“It is likely that there were slaves involved in settlements in the 1500’s.”
Those fools at Smithsonian are writing about Spanish settlements, as if they were the beginning of what became the United States. I guess that’s why our colonial ancestors all spoke Spanish and rebelled against the King of Spain in 1776. Idiots.
Other than the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Jamestown was the first Colony of British North America. Of what became the United States. And the first colonists landed at Jamestown in 1607.
Moreover the Roanoke Colony itself may well have failed due to England’s war with Spain, the same war featuring the Spanish Armada. Fighting that attempted Spanish invasion kept England from resupplying Roanoke, and by the time they were able to return there was no trace of the colony other than the mysterious ‘croatoan’ inscription.
I guess it’s a distinction that i don’t see as important. Florida is part of the United States, and there were slaves in Florida in the 1500s, that they were Spanish slaves, and not British slaves, doesn’t seem that important to me; I don’t blame our country for those slaves, but I don’t think it is important to discount them either. I don’t blame our country for british slaves either, I blame our country for the slaves we allowed as a country.
Which we did not allow for long; although it is hard to give people too much “credit” for ending something that was wrong from the start.