zeit mit anderen Stämmen kämpfen, aber ihre Opfer scheinen klein, und sie kämpfen, wenn sie einzeln bewegt werden, um dies zu tun, weil einige Beschwerden, nicht auf Befehl von Kapitänen oder Königen. Frauen in der indischen Gesellschaft wurden so gut behandelt, um die Spanier zu erschrecken. Las Casas beschreibt Sex-Beziehungen: Heiratsgesetze sind nicht existierende Männer und Frauen gleichermaßen wählen ihre Kumpel und lassen sie, wie sie wollen, ohne Anstoß, Eifersucht oder Wut. Sie vermehren sich in großer Menge, schwangere Frauen arbeiten bis zur letzten Minute und gebären fast schmerzlos am nächsten Tag, sie baden im Fluss und sind so sauber und gesund wie vor der Geburt. Wenn sie ihre Männer ermüden, geben sie Abtreibungen mit Kräutern, die Totgeburten erzwingen und ihre schändlichen Teile mit Blättern oder Baumwolltuch bedecken, obgleich im ganzen die indischen Männer und Frauen die Gesamtnacktheit mit so viel Casualität betrachten, wie wir einen Mannkopf betrachten Oder an seinen Händen. Die Indianer, sagt Las Casas, haben keine Religion, jedenfalls keine Tempel. Sie leben in großen gemeinschaftlichen Glockengebäuden und beherbergen bis zu 600 Personen auf einmal. Aus sehr starkem Holz und überdacht mit Palmblättern. Sie schätzen Vogelfedern in verschiedenen Farben, Perlen aus Fischgräten und grüne und weiße Steine, mit denen sie ihre Ohren und Lippen schmücken, aber sie setzen keinen Wert auf Gold und andere Kostbarkeiten. Sie fehlen jeder Art des Handels, weder kaufen noch verkaufen, und verlassen sich ausschließlich auf ihre natürliche Umgebung für die Instandhaltung. Sie sind sehr großzügig mit ihren Besitzungen und begehren vom gleichen Besitz die Besitztümer ihrer Freunde und erwarten denselben Grad an Freizügigkeit. Im Buch Zwei seiner Geschichte der Indien. Las Casas (der anfangs anfing, Indianer durch schwarze Sklaven zu ersetzen, dachten, sie seien stärker und würden überleben, aber später enttäuscht, als er die Auswirkungen auf Schwarze sah) erzählt von der Behandlung der Indianer durch die Spanier. Es ist ein einzigartiges Konto und verdient es, ausführlich zitiert zu werden: Endlose Zeugnisse. Beweisen das milde und pazifische Temperament der Einheimischen. Aber unsere Arbeit bestand darin, zu verärgern, zu verwüsten, zu töten, zu zermalmen und zu zerstören, und dann, wenn sie versuchten, einen von uns hin und wieder zu töten. Der Admiral war zwar blind wie die, die nach ihm gekommen waren, und er war so besorgt, dem König zu gefallen, daß er unheilbare Verbrechen gegen die Indianer begangen habe. Las Casas erzählt, wie die Spanier jeden Tag einträchtiger wurden und sich nach einer Weile weigerten, irgendeine Distanz zu gehen. Sie ritten den Rücken der Indianer, wenn sie in Eile waren oder wurden auf Hängematten von Indern in Relais ausgeführt. In diesem Fall hatten sie auch Indianer tragen große Blätter, um sie von der Sonne zu schattieren und andere, um sie mit Gänseflügeln zu fächern. Die totale Kontrolle führte zur totalen Grausamkeit. Die Spanier dachten nicht daran, die Indianer um zehn und zwanzig zu schneiden und die Scheiben abzuschneiden, um die Schärfe ihrer Klingen zu prüfen. Las Casas erzählt, wie zwei dieser so genannten Christen zwei indische Jungen eines Tages trafen, von denen jeder einen Papagei trug, nahmen sie die Papageien und zum Spaß enthaupteten sie die Jungen. Die Indianer versuchen, sich selbst zu verteidigen, scheiterten. Und als sie in die Berge liefen, wurden sie gefunden und getötet. So, Las Casas berichtet, sie litten und starben in den Minen und anderen Arbeiten in verzweifelter Stille, wissen nicht eine Seele in der Welt, an die sie sich um Hilfe wenden konnte. Er beschreibt ihre Arbeit in den Bergwerken: Die Berge sind von oben nach unten und von oben bis oben tausendmal graben, die sie graben, Felsen zerspalten, Steine bewegen und Schmutz auf dem Rücken tragen, um sie in den Flüssen zu waschen, während die, die Gold waschen, bleiben Im Wasser die ganze Zeit mit dem Rücken gebeugt so konstant es bricht sie und wenn das Wasser dringt in die Minen, ist die schwierigste Aufgabe von allen zu trocknen die Minen durch Schöpfen Pansful von Wasser und werfen es nach draußen. Nach jeder sechs oder acht Monate Arbeit in den Minen, die die Zeit von jeder Mannschaft zu graben genug Gold zum Schmelzen erforderlich war, bis zu einem Drittel der Männer starben. Während die Männer viele Meilen weg zu den Minen gesandt wurden, blieben die Frauen, um den Boden zu bearbeiten, gezwungen in die quälende Arbeit des Grabens und der Herstellung Tausenden der Hügel für Maniokpflanzen. So waren Ehemänner und Frauen nur einmal alle acht oder zehn Monate zusammen, und als sie sich trafen, waren sie so erschöpft und niedergedrückt auf beiden Seiten. Sie hörten auf zu zeugen. Was die Neugeborenen betrifft, so starben sie früh, weil ihre Mütter, überarbeitet und verhungert, keine Milch hatten, um sie zu pflegen, und aus diesem Grund, während ich in Kuba war, starben 7000 Kinder in drei Monaten. Einige Mütter ertranken sogar ihre Babys vor der Verzweiflung. Auf diese Weise starben die Ehemänner in den Minen, die Frauen starben bei der Arbeit, und die Kinder starben an Mangel an Milch. Und in kurzer Zeit dieses Land, das so groß, so mächtig und fruchtbar war. Wurde entvölkert. Meine Augen haben diese Handlungen so fremd für die menschliche Natur gesehen, und jetzt zittere ich, während ich schreibe. Als er im Jahre 1508 auf Hispaniola ankam, sagt Las Casas, waren es 60.000 Menschen auf dieser Insel, einschließlich der Indianer, so dass von 1494 bis 1508 über drei Millionen Menschen aus dem Krieg, der Sklaverei und den Minen ums Leben gekommen waren. Wer in künftigen Generationen glauben wird, dass ich es selber als kenntnisreicher Augenzeuge schreibe, kann es kaum glauben. So begann die Geschichte vor 500 Jahren von der europäischen Invasion der indischen Siedlungen in Amerika. Der Anfang, wenn man Las Casas liest - auch wenn seine Figuren übertrieben sind (waren es etwa 3 Millionen Inder, wie er sagt, oder weniger als eine Million, wie manche Historiker berechnet haben oder 8 Millionen, wie andere jetzt glauben) Ist Eroberung, Sklaverei, Tod. Wenn wir die Geschichtsbücher lesen, die Kindern in den Vereinigten Staaten gegeben werden, beginnt alles mit heldenhaftem Abenteuer - es gibt kein Blutvergießen - und der Kolumbus-Tag ist eine Feier. Vorbei an den Grund - und Oberschulen gibt es nur gelegentliche Hinweise auf etwas anderes. Samuel Eliot Morison, der Harvard-Historiker, war der bedeutendste Schriftsteller über Kolumbus, der Autor einer Multivolumenbiographie, und war selbst ein Matrose, der den Columbuss-Weg über den Atlantik zurückverfolgte. In seinem 1954 erschienenen Buch Christopher Columbus, Mariner, erzählt er von der Versklavung und dem Töten: Die grausame Politik, die von Kolumbus initiiert und von seinen Nachfolgern verfolgt wurde, führte zu einem vollständigen Völkermord. Das ist auf einer Seite, begraben auf halbem Weg in die Erzählung einer großen Romanze. Im letzten Buch des Buches faßt Morison seine Ansicht von Kolumbus zusammen: Er hatte seine Fehler und seine Fehler, aber sie waren weitgehend die Mängel der Qualitäten, die ihn groß machten, seinen unerschütterlichen Willen, seinen großartigen Glauben an Gott und seine eigene Sendung Als der Christus-Träger zu Ländern jenseits der Meere, seine störrische Beharrlichkeit trotz Vernachlässigung, Armut und Entmutigung. Aber es gab keinen Makel, keine dunkle Seite für die hervorragendsten und wesentlichsten seiner Eigenschaften - seine Seemannschaft. Man kann direkt über die Vergangenheit lügen. Oder man kann Tatsachen weglassen, die zu unannehmbaren Schlussfolgerungen führen können. Morison auch nicht. Er weigert sich, über Columbus zu lügen. Er läßt die Geschichte des Massenmordes nicht weg, er beschreibt sie mit dem härtesten Wort, das man benutzen kann: Völkermord. Aber er tut etwas anderes - er nennt die Wahrheit schnell und geht auf andere Dinge, die ihm wichtiger sind. Die völlige Lüge oder die leise Unterlassung nimmt das Risiko der Entdeckung, die, wenn gemacht, den Leser wecken könnte, sich gegen den Schriftsteller zu rebellieren. Die Tatsachen zu nennen und sie dann in einer Masse anderer Informationen zu begraben, ist dem Leser mit einer gewissen ansteckenden Ruhe zu sagen: ja, Massenmord geschah, aber das ist nicht so wichtig - es sollte nur wenig in unserem Leben abwägen Endgültige Urteile es sollte sehr wenig beeinflussen, was wir in der Welt tun. Es ist nicht so, dass der Historiker die Betonung einiger Tatsachen und nicht anderer vermeiden kann. Das ist ihm ebenso natürlich wie dem Kartenmacher, der, um eine brauchbare Zeichnung zu praktischen Zwecken zu erzeugen, zuerst die Gestalt der Erde flach machen und verzerren und dann aus der verwirrenden Masse der geographischen Information die Dinge auswählen muß, die für die Zweck dieser oder jener bestimmten Karte. Mein Argument kann nicht gegen Auswahl, Vereinfachung, Betonung sein, die für Kartographen und Historiker unvermeidlich sind. Aber die Kartenmacher Verzerrung ist eine technische Notwendigkeit für einen gemeinsamen Zweck von allen Menschen, die Karten benötigen. Die Verzerrung der Historiker ist mehr als technisch, ideologisch ist sie in eine Welt konkurrierender Interessen entrückt, wo jede gewählte Betonung (ob der Historiker für oder nicht) eine Art von Interesse, ob wirtschaftlich oder politisch oder rassistisch oder national oder sexuell, unterstützt . Darüber hinaus ist dieses ideologische Interesse nicht offen in der Art und Weise ein Kartenmachern technisches Interesse offensichtlich ausgedrückt (Dies ist eine Mercator-Projektion für Langstrecken-Navigation - für kurze Reichweite, Sie besser verwenden eine andere Projektion). Nein, es wird präsentiert, als ob alle Leser der Geschichte ein gemeinsames Interesse hatten, das Historiker der besten ihrer Fähigkeit dienen. Dies ist nicht beabsichtigte Täuschung der Historiker hat in einer Gesellschaft, in der Bildung und Wissen als technische Probleme der Exzellenz und nicht als Werkzeuge für die Konkurrenz gesellschaftlichen Klassen, Rassen, Nationen vorgestellt werden trainiert. Das Heldentum von Kolumbus und seinen Nachfolgern als Seefahrer und Entdecker zu betonen und den Völkermord zu entstellen, ist keine technische Notwendigkeit, sondern eine ideologische Wahl. Es dient - unwissentlich - um zu rechtfertigen, was geschehen ist. Mein Punkt ist nicht, dass wir, wenn wir Geschichte erzählen, Kolumbus in Abwesenheit anklagen, richten, verurteilen. Es ist zu spät dafür, dass es eine nutzlose gelehrte Übung in der Moral sein würde. Aber die leichte Akzeptanz von Gräueltaten als bedauerlicher, aber notwendiger Preis für den Fortschritt (Hiroshima und Vietnam, um die westliche Zivilisation Kronstadt und Ungarn zu retten, um die soziale Atomwaffe zu retten, um uns alle zu retten) - das ist noch bei uns. Ein Grund, weshalb diese Gräuel noch bei uns sind, ist, dass wir gelernt haben, sie in einer Masse anderer Tatsachen zu begraben, da radioaktive Abfälle in Containern in der Erde begraben sind. Wir haben gelernt, ihnen genau den gleichen Anteil der Aufmerksamkeit zu geben, die Lehrer und Schriftsteller ihnen oft in den ehrbarsten Klassenzimmern und Lehrbüchern geben. Dieser gelehrte Sinn des moralischen Verhältnisses, der aus der scheinbaren Objektivität des Gelehrten stammt, wird leichter angenommen, als wenn es von Politikern bei Pressekonferenzen kommt. Es ist also tödlicher. Die Behandlung der Helden (Columbus) und ihrer Opfer (die Arawaks) - die stille Annahme von Eroberung und Mord im Namen des Fortschritts - ist nur ein Aspekt eines gewissen Herangehens an die Geschichte, in dem die Vergangenheit vom Standpunkt aus erzählt wird Von Regierungen, Eroberern, Diplomaten, Führern. Es ist, als ob sie, wie Kolumbus, universelle Akzeptanz verdienen, als ob sie - die Gründerväter, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, die führenden Mitglieder des Kongresses, die berühmten Richter des Obersten Gerichtshofs - die Nation als eine ganze. Der Vorwand ist, dass es wirklich so etwas wie die Vereinigten Staaten, gelegentliche Konflikte und Streit, aber grundsätzlich eine Gemeinschaft von Menschen mit gemeinsamen Interessen. Es ist, als ob in der Verfassung, in der territorialen Expansion, in den Gesetzen des Kongresses, in den Entscheidungen der Gerichte, in der Entwicklung des Kapitalismus, in der Bildungskultur und in den Massenmedien ein nationales Interesse besteht. Geschichte ist die Erinnerung an Staaten, schrieb Henry Kissinger in seinem ersten Buch, eine Welt restauriert. In der er fortfuhr, die Geschichte des Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts vom Standpunkt der Führer von Österreich und von England zu erzählen, die Millionen ignorierend, die unter jenen statesmens Politik litten. Aus seiner Sicht war der Frieden, den Europa vor der Französischen Revolution hatte, durch die Diplomatie einiger nationaler Führer wiederhergestellt worden. Aber für Fabrikarbeiter in England, Farmer in Frankreich, farbige Menschen in Asien und Afrika, Frauen und Kinder überall, außer in den Oberschichten, war es eine Welt der Eroberung, Gewalt, Hunger, Ausbeutung - eine Welt, die nicht wiederhergestellt, sondern zersetzt wurde. Mein Standpunkt, in der Erzählung der Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten, ist anders: dass wir nicht akzeptieren, die Erinnerung an Staaten als unsere eigenen. Nationen sind keine Gemeinden und niemals gewesen. Die Geschichte eines jeden Landes, dargestellt als die Geschichte einer Familie, verbirgt scharfe Interessenkonflikte (manchmal explodierend, meistens unterdrückt) zwischen Eroberern und eroberten Meistern und Sklaven, Kapitalisten und Arbeitern, Herrschern Und dominiert in Rasse und Geschlecht. Und in einer solchen Welt des Konflikts, einer Welt der Opfer und Henker, ist es die Aufgabe, Menschen zu denken, wie Albert Camus vorschlug, nicht auf der Seite der Henker zu sein. In diesem unvermeidlichen Aufnehmen von Seiten, das aus der Auswahl und Betonung der Geschichte kommt, möchte ich versuchen, die Geschichte der Entdeckung Amerikas aus der Sicht der Arawaks, der Verfassung aus der Sicht der Sklaven von Andrew Jackson zu erzählen Wie von den Cherokees gesehen, vom Bürgerkrieg, wie er von den New Yorker Iren gesehen wurde, vom mexikanischen Krieg, wie er von den verzweifelten Soldaten der Scotts - Armee gesehen wurde, vom Aufstieg des Industrialismus, wie ihn die jungen Frauen in den Lowell - Den von den Kubanern gesehenen spanisch-amerikanischen Krieg, die Eroberung der Philippinen durch schwarze Soldaten auf Luzon, das vergoldete Zeitalter der südlichen Bauern, den von den Sozialisten gesehenen Ersten Weltkrieg, den von den Pazifisten gesehenen Zweiten Weltkrieg , Das New Deal, wie es von Schwarzen in Harlem, dem amerikanischen Nachkriegsimperium gesehen wurde, wie es von den Peonen in Lateinamerika gesehen wurde. Und so weiter, in dem begrenzten Ausmaß, dass jede Person, wie auch immer sie ist, die Geschichte vom Standpunkt anderer sehen kann. Mein Punkt ist nicht, für die Opfer zu trauern und die Henker zu denunzieren. Diese Tränen, diese Wut, die in die Vergangenheit geworfen ist, verarmt unsere moralische Energie für die Gegenwart. Und die Linien sind nicht immer klar. Auf lange Sicht ist der Unterdrücker auch ein Opfer. Auf kurze Sicht (und so weit, die menschliche Geschichte bestand nur aus kurzen Läufen), die Opfer, selbst verzweifelt und mit der Kultur, die sie unterdrückt, verdorbene, wiederum auf andere Opfer. Dennoch, dieses Verständnis der Komplexität, wird dieses Buch skeptisch gegenüber Regierungen und ihre Versuche, durch Politik und Kultur, um normale Menschen in einem riesigen Netz der Nation zu versorgen, die vorgeben, ein gemeinsames Interesse. Ich werde versuchen, die Grausamkeiten nicht zu übersehen, die die Opfer einander zufügen, da sie in den Boxcars des Systems zusammengeklemmt sind. Ich möchte sie nicht romantisieren. Aber ich erinnere mich (in grober Paraphrase) eine Aussage, die ich einmal las: Der Schrei der Armen ist nicht immer gerecht, aber wenn du nicht auf sie hörst, wirst du nie wissen, was Gerechtigkeit ist. Ich möchte keine Siege für Völkerbewegungen erfinden. Aber zu glauben, dass die Geschichtsschreibung darauf abzielen muss, die Misserfolge, die die Vergangenheit dominieren, zu rekapitulieren, ist es, die Historiker zu einem endlosen Kreislauf der Niederlage zu machen. Wenn die Geschichte kreativ sein soll, um eine mögliche Zukunft zu antizipieren, ohne die Vergangenheit zu verleugnen, sollte sie, wie ich glaube, neue Möglichkeiten aufzeigen, indem sie die verborgenen Episoden der Vergangenheit offenbart, wenn sie auch in kurzen Blitzen ihre Widerstandsfähigkeit widerspiegeln Zusammen, gelegentlich zu gewinnen. Ich nehme an, oder vielleicht nur hoffen, dass unsere Zukunft in der Vergangenheit fliehende Momente des Mitleids und nicht in seinen festen Jahrhunderten des Krieges gefunden werden kann. Das, so stumpf wie ich kann, ist mein Ansatz für die Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten. Der Leser kann das auch vorher wissen. Was Columbus für die Arawaks der Bahamas tat, machte Cortes den Azteken von Mexiko, Pizarro zu den Inkas von Peru und den englischen Siedlern von Virginia und Massachusetts zu den Powhatans und zu den Pequots. Die aztekische Zivilisation von Mexiko kam aus dem Erbe der Maya, Zapotec und Toltec Kulturen. Es baute riesige Konstruktionen aus Steinwerkzeugen und menschlicher Arbeit, entwickelte ein Schriftsystem und ein Priestertum. Sie beschäftigte sich auch mit der rituellen Tötung von Tausenden von Menschen als Opfer für die Götter. Die Grausamkeit der Azteken löste jedoch keine bestimmte Unschuld aus, und als eine spanische Armada in Vera Cruz erschien und ein bärtiger weißer Mann an Land kam, mit seltsamen Thieren (Pferde), die in Eisen gekleidet waren, dachte man, er sei es Der legendäre aztekische Mensch-Gott, der vor dreihundert Jahren gestorben war, mit dem Versprechen zurückzukehren - dem geheimnisvollen Quetzalcoatl. Und so empfingen sie ihn mit großzügiger Gastfreundschaft. Das war Hernando Cortes, aus Spanien mit einer Expedition, die von Kaufleuten und Grundbesitzern finanziert und von den Abgeordneten Gottes gesegnet wurde, mit einem obsessiven Ziel: Gold zu finden. Im Sinne von Montezuma, dem König der Azteken, mußte ein gewisser Zweifel darüber bestanden haben, ob Cortes tatsächlich Quetzalcoatl war, denn er schickte hundert Läufer nach Cortes, die riesige Schätze tragen, Gold und Silber in Gegenstände von phantastischer Schönheit Zur gleichen Zeit bettelte er zurück zu gehen. (Der Maler Durer einige Jahre später beschrieb, was er gerade in Spanien von dieser Expedition ankam - eine Goldsonne, ein Silbermond, ein Vermögen wert.) Cortes begann dann seinen Marsch des Todes von Stadt zu Stadt mit Täuschung, Die Azteke gegen die Azteken zu töten und mit der Art der Absicht zu töten, die eine Strategie begleitet -, um den Willen der Bevölkerung durch eine plötzliche schreckliche Tat zu lähmen. So lud er in Cholulu die Vorsteher der Cholula-Nation auf den Platz ein. Und als sie kamen, mit Tausenden von unbewaffneten Haltern, schrieb Cortess eine kleine Armee von Spaniern um den Platz mit Kanonen, bewaffnet mit Armbrüsten, auf Pferden montiert, massacred sie, bis auf den letzten Mann. Dann plünderten sie die Stadt und zogen weiter. Als ihre Kavalcade des Mordes vorüber war, waren sie in Mexiko-Stadt, Montezuma war tot, und die aztekische Zivilisation, zerschmettert, war in den Händen der Spanier. All dies wird in der spanischen eigenen Konten erzählt. In Peru, der andere spanische Konquistador Pizarro, die gleiche Taktik, und aus den gleichen Gründen - die Raserei in den frühen kapitalistischen Staaten Europas für Gold, für Sklaven, für Produkte des Bodens, die Anleihegläubiger und Aktionäre der Expeditionen zu zahlen , Die in Westeuropa aufsteigenden monarchischen Bürokratien zu finanzieren, um das Wachstum der neuen Geldwirtschaft, die aus dem Feudalismus aufsteigt, anzutreiben, an dem teilzunehmen, was Karl Marx später die primitive Kapitalakkumulation nennen würde. Dies waren die heftigen Anfänge eines komplizierten Systems von Technologie, Wirtschaft, Politik und Kultur, die die Welt für die nächsten fünf Jahrhunderte beherrschen würden. In den nordamerikanischen englischen Kolonien war das Muster früh eingestellt, wie Columbus es in den Inseln der Bahamas gesetzt hatte. 1585, bevor es dauerhafte englische Ansiedlung in Virginia gab, landete Richard Grenville dort mit sieben Schiffen. Die Indianer, denen er begegnete, waren gastfreundlich, aber als einer von ihnen eine kleine silberne Tasse stahl, entließ Grenville und verbrannte das ganze indische Dorf. Jamestown selbst wurde auf dem Territorium einer indischen Konföderation unter der Leitung des Häuptlings Powhatan gegründet. Powhatan beobachtete, wie die Engländer sich auf seinen Völkern Land, aber nicht angreifen, unterhalten eine Haltung der Kühle. Als die Engländer im Winter 1610 ihre verhungernde Zeit durchmachten, gingen einige von ihnen zu den Indianern, wo sie wenigstens gefüttert werden sollten. Als der Sommer kam, sandte der Gouverneur der Kolonie einen Boten, um Powhatan zu bitten, die Ausreißer zurückzugeben, woraufhin Powhatan, nach dem englischen Konto, mit Noe antwortete, als prowde und disdaynefull Antworten. Einige Soldaten wurden deshalb ausgesandt, um Rache zu nehmen. Sie fielen auf eine Indianer-Siedlung, töteten fünfzehn oder sechzehn Inder, verbrannten die Häuser, zerschneiden den Mais, der um das Dorf wuchs, nahm die Königin des Stammes und ihre Kinder in Boote und ließ dann die Kinder über Bord werfen und schießen ihre Braynes im Wasser. Die Königin wurde später abgenommen und erstochen. Zwölf Jahre später beschlossen die Indianer, erschrocken, wie die englischen Siedlungen in Zahlen gewachsen, scheinbar beschlossen, zu versuchen, sie auszurotten für immer. Sie gingen auf einen Rampage und töteten 347 Männer, Frauen und Kinder. Von da an war es der totale Krieg. Nicht in der Lage, die Indianer zu versklaven, und nicht in der Lage, mit ihnen zu leben, beschlossen die Engländer, sie zu vernichten. Edmund Morgan schreibt in seiner Geschichte von Virginia, Amerikanische Sklaverei, Amerikanische Freiheit: Da die Indianer bessere Holzarbeiter waren als die Engländer und praktisch unmöglich zu verfolgen, war die Methode, friedliche Absichten vorzutäuschen, ließ sie sich nieder und pflanzten ihre com überall Wählten sie, und dann, kurz vor der Ernte, auf sie fallen, töten so viele wie möglich und das Brennen der Mais. Innerhalb von zwei oder drei Jahren des Massakers hatten die Engländer den Tod dieses Tages um ein Vielfaches rächte. In diesem ersten Jahr des weißen Mannes in Virginia, 1607, hatte Powhatan eine Bitte an John Smith gerichtet, der prophetisch ausfiel. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it: I have seen two generations of my people die. I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must die soon my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love Why will you destroy us who supply you with food What can you get by war We can hide our provisions and run into the woods then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out Here comes Captain Smith So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner. When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a vacuum. The Indians, he said, had not subdued the land, and therefore had only a natural right to it, but not a civil right. A natural right did not have legal standing. The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. But they wanted them out of the way they wanted their land. And they seemed to want also to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area. The murder of a white trader, Indian-kidnaper, and troublemaker became an excuse to make war on the Pequots in 1636. A punitive expedition left Boston to attack the Narraganset Indians on Block Island, who were lumped with the Pequots. As Governor Winthrop wrote: They had commission to put to death the men of Block Island, but to spare the women and children, and to bring them away, and to take possession of the island and from thence to go to the Pequods to demand the murderers of Captain Stone and other English, and one thousand fathom of wampum for damages, etc. and some of their children as hostages, which if they should refuse, they were to obtain it by force. The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops. Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again. One of the officers of that expedition, in his account, gives some insight into the Pequots they encountered: The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side, crying, What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for They not thinking we intended war, went on cheerfully. - So, the war with the Pequots began. Massacres took place on both sides. The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes and later, in the twentieth century, even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorizing the enemy. This is ethno historian Francis Jenningss interpretation of Captain John Masons attack on a Pequot village on the Mystic River near Long Island Sound: Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemys will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective. So the English set fire to the wigwams of the village. By their own account: The Captain also said, We must Burn Them and immediately stepping into the Wigwam. brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire. William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation written at the time, describes John Masons raid on the Pequot village: Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie. As Dr. Cotton Mather, Puritan theologian, put it: It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day. The war continued. Indian tribes were used against one another, and never seemed able to join together in fighting the English. Jennings sums up: The terror was very real among the Indians, but in time they came to meditate upon its foundations. They drew three lessons from the Pequot War: (1) that the Englishmens most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple or mercy and (3) that weapons of Indian making were almost useless against weapons of European manufacture. These lessons the Indians took to heart. A footnote in Virgil Vogels book This Land Was Ours (1972) says: The official figure on the number of Pequots now in Connecticut is twenty-one persons. Forty years after the Pequot War, Puritans and Indians fought again. This time it was the Wampanoags, occupying the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, who were in the way and also beginning to trade some of their land to people outside the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their chief, Massasoit, was dead. His son Wamsutta had been killed by Englishmen, and Wamsuttas brother Metacom (later to be called King Philip by the English) became chief. The English found their excuse, a murder which they attributed to Metacom, and they began a war of conquest against the Wampanoags, a war to take their land. They were clearly the aggressors, but claimed they attacked for preventive purposes. As Roger Williams, more friendly to the Indians than most, put it: All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive. Jennings says the elite of the Puritans wanted the war the ordinary white Englishman did not want it and often refused to fight. The Indians certainly did not want war, but they matched atrocity with atrocity. When it was over, in 1676, the English had won, but their resources were drained they had lost six hundred men. Three thousand Indians were dead, including Metacom himself. Yet the Indian raids did not stop. For a while, the English tried softer tactics. But ultimately, it was back to annihilation. The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. A Dutch traveler in New Netherland wrote in 1656 that the Indians. affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have died. When the English first settled Marthas Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one. Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples. Roger Williams said it was a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage. This is one of the gods of New England, which the living and most high Eternal will destroy and famish. Was all this bloodshed and deceit-from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro, the Puritans-a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made-as it was made by Stalin when he killed peasants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgment be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly That quick disposal might be acceptable (Unfortunate, yes, but it had to be done) to the middle and upper classes of the conquering and advanced countries. But is it acceptable to the poor of Asia, Africa, Latin America, or to the prisoners in Soviet labor camps, or the blacks in urban ghettos, or the Indians on reservations-to the victims of that progress which benefits a privileged minority in the world Was it acceptable (or just inescapable) to the miners and railroaders of America, the factory hands, the men and women who died by the hundreds of thousands from accidents or sickness, where they worked or where they lived-casualties of progress And even the privileged minority-must it not reconsider, with that practicality which even privilege cannot abolish, the value of its privileges, when they become threatened by the anger of the sacrificed, whether in organized rebellion, unorganized riot, or simply those brutal individual acts of desperation labeled crimes by law and the state If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death What did people in Spain get out of all that death and brutality visited on the Indians of the Americas For a brief period in history, there was the glory of a Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere. As Hans Koning sums it up in his book Columbus: His Enterprise . For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class. Beyond all that, how certain are we that what was destroyed was inferior Who were these people who came out on the beach and swam to bring presents to Columbus and his crew, who watched Cortes and Pizarro ride through their countryside, who peered out of the forests at the first white settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts Columbus called them Indians, because he miscalculated the size of the earth. In this book we too call them Indians, with some reluctance, because it happens too often that people are saddled with names given them by their conquerors. And yet, there is some reason to call them Indians, because they did come, perhaps 25,000 years ago, from Asia, across the land bridge of the Bering Straits (later to disappear under water) to Alaska. Then they moved southward, seeking warmth and land, in a trek lasting thousands of years that took them into North America, then Central and South America. In Nicaragua, Brazil, and Ecuador their petrified footprints can still be seen, along with the print of bison, who disappeared about five thousand years ago, so they must have reached South America at least that far back Widely dispersed over the great land mass of the Americas, they numbered approximately 75 million people by the time Columbus came, perhaps 25 million in North America. Responding to the different environments of soil and climate, they developed hundreds of different tribal cultures, perhaps two thousand different languages. They perfected the art of agriculture, and figured out how to grow maize (corn), which cannot grow by itself and must be planted, cultivated, fertilized, harvested, husked, shelled. They ingeniously developed a variety of other vegetables and fruits, as well as peanuts and chocolate and tobacco and rubber. On their own, the Indians were engaged in the great agricultural revolution that other peoples in Asia, Europe, Africa were going through about the same time. While many of the tribes remained nomadic hunters and food gatherers in wandering, egalitarian communes, others began to live in more settled communities where there was more food, larger populations, more divisions of labor among men and women, more surplus to feed chiefs and priests, more leisure time for artistic and social work, for building houses. About a thousand years before Christ, while comparable constructions were going on in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Zuni and Hopi Indians of what is now New Mexico had begun to build villages consisting of large terraced buildings, nestled in among cliffs and mountains for protection from enemies, with hundreds of rooms in each village. Before the arrival of the European explorers, they were using irrigation canals, dams, were doing ceramics, weaving baskets, making cloth out of cotton. By the time of Christ and Julius Caesar, there had developed in the Ohio River Valley a culture of so-called Moundbuilders, Indians who constructed thousands of enormous sculptures out of earth, sometimes in the shapes of huge humans, birds, or serpents, sometimes as burial sites, sometimes as fortifications. One of them was 3 12 miles long, enclosing 100 acres. These Moundbuilders seem to have been part of a complex trading system of ornaments and weapons from as far off as the Great Lakes, the Far West, and the Gulf of Mexico. About A. D. 500, as this Moundbuilder culture of the Ohio Valley was beginning to decline, another culture was developing westward, in the valley of the Mississippi, centered on what is now St. Louis. It had an advanced agriculture, included thousands of villages, and also built huge earthen mounds as burial and ceremonial places near a vast Indian metropolis that may have had thirty thousand people. The largest mound was 100 feet high, with a rectangular base larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In the city, known as Cahokia, were toolmakers, hide dressers, potters, jewelry makers, weavers, salt makers, copper engravers, and magnificent ceramists. One funeral blanket was made of twelve thousand shell beads. From the Adirondacks to the Great Lakes, in what is now Pennsylvania and upper New York, lived the most powerful of the northeastern tribes, the League of the Iroquois, which included the Mohawks (People of the Flint), Oneidas (People of the Stone), Onondagas (People of the Mountain), Cayugas (People at the Landing), and Senecas (Great Hill People), thousands of people bound together by a common Iroquois language. In the vision of the Mohawk chief Iliawatha, the legendary Dekaniwidah spoke to the Iroquois: We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each others hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace and happiness. In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families. The concept of private ownership of land and homes was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither mendicants nor paupers. Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common. Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives families. Each extended family lived in a long house. When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husbands things outside the door. Families were grouped in clans, and a dozen or more clans might make up a village. The senior women in the village named the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils. They also named the forty-nine chiefs who were the ruling council for the Five Nation confederacy of the Iroquois. The women attended clan meetings, stood behind the circle of men who spoke and voted, and removed the men from office if they strayed too far from the wishes of the women. The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society. Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. They were taught equality in status and the sharing of possessions. The Iroquois did not use harsh punishment on children they did not insist on early weaning or early toilet training, but gradually allowed the child to learn self-care. All of this was in sharp contrast to European values as brought over by the first colonists, a society of rich and poor, controlled by priests, by governors, by male heads of families. For example, the pastor of the Pilgrim colony, John Robinson, thus advised his parishioners how to deal with their children: And surely there is in all children. a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon. Gary Nash describes Iroquois culture: No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails-the apparatus of authority in European societies-were to be found in the northeast woodlands prior to European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behavior were firmly set. Though priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong. He who stole anothers food or acted invalourously in war was shamed by his people and ostracized from their company until he had atoned for his actions and demonstrated to their satisfaction that he had morally purified himself. Not only the Iroquois but other Indian tribes behaved the same way. In 1635, Maryland Indians responded to the governors demand that if any of them killed an Englishman, the guilty one should be delivered up for punishment according to English law. The Indians said: It is the manner amongst us Indians, that if any such accident happen, wee doe redeeme the life of a man that is so slaine, with a 100 armes length of Beades and since that you are heere strangers, and come into our Countrey, you should rather conform yourselves to the Customes of our Countrey, than impose yours upon us. So, Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europes, accompanied by song, dance, and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature. John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace. Perhaps there is some romantic mythology in that. But the evidence from European travelers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, put together recently by an American specialist on Indian life, William Brandon, is overwhelmingly supportive of much of that myth. Even allowing for the imperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, for that time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization. Chapter 3: Persons of a Mean and Vile Condition In 1676, seventy years after Virginia was founded, a hundred years before it supplied leadership for the American Revolution, that colony faced a rebellion of white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and servants, a rebellion so threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown, and England decided to send a thousand soldiers across the Atlantic, hoping to maintain order among forty thousand colonists. This was Bacons Rebellion. After the uprising was suppressed, its leader, Nathaniel Bacon, dead, and his associates hanged, Bacon was described in a Royal Commission report: He was said to be about four or five and thirty years of age, indifferent tall but slender, black-haird and of an ominous, pensive, melancholly Aspect, of a pestilent and prevalent Logical discourse tending to atheisme. He seduced the Vulgar and most ignorant people to believe (two thirds of each county being of that Sort) Soe that their whole hearts and hopes were set now upon Bacon. Next he charges the Governour as negligent and wicked, treacherous and incapable, the Lawes and Taxes as unjust and oppressive and cryes up absolute necessity of redress. Thus Bacon encouraged the Tumult and as the unquiet crowd follow and adhere to him, he listeth them as they come in upon a large paper, writing their name circular wise, that their Ringleaders might not be found out. Having connurd them into this circle, given them Brandy to wind up the charme, and enjoyned them by an oath to stick fast together and to him and the oath being administered, he went and infected New Kent County ripe for Rebellion. Bacons Rebellion began with conflict over how to deal with the Indians, who were close by, on the western frontier, constantly threatening. Whites who had been ignored when huge land grants around Jamestown were given away had gone west to find land, and there they encountered Indians. Were those frontier Virginians resentful that the politicos and landed aristocrats who controlled the colonys government in Jamestown first pushed them westward into Indian territory, and then seemed indecisive in fighting the Indians That might explain the character of their rebellion, not easily classifiable as either antiaristocrat or anti-Indian, because it was both. And the governor, William Berkeley, and his Jamestown crowd-were they more conciliatory to the Indians (they wooed certain of them as spies and allies) now that they had monopolized the land in the East, could use frontier whites as a buffer, and needed peace The desperation of the government in suppressing the rebellion seemed to have a double motive: developing an Indian policy which would divide Indians in order to control them (in New England at this very time, Massasoits son Metacom was threatening to unite Indian tribes, and had done frightening damage to Puritan settlements in King Philips War) and teaching the poor whites of Virginia that rebellion did not pay-by a show of superior force, by calling for troops from England itself, by mass hanging. Violence had escalated on the frontier before the rebellion. Some Doeg Indians took a few hogs to redress a debt, and whites, retrieving the hogs, murdered two Indians. The Doegs then sent out a war party to kill a white herdsman, after which a white militia company killed twenty-four Indians. This led to a series of Indian raids, with the Indians, outnumbered, turning to guerrilla warfare. The House of Burgesses in Jamestown declared war on the Indians, but proposed to exempt those Indians who cooperated. This seemed to anger the frontiers people, who wanted total war but also resented the high taxes assessed to pay for the war. Times were hard in 1676. There was genuine distress, genuine poverty. All contemporary sources speak of the great mass of people as living in severe economic straits, writes Wilcomb Washburn, who, using British colonial records, has done an exhaustive study of Bacons Rebellion. It was a dry summer, ruining the corn crop, which was needed for food, and the tobacco crop, needed for export. Governor Berkeley, in his seventies, tired of holding office, wrote wearily about his situation: How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed. His phrase six parts of seaven suggests the existence of an upper class not so impoverished. In fact, there was such a class already developed in Virginia. Bacon himself came from this class, had a good bit of land, and was probably more enthusiastic about killing Indians than about redressing the grievances of the poor. But he became a symbol of mass resentment against the Virginia establishment, and was elected in the spring of 1676 to the House of Burgesses. When he insisted on organizing armed detachments to fight the Indians, outside official control, Berkeley proclaimed him a rebel and had him captured, whereupon two thousand Virginians marched into Jamestown to support him. Berkeley let Bacon go, in return for an apology, but Bacon went off, gathered his militia, and began raiding the Indians. Bacons Declaration of the People of July 1676 shows a mixture of populist resentment against the rich and frontier hatred of the Indians. It indicted the Berkeley administration for unjust taxes, for putting favorites in high positions, for monopolizing the beaver trade, and for not protecting the western formers from the Indians. Then Bacon went out to attack the friendly Pamunkey Indians, killing eight, taking others prisoner, plundering their possessions. There is evidence that the rank and file of both Bacons rebel army and Berkeleys official army were not as enthusiastic as their leaders. There were mass desertions on both sides, according to Washburn. In the fall, Bacon, aged twenty-nine, fell sick and died, because of, as a contemporary put it, swarmes of Vermyn that bred in his body. A minister, apparently not a sympathizer, wrote this epitaph: Bacon is Dead I am sorry at my heart, That lice and flux should take the hangmans part. The rebellion didnt last long after that. A ship armed with thirty guns, cruising the York River, became the base for securing order, and its captain, Thomas Grantham, used force and deception to disarm the last rebel forces. Coming upon the chief garrison of the rebellion, he found four hundred armed Englishmen and Negroes, a mixture of free men, servants, and slaves. He promised to pardon everyone, to give freedom to slaves and servants, whereupon they surrendered their arms and dispersed, except for eighty Negroes and twenty English who insisted on keeping their arms. Grantham promised to take them to a garrison down the river, but when they got into the boat, he trained his big guns on them, disarmed them, and eventually delivered the slaves and servants to their masters. The remaining garrisons were overcome one by one. Twenty-three rebel leaders were hanged. It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. The Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the whole colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the King. Berkeley himself, returning to England years earlier to protest the English Navigation Acts, which gave English merchants a monopoly of the colonial trade, had said: we cannot but resent, that forty thousand people should be impoverishd to enrich little more than forty Merchants, who being the only buyers of our Tobacco, give us what they please for it, and after it is here, sell it how they please and indeed have forty thousand servants in us at cheaper rates, than any other men have slaves. From the testimony of the governor himself, the rebellion against him had the overwhelming support of the Virginia population. A member of his Council reported that the defection was almost general and laid it to the Lewd dispositions of some Persons of desperate Fortunes who had the Vaine hopes of takeing the Countrey wholley out of his Majestys handes into their owne. Another member of the Governors Council, Richard Lee, noted that Bacons Rebellion had started over Indian policy. But the zealous inclination of the multitude to support Bacon was due, he said, to hopes of levelling. Levelling meant equalizing the wealth. Levelling was to be behind countless actions of poor whites against the rich in all the English colonies, in the century and a half before the Revolution. The servants who joined Bacons Rebellion were part of a large underclass of miserably poor whites who came to the North American colonies from European cities whose governments were anxious to be rid of them. In England, the development of commerce and capitalism in the 1500s and 1600s, the enclosing of land for the production of wool, filled the cities with vagrant poor, and from the reign of Elizabeth on, laws were passed to punish them, imprison them in workhouses, or exile them. The Elizabethan definition of rogues and vagabonds included: All persons calling themselves Schollers going about begging, all Seafaring men pretending losses of their Shippes or goods on the sea going about the Country begging, all idle persons going about in any Country either begging or using any subtile crafte or unlawful Games. comon Players of Interludes and Minstrells wandring abroade. all wandering persons and comon Labourers being persons able in bodye using loytering and refusing to worke for such reasonable wages as is taxed or commonly given. Such persons found begging could be stripped to the waist and whipped bloody, could be sent out of the city, sent to workhouses, or transported out of the country. In the 1600s and 1700s, by forced exile, by lures, promises, and lies, by kidnapping, by their urgent need to escape the living conditions of the home country, poor people wanting to go to America became commodities of profit for merchants, traders, ship captains, and eventually their masters in America. Abbot Smith, in his study of indentured servitude, Colonists in Bondage . writes: From the complex pattern of forces producing emigration to the American colonies one stands out clearly as most powerful in causing the movement of servants. This was the pecuniary profit to be made by shipping them. After signing the indenture, in which the immigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or seven years, they were often imprisoned until the ship sailed, to make sure they did not run away. In the year 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses, born that year as the first representative assembly in America (it was also the year of the first importation of black slaves), provided for the recording and enforcing of contracts between servants and masters. As in any contract between unequal powers, the parties appeared on paper as equals, but enforcement was far easier for master than for servant. The voyage to America lasted eight, ten, or twelve weeks, and the servants were packed into ships with the same fanatic concern for profits that marked the slave ships. If the weather was bad, and the trip took too long, they ran out of food. The sloop Sea-Flower . leaving Belfast in 1741, was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in Boston, forty-six of its 106 passengers were dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. On another trip, thirty-two children died of hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean. Gottlieb Mittelberger, a musician, traveling from Germany to America around 1750, wrote about his voyage: During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the high salted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad and filthy water. Add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles. On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman ahout to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea. Indentured servants were bought and sold like slaves. An announcement in the Virginia Gazette . March 28, 1771, read: Just arrived at Leedstown, the Ship Justitia, with about one Hundred Healthy Servants, Men Women Boys. The Sale will commence on Tuesday the 2nd of April. Against the rosy accounts of better living standards in the Americas one must place many others, like one immigrants letter from America: Whoever is well off in Europe better remain there. Here is misery and distress, same as everywhere, and for certain persons and conditions incomparably more than in Europe. Beatings and whippings were common. Servant women were raped. One observer testified: I have seen an Overseer beat a Servant with a cane about the head till the blood has followed, for a fault that is not worth the speaking of. The Maryland court records showed many servant suicides. In 1671, Governor Berkeley of Virginia reported that in previous years four of five servants died of disease after their arrival. Many were poor children, gathered up by the hundreds on the streets of English cities and sent to Virginia to work. The master tried to control completely the sexual lives of the servants. It was in his economic interest to keep women servants from marrying or from having sexual relations, because childbearing would interfere with work. Benjamin Franklin, writing as Poor Richard in 1736, gave advice to his readers: Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong and homely. Servants could not marry without permission, could be separated from their families, could be whipped for various offenses. Pennsylvania law in the seventeenth century said that marriage of servants without the consent of the Masters. shall be proceeded against as for Adultery, or fornication, and Children to be reputed as Bastards. Although colonial laws existed to stop excesses against servants, they were not very well enforced, we learn from Richard Morriss comprehensive study of early court records in Government and Labor in Early America . Servants did not participate in juries. Masters did. (And being propertyless, servants did not vote.) In 1666, a New England court accused a couple of the death of a servant after the mistress had cut off the servants toes. The jury voted acquittal. In Virginia in the 1660s, a master was convicted of raping two women servants. He also was known to beat his own wife and children he had whipped and chained another servant until he died. The master was berated by the court, but specifically cleared on the rape charge, despite overwhelming evidence. Sometimes servants organized rebellions, but one did not find on the mainland the kind of large - scale conspiracies of servants that existed, for instance, on Barbados in the West Indies. (Abbot Smith suggests this was because there was more chance of success on a small island.) However, in York County, Virginia, in 1661, a servant named Isaac Friend proposed to another, after much dissatisfaction with the food, that they get a matter of Forty of them together, and get Gunnes hee would be the first lead them and cry as they went along, who would be for Liberty, and free from bondage, that there would enough come to them and they would goe through the Countrey and kill those that made any opposition and that they would either be free or dye for it. The scheme was never carried out, but two years later, in Gloucester County, servants again planned a general uprising. One of them gave the plot away, and four were executed. The informer was given his freedom and 5,000 pounds of tobacco. Despite the rarity of servants rebellions, the threat was always there, and masters were fearful. Finding their situation intolerable, and rebellion impractical in an increasingly organized society, servants reacted in individual ways. The files of the county courts in New England show that one servant struck at his master with a pitchfork. An apprentice servant was accused of laying violent hands upon his. master, and throwing him downe twice and feching bloud of him, threatening to breake his necke, running at his face with a chayre. One maidservant was brought into court for being bad, unruly, sulen, careles, destructive, and disobedient. After the participation of servants in Bacons Rebellion, the Virginia legislature passed laws to punish servants who rebelled. The preamble to the act said: Whereas many evil disposed servants in these late tymes of horrid rebellion taking advantage of the loosnes and liberty of the tyme, did depart from their service, and followed the rebells in rebellion, wholy neglecting their masters imployment whereby the said masters have suffered great damage and injury. Two companies of English soldiers remained in Virginia to guard against future trouble, and their presence was defended in a report to the Lords of Trade and Plantation saying: Virginia is at present poor and more populous than ever. There is great apprehension of a rising among the servants, owing to their great necessities and want of clothes they may plunder the storehouses and ships. Escape was easier than rebellion. Numerous instances of mass desertions by white servants took place in the Southern colonies, reports Richard Morris, on the basis of an inspection of colonial newspapers in the 1700s. The atmosphere of seventeenth-century Virginia, he says, was charged with plots and rumors of combinations of servants to run away. The Maryland court records show, in the 1650s, a conspiracy of a dozen servants to seize a boat and to resist with arms if intercepted. They were captured and whipped. The mechanism of control was formidable. Strangers had to show passports or certificates to prove they were free men. Agreements among the colonies provided for the extradition of fugitive servants - these became the basis of the clause in the U. S. Constitution that persons held to Service or Labor in one State. escaping into another. shall be delivered up. Sometimes, servants went on strike. One Maryland master complained to the Provincial Court in 1663 that his servants did peremptorily and positively refuse to goe and doe their ordinary labor. The servants responded that they were fed only Beanes and Bread and they were soe weake, wee are not able to perform the imploymts hee puts us uppon. They were given thirty lashes by the court. More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants. They were mostly English in the seventeenth century, Irish and German in the eighteenth century. More and more, slaves replaced them, as they ran away to freedom or finished their time, but as late as 1755, white servants made up 10 percent of the population of Maryland. What happened to these servants after they became free There are cheerful accounts in which they rise to prosperity, becoming landowners and important figures. But Abbot Smith, after a careful study, concludes that colonial society was not democratic and certainly not equalitarian it was dominated by men who had money enough to make others work for them. And: Few of these men were descended from indentured servants, and practically none had themselves been of that class. After we make our way through Abbot Smiths disdain for the servants, as men and women who were dirty and lazy, rough, ignorant, lewd, and often criminal, who thieved and wandered, had bastard children, and corrupted society with loathsome diseases, we find that about one in ten was a sound and solid individual, who would if fortunate survive his seasoning, work out his time, take up land, and wax decently prosperous. Perhaps another one in ten would become an artisan or an overseer. The rest, 80 percent, who were certainly. shiftless, hopeless, ruined individuals, either died during their servitude, returned to England after it was over, or became poor whites. Smiths conclusion is supported by a more recent study of servants in seventeenth-century Maryland, where it was found that the first batches of servants became landowners and politically active in the colony, but by the second half of the century more than half the servants, even after ten years of freedom, remained landless. Servants became tenants, providing cheap labor for the large planters both during and after their servitude. It seems quite clear that class lines hardened through the colonial period the distinction between rich and poor became sharper. By 1700 there were fifty rich families in Virginia, with wealth equivalent to 50,000 pounds (a huge sum those days), who lived off the labor of black slaves and white servants, owned the plantations, sat on the governors council, served as local magistrates. In Maryland, the settlers were ruled by a proprietor whose right of total control over the colony had been granted by the English King. Between 1650 and 1689 there were five revolts against the proprietor. In the Carolinas, the Fundamental Constitutions were written in the 1660s by John Locke, who is often considered the philosophical father of the Founding Fathers and the American system. Lockes constitution set up a feudal-type aristocracy, in which eight barons would own 40 percent of the colonys land, and only a baron could be governor. When the crown took direct control of North Carolina, after a rebellion against the land arrangements, rich speculators seized half a million acres for themselves, monopolizing the good farming land near the coast. Poor people, desperate for land, squatted on bits of farmland and fought all through the pre-Revolutionary period against the landlords attempts to collect rent. Carl Bridenbaughs study of colonial cities, Cities in the Wilderness . reveals a clear-cut class system. He finds: The leaders of early Boston were gentlemen of considerable wealth who, in association with the clergy, eagerly sought to preserve in America the social arrangements of the Mother Country. By means of their control of trade and commerce, by their political domination of the inhabitants through church and Town Meeting, and by careful marriage alliances among themselves, members of this little oligarchy laid the foundations for an aristocratic class in seventeenth century Boston. At the very start of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, the governor, John Winthrop, had declared the philosophy of the rulers: . in all times some must be rich, some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie others meane and in subjection. Rich merchants erected mansions persons of Qualitie traveled in coaches or sedan chairs, had their portraits painted, wore periwigs, and filled themselves with rich food and Madeira. A petition came from the town of Deer-field in 1678 to the Massachusetts General Court: You may be pleased to know that the very principle and best of the land the best for soile the best for situation as laying in ye center and midle of the town: and as to quantity, nere half, belongs unto eight or nine proprietors. In Newport, Rhode Island, Bridenbaugh found, as in Boston, that the town meetings, while ostensibly democratic, were in reality controlled year after year by the same group of merchant aristocrats, who secured most of the important offices. A contemporary described the Newport merchants as . men in flaming scarlet coats and waistcoats, laced and fringed with brightest glaring yellow. The Sly Quakers, not venturing on these charming coats and waistcoats, yet loving finery, figured away with plate on their sideboards. The New York aristocracy was the most ostentatious of all, Bridenbaugh tells of window hangings of camlet, japanned tables, gold-framed looking glasses, spinets and massive eight-day clocks. richly carved furniture, jewels and silverplate. Black house servants. New York in the colonial period was like a feudal kingdom. The Dutch had set up a patroonship system along the Hudson River, with enormous landed estates, where the barons controlled completely the lives of their tenants, in 1689, many of the grievances of the poor were mixed up in the farmers revolt of Jacob Leisler and his group. Leisler was hanged, and the parceling out of huge estates continued. Under Governor Benjamin Fletcher, three-fourths of the land in New York was granted to about thirty people. He gave a friend a half million acres for a token annual payment of 30 shillings. Under Lord Cornbury in the early 1700s, one grant to a group of speculators was for 2 million acres. In 1700, New York City church wardens had asked for funds from the common council because the Crys of the poor and Impotent for want of Relief are Extreamly Grevious. In the 1730s, demand began to grow for institutions to contain the many Beggarly people daily suffered to wander about the Streets. A city council resolution read: Whereas the Necessity, Number and Continual Increase of the Poor within this City is very Great and. frequendy Commit divers misdemeanors within the Said City, who living Idly and unemployed, become debauched and Instructed in the Practice of Thievery and Debauchery. For Remedy Whereof. Resolved that there be forthwith built. A good, Strong and Convenient House and Tenement. The two-story brick structure was called Poor House, Work House, and House of Correction. A letter to Peter Zengers New York Journal in 1737 described the poor street urchin of New York as an Object in Human Shape, half starvd with Cold, with Cloathes out at the Elbows, Knees through the Breeches, Hair standing on end. From the age about four to Fourteen they spend their Days in the Streets. then they are put out as Apprentices, perhaps four, five, or six years. The colonies grew fast in the 1700s. English settlers were joined by Scotch-Irish and German immigrants. Black slaves were pouring in they were 8 percent of the population in 1690 21 percent in 1770. The population of the colonies was 250,000 in 1700 1,600,000 by 1760. Agriculture was growing. Small manufacturing was developing. Shipping and trading were expanding. The big cities-Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston-were doubling and tripling in size. Through all that growth, the upper class was getting most of the benefits and monopolized political power. A historian who studied Boston tax lists in 1687 and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand, about one thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent - 1 percent of the population-consisted of fifty rich individuals who had 25 percent of the wealth. By 1770, the top 1 percent of property owners owned 44 percent of the wealth. As Boston grew, from 1687 to 1770, the percentage of adult males who were poor, perhaps rented a room, or slept in the back of a tavern, owned no property, doubled from 14 percent of the adult males to 29 percent. And loss of property meant loss of voting rights. Everywhere the poor were struggling to stay alive, simply to keep from freezing in cold weather. All the cities built poorhouses in the 1730s, not just for old people, widows, crippled, and orphans, but for unemployed, war veterans, new immigrants. In New York, at midcentury, the city almshouse, built for one hundred poor, was housing over four hundred. A Philadelphia citizen wrote in 1748: It is remarkable what an increase of the number of Beggars there is about this town this winter. In 1757, Boston officials spoke of a great Number of Poor. who can scarcely procure from day to day daily Bread for themselves Families. Kenneth Lockridge, in a study of colonial New England, found that vagabonds and paupers kept increasing and the wandering poor were a distinct fact of New England life in the middle 1700s. James T. Lemon and Gary Nash found a similar concentration of wealth, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, in their study of Chester County, Pennsylvania, in the 1700s. The colonies, it seems, were societies of contending classes-a fact obscured by the emphasis, in traditional histories, on the external struggle against England, the unity of colonists in the Revolution. The country therefore was not born free but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich. As a result, the political authorities were opposed frequently, vociferously, and sometimes violently, according to Nash. Outbreaks of disorder punctuated the last quarter of the seventeenth century, toppling established governments in Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Free white workers were better off than slaves or servants, but they still resented unfair treatment by the wealthier classes. As early as 1636, an employer off the coast of Maine reported that his workmen and fishermen fell into a mutiny because he had withheld their wages. They deserted en masse. Five years later, carpenters in Maine, protesting against inadequate food, engaged in a slowdown. At the Gloucester shipyards in the 1640s, what Richard Morris calls the first lockout in American labor history took place when the authorities told a group of troublesome shipwrights they could not worke a stroke of worke more. There were early strikes of coopers, butchers, bakers, protesting against government control of the fees they charged. Porters in the 1650s in New York refused to carry salt, and carters (truckers, teamsters, carriers) who went out on strike were prosecuted in New York City for not obeying the Command and Doing their Uutyes as becomes them in their Places. In 1741, bakers combined to refuse to bake because they had to pay such high prices for wheat. A severe food shortage in Boston in 1713 brought a warning from town selectmen to the General Assembly of Massachusetts saying the threatening scarcity of provisions had led to such extravagant prices that the necessities of the poor in the approaching winter must needs be very pressing. Andrew Belcher, a wealthy merchant, was exporting grain to the Caribbean because the profit was greater there. On May 19, two hundred people rioted on the Boston Common. They attacked Belchers ships, broke into his warehouses looking for corn, and shot the lieutenant governor when he tried to interfere. Eight years after the bread riot on the Common, a pamphleteer protested against those who became rich by grinding the poor, by studying how to oppress, cheat, and overreach their neighbors. He denounced The Rich, Great and Potent who with rapacious violence bear down all before them. In the 1730s, in Boston, people protesting the high prices established by merchants demolished the public market in Dock Square while (as a conservative writer complained) murmuring against the Government the rich people. No one was arrested, after the demonstrators warned that arrests would bring Five Hundred Men in Solemn League and Covenent who would destroy other markets set up for the benefit of rich merchants. Around the same time, in New York, an election pamphlet urged New York voters to join Shuttle the weaver, Plane the joiner, Drive the carter, Mortar the mason, Tar the mariner, Snip the tailor, Smallrent the fair-minded landlord, and John Poor the tenant, against Gripe the Merchant, Squeeze the Shopkeeper, Spintext and Quible the Lawyer. The electorate was urged to vote out of office people in Exalted Stations who scorned those they call the Vulgar, the Mob, the herd of Mechanicks. In the 1730s, a committee of the Boston town meeting spoke out for Bostonians in debt, who wanted paper money issued to make it easier to pay off their debts to the merchant elite. They did not want, they declared, to have our Bread and Water measured out to Us by those who Riot in Luxury Wantonness on Our Sweat Toil. Bostonians rioted also against impressment, in which men were drafted for naval service. They surrounded the house of the governor, beat up the sheriff, locked up a deputy sheriff, and stormed the town house where the General Court sat. The militia did not respond when called to put them down, and the governor fled. The crowd was condemned by a merchants group as a Riotous Tumultuous Assembly of Foreign Seamen, Servants, Negroes, and Other Persons of Mean and Vile Condition. In New Jersey in the 1740s and 1750s, poor farmers occupying land, over which they and the landowners had rival claims, rioted when rents were demanded of them. In 1745, Samuel Baldwin, who had long lived on his land and who held an Indian tide to it, was arrested for nonpayment of rent to the proprietor and taken to the Newark jail. A contemporary described what happened then: The People in general, supposing the Design of the Proprietors was to ruin them. went to the Prison, opened the Door, took out Baldwin. When two men who freed Baldwin were arrested, hundreds of New Jersey citizens gathered around the jail. A report sent by the New Jersey government to the Lords of Trade in London described the scene: Two of the new captains of the Newark Companies by the Sheriffs order went with their drumms, to the people, so met, and required all persons there, belong to their companies, to follow the drums and to defend the prison but none followed, tho many were there. The multitude. between four and five of the clock in the afternoon lighted off their horses, and came towards the gaol, huzzaing and swinging their clubbs. till they came within reach of the guard, struck them with their clubbs, and the guard (having no orders to fire) returned the blows with then - guns, and some were wounded on both sides, but none killed. The multitude broke the ranks of the soldiers, and pressed on the prison door, where the Sheriff stood with a sword, and kept them off, till they gave him several blows, and forced him out from thence. They then, with axes and other instruments, broke open the prison door, and took out the two prisoners. As also one other prisoner, that was confined for debt, and went away. Through this period, England was fighting a series of wars (Queen Annes War in the early 1700s, King Georges War in the 1730s). Some merchants made fortunes from these wars, but for most people they meant higher taxes, unemployment, poverty. An anonymous pamphleteer in Massachusetts, writing angrily after King Georges War, described the situation: Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue. He spoke of a few men, fed by Lust of Power, Lust of Fame, Lust of Money, who got rich during the war. No Wonder such Men can build Ships, Houses, buy Farms, set up their Coaches, Chariots, live very splendidly, purchase Fame, Posts of Honour. He called them Birds of prey. Enemies to all Communities-wherever they live. The forced service of seamen led to a riot against impressment in Boston in 1747. Then crowds turned against Thomas Hutchinson, a rich merchant and colonial official who had backed the governor in putting down the riot, and who also designed a currency plan for Massachusetts which seemed to discriminate against the poor. Hutchinsons house burned down, mysteriously, and a crowd gathered in the street, cursing Hutchinson and shouting, Let it burn By the years of the Revolutionary crisis, the 1760s, the wealthy elite that controlled the British colonies on the American mainland had 150 years of experience, had learned certain things about how to rule. They had various fears, but also had developed tactics to deal with what they feared. The Indians, they had found, were too unruly to keep as a labor force, and remained an obstacle to expansion. Black slaves were easier to control, and their profitability for southern plantations was bringing an enormous increase in the importation of slaves, who were becoming a majority in some colonies and constituted one-fifth of the entire colonial population. But the blacks were not totally submissive, and as their numbers grew, the prospect of slave rebellion grew. With the problem of Indian hostility, and the danger of slave revolts, the colonial elite had to consider the class anger of poor whites-servants, tenants, the city poor, the propertyless, the taxpayer, the soldier and sailor. As the colonies passed their hundredth year and went into the middle of the 1700s, as the gap between rich and poor widened, as violence and the threat of violence increased, the problem of control became more serious. What if these different despised groups-the Indians, the slaves, the poor whites-should combine Even before there were so many blacks, in the seventeenth century, there was, as Abbot Smith puts it, a lively fear that servants would join with Negroes or Indians to overcome the small number of masters. There was little chance that whites and Indians would combine in North America as they were doing in South and Central America, where the shortage of women, and the use of Indians on the plantations, led to daily contact. Only in Georgia and South Carolina, where white women were scarce, was there some sexual mixing of white men and Indian women. In general, the Indian had been pushed out of sight, out of touch. One fact disturbed: whites would run off to join Indian tribes, or would be captured in battle and brought up among the Indians, and when this happened the whites, given a chance to leave, chose to stay in the Indian culture, Indians, having the choice, almost never decided to join the whites. Hector St. Jean Crevecoeur, the Frenchman who lived in America for almost twenty years, told, in Letters from an American Farmer . how children captured during the Seven Years War and found by their parents, grown up and living with Indians, would refuse to leave their new families. There must be in their social bond, he said, something singularly captivating, and far superior to anything to be boasted among us for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans. But this affected few people. In general, the Indian was kept at a distance. And the colonial officialdom had found a way of alleviating the danger: by monopolizing the good land on the eastern seaboard, they forced landless whites to move westward to the frontier, there to encounter the Indians and to be a buffer for the seaboard rich against Indian troubles, white becoming more dependent on the government for protection. Bacons Rebellion was instructive: to conciliate a diminishing Indian population at the expense of infuriating a coalition of white frontiersmen was very risky. Better to make war on the Indian, gain the support of the white, divert possible class conflict by turning poor whites against Indians for the security of the elite. Might blacks and Indians combine against the white enemy In the northern colonies (except on Cape Cod, Marthas Vineyard, and Rhode Island, where there was close contact and sexual mixing), there was not much opportunity for Africans and Indians to meet in large numbers. New York had the largest slave population in the North, and there was some contact between blacks and Indians, as in 1712 when Africans and Indians joined in an insurrection. But this was quickly suppressed. In the Carolinas, however, whites were outnumbered by black slaves and nearby Indian tribes in the 1750s, 25,000 whites faced 40,000 black slaves, with 60,000 Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indians in the area. Gary Nash writes: Indian uprisings that punctuated the colonial period and a succession of slave uprisings and insurrectionary plots that were nipped in the bud kept South Carolinians sickeningly aware that only through the greatest vigilance and through policies designed to keep their enemies divided could they hope to remain in control of the situation. The white rulers of the Carolinas seemed to be conscious of the need for a policy, as one of them put it, to make Indians Negros a checque upon each other lest by their Vastly Superior Numbers we should be crushed by one or the other. And so laws were passed prohibiting free blacks from traveling in Indian country. Treaties with Indian tribes contained clauses requiring the return of fugitive slaves. Governor Lyttletown of South Carolina wrote in 1738: It has always been the policy of this government to create an aversion in them Indians to Negroes. Part of this policy involved using black slaves in the South Carolina militia to fight Indians. Still, the government was worried about black revolt, and during the Cherokee war in the 1760s, a motion to equip five hundred slaves to fight the Indians lost in the Carolina assembly by a single vote. Blacks ran away to Indian villages, and the Creeks and Cherokees harbored runaway slaves by the hundreds. Many of these were amalgamated into the Indian tribes, married, produced children. But the combination of harsh slave codes and bribes to the Indians to help put down black rebels kept things under control. It was the potential combination of poor whites and blacks that caused the most fear among the wealthy white planters. If there had been the natural racial repugnance that some theorists have assumed, control would have been easier. But sexual attraction was powerful, across racial lines. In 1743, a grand jury in Charleston, South Carolina, denounced The Too Common Practice of Criminal Conversation with Negro and other Slave Wenches in this Province. Mixed offspring continued to be produced by white-black sex relations throughout the colonial period, in spite of laws prohibiting interracial marriage in Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Georgia. By declaring the children illegitimate, they would keep them inside the black families, so that the white population could remain pure and in control. What made Bacons Rebellion especially fearsome for the rulers of Virginia was that black slaves and white servants joined forces. The final surrender was by four hundred English and Negroes in Armes at one garrison, and three hundred freemen and African and English bondservants in another garrison. The naval commander who subdued the four hundred wrote: Most of them I persuaded to goe to their Homes, which accordingly they did, except about eighty Negroes and twenty English which would not deliver their Armes. All through those early years, black and white slaves and servants ran away together, as shown both by the laws passed to stop this and the records of the courts. In 1698, South Carolina passed a deficiency law requiring plantation owners to have at least one white servant for every six male adult Negroes. A letter from the southern colonies in 1682 complained of no white men to superintend our negroes, or repress an insurrection of negroes. In 1691, the House of Commons received a petition of divers merchants, masters of ships, planters and others, trading to foreign plantations. setting forth, that the plantations cannot be maintained without a considerable number of white servants, as well to keep the blacks in subjection, as to bear arms in case of invasion. A report to the English government in 1721 said that in South Carolina black slaves have lately attempted and were very near succeeding in a new revolution. and therefore, it may be necessary. to propose some new law for encouraging the entertainment of more white servants in the future. The militia of this province does not consist of above 2000 men. Apparently, two thousand were not considered sufficient to meet the threat. This fear may help explain why Parliament, in 1717, made transportation to the New World a legal punishment for crime. After that, tens of thousands of convicts could be sent to Virginia, Maryland, and other colonies. It also makes understandable why the Virginia Assembly, after Bacons Rebellion, gave amnesty to white servants who had rebelled, but not to blacks. Negroes were forbidden to carry any arms, while whites finishing their servitude would get muskets, along with corn and cash. The distinctions of status between white and black servants became more and more clear. In the 1720s, with fear of slave rebellion growing, white servants were allowed in Virginia to join the militia as substitutes for white freemen. At the same time, slave patrols were established in Virginia to deal with the great dangers that may. happen by the insurrections of negroes. Poor white men would make up the rank and file of these patrols, and get the monetary reward. Racism was becoming more and more practical. Edmund Morgan, on the basis of his careful study of slavery in Virginia, sees racism not as natural to black-white difference, but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control. If freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done. The answer to the problem, obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt. There was still another control which became handy as the colonies grew, and which had crucial consequences for the continued rule of the elite throughout American history. Along with the very rich and the very poor, there developed a white middle class of small planters, independent farmers, city artisans, who, given small rewards for joining forces with merchants and planters, would be a solid buffer against black slaves, frontier Indians, and very poor whites. The growing cities generated more skilled workers, and the governments cultivated the support of white mechanics by protecting them from the competition of both slaves and free Negroes. As early as 1686, the council in New York ordered that noe Negro or Slave be suffered to work on the bridge as a Porter about any goods either imported or Exported from or into this City. In the southern towns too, white craftsmen and traders were protected from Negro competition. In 1764 the South Carolina legislature prohibited Charleston masters from employing Negroes or other slaves as mechanics or in handicraft trades. Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Golden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of the midling rank of mankind in whom citizens could best trust our liberty Property. This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of our liberty, our property, our country. Similarly, in Boston, the rich James Otis could appeal to the Boston middle class by attacking the Tory Thomas Hutchinson. James Henretta has shown that while it was the rich who ruled Boston, there were political jobs available for the moderately well-off, as cullers of staves, measurer of Coal Baskets, Fence Viewer. Aubrey Land found in Maryland a class of small planters who were not the beneficiary of the planting society as the rich were, but who had the distinction of being called planters, and who were respectable citizens with community obligations to act as overseers of roads, appraisers of estates and similar duties. It helped the alliance to accept the middle class socially in a round of activities that included local politics. dances, horseracing, and cockfights, occasionally punctuated with drinking brawls. The Pennsylvania Journal wrote in 1756: The people of this province are generally of the middling sort, and at present pretty much upon a level. They are chiefly industrious farmers, artificers or men in trade they enjoy and are fond of freedom, and the meanest among them thinks he has a right to civility from the greatest. Indeed, there was a substantial middle class fitting that description. To call them the people was to omit black slaves, white servants, displaced Indians. And the term middle class concealed a fact long true about this country, that, as Richard Hofstadter said: It was. a middle-class society governed for the most part by its upper classes. Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality.
