November 30, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the Day
Why did so many sites take such pleasure in saying "the Thanksgiving story is a myth" and instead relaying the worst dark side of the pilgrim tales?
[Full disclosure: I am descended from John and Priscilla Alden, and probably some other Pilgrims. Not that I can imagine why that would matter, since I am also probably descended from some of the natives they displaced.]
I mean, yes, there is a strong element of mythology to the pilgrim story. There are very strong elements of mythology to any story any group tells about itself. Believe me, I know -- I just watched Reds last night. How come people who get quite hysterical telling you that the apologists for Stalin were all right, really, because they meant well can't cut the Pilgrims a little slack for being creatures of the 17th century instead of the 21st? It's not, after all, as if they infected the Indians with smallpox whom they displaced; those folks were gone before they got there. It's not that there isn't a dark side to the Pilgrim story, mind you, but it certainly isn't the whole story. Those folks had the balls to get in a tiny little ship and sail into the unknown, build a community several thousand miles from the nearest folks who spoke their language, survived the death of half their colony in the first year, and made something of it. Unless you could build a colony in an unknown country with just some abandoned fields, the contents of one ship, and Squanto, it behooves you to pay that accomplishment some respect.
I don't mind, per se, those who publicize the little known aspects of the pilgrim story. What sets my teeth on edge is the relentless focus on the negative, which is just as false as the fairy tale we tell five year olds. The Pilgrims were not lying, murdering scum; they were people persecuted for their religion who came to the New World in search of a place where they could practice their religion and keep their culture. Just like, say, the Jews. They did not always behave well. But their early treatment of the indians was, while not exemplary, not all that bad either. It helps if you stop thinking of the Indians as the Eco-Demi-Gods of the commercials, and think of them instead as actual real live people, who were busy having lives, clashing with each other, and periodically exterminating other tribes, long before the Pilgrims got here. What the Pilgrims did was not sacrelige; it was the same kind of opportunistic expansion into the territory of another group that has characterized the whole of human history, including the history of the Indians. We have, I hope, evolved morally and politically since then. Such a thing wouldn't happen today. But of course, the reason it wouldn't happen today is that those Pilgrims came over here and founded a colony that eventually showed the world that there was a better way.
Publishing such thoughts on Thanksgiving seems rather childish, the sulking teenager at the dinner table who can't wait to tell everyone what's wrong with the pole lamps and the overstuffed sofa and the deep freezer out in the garage. It's not just that they don't want to enjoy the holiday; none of us can because it's not authentic. You know, the right does not, by and large, spend labor day pissing all over the Hollywood Ten and all the other heroic myths of the left. For one day, could you be polite and let everyone else enjoy their turkey?
Posted by Jane Galt at November 30, 2002 8:20 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Bravo Jane! I've been trying to say that to folks since the 60s but your formulation is just right. Merry Christmas.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on November 30, 2002 2:06 PMIt's always fascinated me that the same people who claim that every culture has to be taken on it's own merits and that judging them with the values of our own society is just plain wrong will turn around and condemn past European society.
Sure, we evolved from them, but in many ways we're unrecognizable from them. Doesn't make any difference to the bitter ol' multi-cults, though.
Ja,es
Logically it doesn't make any sense, but tactically it does. The goal is to deny Western Civ the moral high ground and thus guilt trip us into submission. Four legs good two legs bad type stuff.
Posted by: Brian on November 30, 2002 4:38 PMDon't forget the genocidal policies that Native Americans instigated against the indigenous megafauna of the Old Stone Age.
Posted by: Frank C on November 30, 2002 5:33 PMThe really strange part of the Pilgrims story is Squanto. He was kidnapped to England, put on display like a zoo animal (IIRC), and his people were wiped out. So when more white people show up, he helps them survive??? I'd have been teaching them to make poison ivy salad and build their houses below the high water mark - if I couldn't persuade the surviving tribes to wipe them out while they were weak.
Either there was more to the story than I've heard or Squanto was the all-time world champion suck-up.
Posted by: markm on November 30, 2002 7:34 PMFrank wrote:
"Don't forget the genocidal policies that Native Americans instigated against the indigenous megafauna of the Old Stone Age."
It wasn't megafauna that they committed genocide against. There is very good evidence that the Americas were inhabited by aborigines before the Indians, sorry, Native Americans, arrived.
Posted by: Steve on December 1, 2002 12:27 AMSteve,
You meant to say that it wasn't JUST megafauna they killed off, right? Because the Amerinds wiped out a whole LOT of species before the Europeans got here.
Posted by: Gary Utter on December 1, 2002 4:41 AMBrian said something I find puzzling....
"The goal is to deny Western Civ the moral high ground and thus guilt trip us into submission. "
Submission to what? Do these guys even have a goal? They're pretty good at keeping a secret 'cause I can't figure out what it is.
James
Posted by: James R. Rummel on December 1, 2002 5:06 AM"Submission to what? Do these guys even have a goal?"
Well that's what the Culture Wars are all about, no? The left's goal is still to remake society by coercion, but the whole history and institutional framework of the country is arrayed against that sort of thing. So if they can frame that history as the tainted legacy of rascist hate-mongers, then it'll be all the easier to trample. Who would defend it?
Of course, talking about genocide of Indians by Indians doesn't help in this little crusade, so it's avoided. (Or, in the strange case of Kennewick Man, suppressed; I can't do links, so just google "Kennewick Man".) They talk loudly about greedy Pilgrims or rascist Founders or sexist settlers or plundering pioneers in order to subvert their legacy of freedom, sovereignty, limited govt, yada yada yada.
Post-modern history is politics by other means.
Posted by: Brian on December 1, 2002 1:47 PMBeautiful screed. The fact of inter-Indian warfare is part of the balance that is curiously and typically omitted from such stories in po-mo hands.
Posted by: anony-mouse on December 1, 2002 3:39 PMSteve: aboriginal Americans before the "native americans" crossed over from Asia?
This is the first I've heard of such things other tan rank speculation. Pray tell us what this evidence is and where it might be read about?
(Or do you just mean an earlier migration, rather than Truly Indigenous Peoples?)
Posted by: Sigivald on December 2, 2002 7:03 PMInteresting article on Kennewick Man (Sigivald, this is what you're looking for) here. Interesting to also note that although Kennewick Man appears to NOT be related at all to Native American Indians (or whatever the PC term is nowadays) the NAIs have claimed his remains as their own.
In any event, there's no evidence that currently supports man having evolved out of a base anywhere other than in Africa. So to some extent, we're all invaders. It's just the last set of invaders that's inevitably held up as evil.
Posted by: David Perron on December 3, 2002 4:45 AMComments are Closed.