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Posted on 03/08/2007 5:24:52 AM PST by SJackson
'Celebration' banned for Jamestown's 400th
Events marking settlement's anniversary condemn its 'holocaust'
By Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
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This year is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of settlers in Jamestown, 13 years before the Plymouth Pilgrims appeared on America's shores. And there will be discussions on the environmental impact of the settlement and its impact on African-Americans and Native Americans. But there will be no celebration.
"You can't celebrate an invasion," Mary Wade, a member of Jamestown 2007 organizing committee, has stated. After all, Indian tribes "were pushed back off of their land, even killed. Whole tribes were annihilated. A lot of people carry that oral history with them, and that's why they use the word 'invasion,' because it truly was an invasion, and I'm sure some of the Indian people will probably want to tell that as a part of the story of 400 years."
And that has some experts in history upset, since the advent of Jamestown provided what later became the United States with important introductions to Christian common law, a republican representative government, the first Protestant Christian worship service, and its first interracial marriage.
Wade's comments came in an interview with Voice of America, and highlighted the revisions that are going on regarding the history of Jamestown – and America. It also left a message about how important are the disputes over the political perspective now being applied retroactively to America's history.
"I believe this is one of the most significant battles of our day," said Doug Phillips, president of Vision Forum Ministries and the founder of the Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of America's Providential History, Vision Forum's own series of events to celebrate the quadracentennial. "It is the battle for our history."
He cited the fact that the Jamestown settlers arrived with not only an economic commission from England, but orders to spread the Good News of Jesus, noting one of the founders of Jamestown, Richard Hakluyt, wrote, "Wee shall by plantinge there inlarge the glory of the gospel, and from England plante sincere religion, and provide a safe and a sure place to receave people from all partes of the worlds that are forced to flee for the truthe of Gods worde."
And he said the Bible, in Psalm 78, tells readers, "If we don't tell the great deeds of God, our children will lose hope." But he said the secular perspectives that are the focal point of the contemporary events miss that Christian perspective, and that will end up being costly.
"We are destroying our children's generation by robbing them of history. They don't know who they are or where they came from," he told WND in an interview.
Phillips said America is known world-wide for its celebration, from the millions of dollars worth of fireworks ignited each 4th of July to the major festivities launched for other events, such as the 1976 Bicentennial.
But now, for the first time ever, the nation is ashamed of itself, so ashamed, he noted, Jamestown 2007 officials have banned the use of the word "celebration" in their materials.
On the other hand, they still are interested in attracting paying visitors to the region to fund their various activities, so they have turned this year's acknowledgment of the history into a bashfest.
"For America's 400th birthday, what should be a celebration of gratitude to the Lord is fast becoming an homage to revisionist historiography and political correctness," Phillips said.
For example, an event called, "State of the Black Union 2007: America's 400th Anniversary: The African American Imprint on America," already has been held. Its goal was a conversation about "how African Americans have made this nation great and how we must continue to fight to make the state of Black America a more perfect union."
Two other discussion headlines have included: "A Concentrated Diversity: The Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, 1619 to 1860," and "The Ecology of Jamestown – Origin of Environmental Injustice in America."
Said one commentary by Ken Adams, a tribal leader: "The British government finally sent enough people to take over all the land, which the Indians owned, and in the process of the wars that followed, 90 percent of an entire human race of people died."
"Yet, by God's grace, grateful Christians have an opportunity to officially celebrate America's great heritage on her 400th birthday," Phillips said.
His Vision Forum Ministries will be rallying Americans "from shore to shore to Jamestown" to the "Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of America's Providential History."
Those events will be June 11-16, and will highlight the significant role Jamestown played in creating the United States and its freedoms. There is a fourfold vision for Vision Forum's plans: to leave a witness for future generations that America did not forget the providential hand of God and Americans are a thankful people willing to honor the faith of their fathers, to create an exciting event that gives families an unforgettable experience, to leave a record of poetry and literature for following generations, and to leave "rocks of remembrance and Ebenezers of hope" that will provide vision for children of today.
A featured guest will be Harrison Tyler, the man whose father called for the Tercentenary 100 years ago and whose grandfather, the nation's 10th president, John Tyler, Jr., keynoted the 250th celebration.
Kevin Crossett, a spokesman for the formal Jamestown 2007 organization, said the historians decided to highlight free enterprise, representative government and cultural diversity in this year's "commemoration."
"That's not to say that other legacies are not important. These are the three that … are the most well-known," he told WND. Besides, other organizations are marking the Christian legacy, he said. "It's not being promoted as such from our office."
He said the use of the "commemoration" was changed from "celebration," as the events have been known for the last 200 years, because of objections from blacks and Native Americans.
"When we started planning the culturally diverse aspects of the Jamestown story, the African-American and Indian communities said, 'This isn't necessary a celebration for us,'" he said. "Those words struck home."
While that may have happened, Phillips notes that the actions resulting from those words actually is changing the history, since the settlers in Jamestown were commissioned to carry the message of Christianity, and did that in many ways.
"America's first published author was Captain John Smith, who described the arrival of the Jamestown settlers in 1607 as an act of providential goodness. America's spiritual 'first family,' the Mathers of New England, authored numerous works on Providence. America's first charter as an independent nation, the Declaration of Independence, announced that our ability to persevere as a nation rested in our 'firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.' Just weeks before the Declaration was signed, America's first great political mentor, the Rev. John Witherspoon (himself a signer of the Declaration and the tutor to one sixth of the members of our Constitutional Convention) authored 'The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men.' Even America's first president regularly invoked the God of providence in his writings," he said.
"Thus, gratitude to the sovereign God for His many providential blessings is not only biblical, it is richly American," Phillips said.
"In 1807 for the two hundredth, 1957 for the 250th, 1907 for the three hundredth, and then again in 1957 for the 350th anniversary celebration of America's birthday at Jamestown, our nation was enthusiastically reminded of these glorious acts of Divine Providence," Phillips noted.
For example, in 1857, former President John Tyler, Jr. gave a three-hour keynote oration tracing 250 years of providence, perseverance, and blessing.
Here amid the graves of our ancestors, we renew our pledges to those principles of self-government, which have been consecrated by their examples through two-hundred and fifty years; and implore that great Being who so often and signally preserved them through trials and difficulties, to continue to our country His protecting guardianship and care.
Phillips said the more liberal members of the media have joined the secularization and diminution of Jamestown's contributions. "A town which disappeared into the mud," is from the New York Times while the Virginia Gazette said Jamestown was "not worth it."
"For a whole year or more we shall celebrate the fact that a bunch of British buffoons who knew nothing of what they were doing colonized a swamp for the sake of Christianizing Indians," the paper said.
If such efforts are successful, "ours will be the first generation in the history of America at the time of a landmark historical celebration to officially and publicly despise our birthright and the providential hand of God in the life of our people," Phillips noted.
The event planning has been going on for years, and it was in 2000 when Congress passed the Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission Act, setting up the organizing structure for the events now going on.
The official propaganda from that group carries it even further. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine told an early event that those previous celebrations "did not tell the whole story," and he introduced a panel including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Otis Moss. Moss said this nation should be required to fix "the propaganda of history," and those Jamestown settlers were guilty of mass "holocaust" and "lynchings."
The reality is that the Jamestown settlers were people, Phillips said. "The true record includes warts, bumps, and bruises … What makes this story so compelling is that God worked through remarkable but flawed men to advance a mission that was based on a prime directive of New Testament Christianity. The result – a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
"We tryed it on them twice and now there's more of them than ever." - P.J. O'Rourke
The exchange took place during Pontiac's Rebellion, which broke out after the war, in 1763. Forces led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa who had been allied with the French, laid siege to the English at Fort Pitt.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:
P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.
On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:
I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed.
We don't know if Bouquet actually put the plan into effect, or if so with what result. We do know that a supply of smallpox-infected blankets was available, since the disease had broken out at Fort Pitt some weeks previously. We also know that the following spring smallpox was reported to be raging among the Indians in the vicinity.
To modern ears, this talk about infecting the natives with smallpox, hunting them down with dogs, etc., sounds over the top. But it's easy to believe Amherst and company were serious. D'Errico provides other quotes from Amherst's correspondence that suggest he considered Native Americans subhumans who ought to be exterminated. Check out his research for yourself at www.nativeweb.org/pages/l egal/amherst/lord_jeff.html. He not only includes transcriptions but also reproduces the relevant parts of the incriminating letters.
I consider the Muslims who behead captives as subhuman. The brutality of the Indians was far worse than what the Muslims have done.
At the time small pox was killing 400,000 people per year in Europe and had a high white mortality rate here. The cause was unknown but the relationship between exposure and contracting the disease was. Only those who had had the disease and recovered would even think of handling an "infested" blanket. The outbreak that followed doesn't seem to coincide with the letters or the supposed delivery.
I really detest all this PC garbage.
Granted this was not the American Government. But to argue that the American government has always dealt fairly with the Indians is absurd.
What a crock. If "we" hadn't "invaded," she wouldn't have a platform for her stupdity.
Yes, the Lunatics of Political Correctness. They've been running things since the 1960s.
The story of the human past is the story of invasion and conquest. It may really be the "end of history" as western civ at least has seemed to abandon these ancient principles.
But the Arabs were unified through warfare. They used to be isolated tribes until Muhammad and the Caliphs brought them together through conquest.
Dixon believes that at the siege by the Indians at Fort Pitt, two Indian chiefs who came to parley with the besiegers on June 24, 1763, were in fact given two blankets and a handkerchief that had been in the smallpox hospital in the fort.
Dixon, who it is clear in his writing is far from a friend of the British imperialists, points out, however, that the evidence indicates the supposedly infected blankets had no effect. The two Indian chiefs, Turtle's Heart and Maumaultee, came to parley again with the besieged garrison on July 26, a full month after receiving the blankets. The incubation period for smallpox is two weeks, and there was no sign of smallpox among the two chiefs or any of the Indian force besieging Fort Pitt. Also, the letter by General Sir Jeffrey Amherst suggesting it would be good if the Indians contracted smallpox was sent AFTER (July 7) the blanket-giving incident occurred, and the giving of the blankets was therefore NOT in furtherance of General Amherst's desire.
However, Dixon cites eyewitness accounts of the smallpox epidemic breaking out among the Indians at this time BEFORE the blanket-giving incident at Fort Pitt. Among the frontier communities where the Indians launched raids were at least two in which there had been a smallpox outbreak, and it appears the Indians picked up the disease in the course of slaughtering the inhabitants. The Indians sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind.
The Indians themselves tried to bring disease among the whites by placing the dead carcass of a horse in a well used by the frontier community in the area of Fort Ligonier.
This blanket-giving incident has been distorted far out of proportion to its actual significance by left-leaning ideologues in order to serve a more modern political agenda.
They do this in order to sweep under the rug the treacherous way in the Indians broke the peace, the savage cruelty the Indians employed in murdering a large number of people at the British garrisons and in the frontier communities, including many people who had surrendered to the Indians.
Episodes like the ritual cannibalism in which the victorious Indians after overcoming the defenders of Fort Detroit boiled and ate the corpse of a British soldier, are swept under the rug.
Or that Pontiac's uprising was really an attempt at ethnic cleansing, as demonstrated by Pontiac's own words to his fellow Indians:
"It is important for us, my brothers, that we exterminate from our land this nation which seeks only to destroy us. You see as well as I that we can no longer supply our needs, as we have done from our brothers, the French....Therefore, my brothers, we must all swear their destruction and wait no longer. Nothing prevents us; they are few in numbers, and we can accomplish it."
Subhuman? I wouldn't use that term, but the behavior of the Indians demonstrated the absolute lowest depths to which human beings can sink in depravity and cruelty.
As with most things now, this is a spiritual battle between Good and Evil... one side believes that war and death are the ultimate and highest wrongs and are to be condemned and avoided at all costs and the other side believes (rightly) that death comes no matter and the ultimate wrong is going to hell.
jw
Sadly, I wonder how many school children today even know what Jamestown was?
Does this mean no more celebrations at Normandy or Anzio, either? No more MacArthur pageants?
Must we ban The Charge of the Light Brigade?
It is now, but only because they were run out of northern Colorado & most of Wyoming several hundred years ago.
They also found less than enthusiastic welcomes in Nebraska & Kansas, while on their way to their present digs. Think NANA--No Apache Need Apply--as the policy of the tribes whose land they were invading moving through.
For that matter, the Lakota only possessed "their" sacred Black Hills around about 300 years ago, driving out other tribes when they pushed west, out of Minnesota. Believe me, they did not use a reputable Realtor for the transaction, nor even offer "$24 worth of beeds" for their new "ancestral home".
First, these "Native Americans" INVADED North America, pushing out, destroying, or otherwise supplanting the previous cultures. After that, they milled around fighting (and sometimes eating) each other incessantly for new places to live, until the white man found them.
The last time we were at Jamestowne, the clerks who dealt with our entry to the settlement were all Eastern European. Talk about an invasion!
That's multiculturalism. Celebrate diversity and encourage the validation of every tribe and culture but ours.
For us, the invalidation of America.
Wholeheartedly agree.
:o])
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