Posted on 03/18/2015 6:31:00 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
The early American settlers called it "the starving time," and accounts of the winter of 1609-1610 were so ghastly, and so morbid, that scholars weren't sure if the stories were true. George Percy, then president of the English settlement of Jamestown in Virginia, wrote that settlers ate horses, then cats and dogs, then boots and bits of leather, and, finally, one another. "One of our colony murdered his wife, ripped the child out of her womb and threw it into the river, and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food," wrote Percy, who then ordered the man executed. "Now whether she was better roasted, boyled or carbonado'd (barbecued), I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of," added the famed settler John Smith.
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That was a hard hit to the back of the head. It was likely a metal tool or weapon and not from an animal.
Tough time of year to survive in my neck of the woods. There is ice on the lakes but its rotten. Too early for anything to be growing. Birds have picked bushes and trees clean of dried berries. You might find some nuts if the critters haven’t picked them over.
Farming really is the only way to go for long term survival.
I think history has proved that white man started the scalping.
One of my ancestors was aboard one of the ships that got shipwrecked on Bermuda, then repaired the boats and arrived at Jamestowne just in time to rescue the starving colonists. They had been trapped in the fort by the Powhatan Indians, so could not hunt or forage. On top of that the winter was so severe that the rivers froze solid. The world was undergoing a Little Ice Age.
Tramping through the woods hunting is often a net loss of energy. Unless large game is plentiful, and it was most assuredly not plentiful that year, hunting was an energy alligator.
Secondly, game is lean, and fat is high energy food. For that reason, black bear were prized as food. And that nice pelt. ;-)
Cool. You are privileged to know your family history. Its amazing how history turns on happenchance. If your ancestor had not survived the initial shipwreck and helped repair and restock the ships, Jamestown would not have survived. It took incredible bravery for those folks to do what they did.
“Farming really is the only way to go for long term survival.”
If you intend to stay in one place it is otherwise you would need to be like the plains Indians constantly on the move following the game and gathering what you can in the area before moving to the next area.
Indians that stayed in one place farmed. It was mostly beans, squash, and corn and they had meat, fish when they could get it.
That’s exactly why I raise a garden twice a year. Much easier “foraging” inside the garden fence.
that is news to me...
..obviously, not taught to be self-reliant..!
I’d eat a turd, also, if I didn’t have my best friend close.
He’s such a lecherous perv
No it hasn’t, scalping was an ancient Indian practice.
“Of the approximately 500 bodies at the Crow Creek massacre site, 90 percent of the skulls show evidence of scalping. The event took place around 1325 AD.”
And they were the ones with the tomahawks and the direction of the forehead cuts indicates such a weapon, not a kitchen cleaver.
Did the body fall hard onto the edge of a wooden chair or a boulder, cracking the skull? Were the remains disturbed by animals or earth movements during the centuries that passed?
who would eat clams without linguini?
Yeah, maybe we should talk about the peaceful, agrarian Anasazi instead. :)
revisionist history.
“I think history has proved that white man started the scalping.”
Someone had posted that awhile ago so I did some searching. There are accounts of scalping in Europe that go way back, as well as in other places. I’m guessing it was a common enough way in a lot of places, including America 2000 years ago, to prove your manhood, that you had killed the enemy, etc.
Your claim that scalping was brought from Europe to the Indians, is the revisionist history.
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