I suspect that since the number of European women in Virginia was small--VA 
was 2:1 male in 1700 according to Edmund Morgan--the amount of interbreeding 
as opposed to intermarriage was rather high.  Thus, the descendants of the 
earliest Virginia settlers may well tend to be mixed, while those who came 
later and who were less likely to share in the tobacco boom times of the 
17th century, including  thousands of convict laborers from the United 
Kingdom, were ironically more likely to be pure (whatever that means) 
European.  But ironies abound in Virginia's colonial history.  I 
corresponded with an anthropologist from MD who was working on 
African-Americans descended from Afro-Asians brought in the 17th and 18th 
century slave trade to the Chesapeake from Madagascar.  I also read 
somewhere (wish I remembered where) that for some reason at least one 
boatload of Mayans were brought from Central America in the 18th century and 
landed in Norfolk.

Virginia like many other constructed societies has certain myths of origins 
and identities and even more complex and fascinating realities.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Frederick Fausz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: 40 PERCENT ?!?!Pocahontas's Wedding questions


> That is NOT a reliable figure, for it is outrageously high.  "Early 
> English
> settlers" is much too vague, and "marry" is very problematical.  All of
> the available evidence for the early 17th century shows that the Virginia
> English constructed literal and legal barriers in separating themselves
> from Indian populations--much more of an apartheid society than most
> of the French and Spanish with regard to native peoples.
>
> I would be amazed if any documentation could be produced to show
> even 4 percent of English males "intermarrying" with Indian women--
> and certainly not 40 percent.
>
>
> Fred Fausz
> St. Louis
>
>
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