Excellent analysis.
The Berkeley story does not end happily, either, until many years later. Two years into the English colony at Berkeley, the Indians became excessively friendly, so the colonists included them in their Thanksgiving celebration. Friendly groups of Indians drifted in all morning, including their King for whom the colonists had built a house the previous winter.
Suddenly, without warning, the Indians grabbed muskets and knives, which were leaning against the buildings. and began to slaughter the colonists. It turned out that other groups of Indians started massacreing colonists in other settlements at the same time for 140 miles on either side of the James River. There is no record of how many colonists actually died, but the action brought a halt to the annual Thanksgiving celebration at Berkeley Plantation until 1958.
Jamestown, itself, was spared because a friendly Indian named Chanco rowed across the river in his canoe and warned the Jamestown population. The Indians were stopped before they could attack the settlers there.
“A failed ‘spearment in Socialism?” Is there any other kind?
Bookmark
>> greed, averse, and selfishness
“avarice” maybe?
Very timely and all Americans should know this history...
Sadly, most do not.....
PURITAN ECONOMIC EXPERIMENTS by Dr. Gary North
Free Online Book
http://www.garynorth.com/PURITAN_ECONOMIC_EXPERIMENTS.pdf
they invited Chief Massasoit and 0 braves (they most likely brought their families - but in those days, when recounting numbers at gatherings, only men were listed.)
The feasted/ sang and played games for 3 days. They had, not only ‘plenty of water fowl” but ‘ye wilde turkey
= and fish, including ‘succor from the sea” - which included clams (but probably not mussels as the had gotten quite ill from them on their first day on land) and lobster (which could be gathered under the seaweed at low time - but were considered a lowly food) -
there would have, undoubtedly been corn and pumpkins (as the natives grew these there) and cranberries - as cranberry bogs as indigenous to the area. (They made ‘bog shoes’ out of wood that strapped to their boots and provided them a few extra inches out of the water while gathering cranberries.)
I have the 1898 edition of “The Bradford History” published after many decades long searching for the original manuscript of his ‘book - which was a Journal, written for his family. I was on loan to the pastor of the Old South Church when the Revolutionary WAr broke out. The British took over the church and used it as a stable. The Journal disappeared.
I was finally tracked down in the late 1800’s, in the private library of the archbishop of London. He eventually donated it to the Pilgrim Museum and it was finally published - amost great fanfare and acclaim from scholars of the day.
I it now published continually under the name “Of Plimoth Plantation” - and should be in every home and required reading for everyone.
The best and most accurate account of the Pilgrims I have seen is the Documentary “Dangerous Crossing” - a History Ch documentary. (You can see it on You Tube - in 3 parts. A great film to watch this week - teach your kids - and yourselves - what these people went through to establish freedom in this land...the seeds of the freest country ever known.
Happy Thanksgiving
I’ve witnessed a similar experience in my early food service employment.. I was a young room service busboy in the Plaza Hotel in new York, and the typical struggle ensued between the server/carrier busboys, the pick-up crew, and the set-up boys..
It was standard that the servers, having to rush, and carry heavy trays of hot food, with huge silver domes,(as much as 30#’s) keeping everything warm, and waiting for elevators, etc, were collecting all of the tips, but getting paid much less in hourly wage, pennies really.. We were English speaking, polite, and well groomed, and they were a scruffy crew..
We would give them 15% of our tips to divide amongst themselves.. They would piss and moan about this arrangement and they made life for us nearly unbearable, because they delayed setting up our trays and stacked our trays unbalanced to make them harder to carry without dumping them..
The others constantly complained that when business was brisk, with conventions, business meetings, weddings, etc, we would make great money, and this was true.. But there were days, most days, when we sat all day, and most nights that nothing happened, and we went home with change in our pockets..
These were 3 different unions and nothing in those contracts called for any change in the distribution but after a meeting it was decided that we split our tips, 50-50, and they promised to do their jobs in real time..
This worked for a short time, but soon there were loud complaints that we were cheating on the split, and the lazy ones weren’t working as promised, and they were fighting among themselves.. We complained that we are taking home much less and nothing really changed, so we voted to return to the contract limits.. All hell broke out with fist fights, and feet dragging returned with a vengeance, until several boys were fired..
Over the years, even in the nonunion shops, and even in the hotels that I owned, this subject would raise it’s ugly head, with the same sad results.. The complainers seldom worked to improve their lot in life, or even worked harder to prove their worth, but wanted more of the harder workers pay..
I am of the firm belief that this should be taught to every first year college student for one semester.
If you go to the Plimouth Plantation in New England, you will hear the story for yourself in a “living museum.” That is, if they haven’t changed the talk track since I was last there to accommodate “political correctness.” When I went back in the 1980s, they spoke about the failed experiment with socialism in great detail.