Yes, there are the few famous unions between English and Indian
elites, since all of the societies that shared the Chesapeake were 
hierarchically-ranked and class based.  And, Yes, our images of 
colonial times are filtered through the increasingly race-biased and
sexually-inhibited lenses of Victorian Era historians.  And laws 
reflect official opprobrium about behavior that was apparently 
enough of an issue to require statutory prohibition, but to what 
extent we will never know.  

While it was true that interethnic sexual intercourse often 
accompanied and facilitated commercial intercourse along trading
frontiers in "Indian country" (one merchant claimed that cultures 
best merge in bed), there were still social sanctions--Indian as well 
as English--that made miscegenation the rare exception, especially
as the ethnic enclaves grew further apart in policy and farther apart 
in proximity.  (The 17th-century Eastern Shore is always going to be
the exception, as well as early Maryland to a certain extent.)

Then there were the Anglo-Indian wars in Virginia that consumed 
much of 1620s, 1640s, and 1670s, which literally "militated" against
the closest and most intimate of interethnic relationships.  It is 
interesting to interpret WAR, the most acculturative experience
other than interracial family formation, as a deviant intimacy
featuring Male-on-Male "contact" using clubs and guns!!  Let the 
NRA grapple with that one. 

In sum, there are enormous problems in discovering and 
documenting English and Indian "unions" in the colonial centuries,
which themselves were so different.  We must consider the dramatic
depopulation and dispossession of Indians, which may have broken 
down traditional barriers to taking an alien spouse while making it 
difficult for increasingly distant populations to do so.  Since we can't
rely on written records, most of which are missing, or anecdotal 
family lore, much of which is popular today because it romanticizes
(literallly) a past that was not so ethnically enlightened, the best we
can do is to "guesstimate" from our individual points of view.  Beware
of any figure that is so grossly exaggerated as to astound you; always
check the qualifiers; and insist on chronological specificity.  That is at
least a start in discounting rumors and wishful thinking--such as the 
Europeans invented scalping--which, unfortunately, have become a huge
"growth industry" related to "the Past," but not to History.   

Best to All,

Fred Fausz
St. Louis
 
 


**************************************
 AOL now offers free email to 
everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html