I don't have too much to say about Jamestown and its lessons but I thought I 
would weigh in here because Tom Apple mentions the laws of the colony.

From my limited knowledge of American colonial history, laws tended to be 
subordinated to practice.  The problem in Virginia, was also later a problem 
in Georgia and Massachusetts (and New York, the list goes on:)  whether the 
founding was religious or economic, colonial practice tended to displace the 
Indians.  The two exceptions that come to mind are Rhode Island and 
Pennsylvania but those exceptions have much to do with the remarkably pious 
men, Roger Williams and William Penn, who put their stamp on the colonies 
they founded.  They explicitly warned their colonists not to steal from the 
native owners of the lands they were given by the King.  Roger Williams 
become fluent in Narragansett and wrote a dictionary (and preaching guide) 
on the Narragansett language.  William Penn negotiated directly with the 
local Indians to purchase the site for Philadelphia.

So, in those selected places there was for a time harmony between European 
settlers and American Indians.  Elsewhere, regardless of the laws of 
companies or colonies, or even the theology of churches, settlement led to 
bloodshed.  By the time of King Phillip's War in New England (1676?) even 
the Narragansett went into revolt.  By the mid-18th century the Quakers 
withdrew from governing Pennsylvania, unable to resolve their conflict over 
their duties to western PA white settlers and their duties to nonviolence.

Put in the context of worldwide colonialism, Jamestown is hardly the worst 
example (think Transvaal, Tasmania, & Algeria), nor is it the best.  It is, 
for better or worse, our founding;  the founding of the United States of 
America.  I think Edmund Morgan said it best, when he asked if the USA was 
simply colonial Virginia writ large.
    Rhode Island had, as I remember, a 17th century statute barring slavery, 
yet Rhode Island had the largest percentage of slaves in the North at the 
time of the first census in 1790.  Notions of human inequality predate 
notions of human equality by millennia.  It was these ideas of inequality 
that Europeans brought over when they became American (Spanish, Dutch, 
Portuguese, French, and English.)  Notions of human equality began to shake 
many of the colonies during the "Age of Revolution:"  and if the 18th 
century was the era of enslavement, the 19th century was the era of 
revolution against slavery and other forms of bondage.

    This is a complex history and the moral responses to it differ amongst 
our group of Virginia history enthusiasts.  Let's just agree to differ and 
continue to tease out all the complexity that shaped Virginia and thus the 
US.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Apple" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?


>I think that there has been too much emotional handwringing over the 400th 
>as
> far as people tripping over themselves cast the the colony in different
> lights to suit their agendas.
>
> I am really getting tired of the colony being portrayed as a bunch of evil
> white Europeans whose presence in the New World is to rob the natives of
> their lands and lives as part of some genocidal masterplan. I am all in 
> favor
> of examining this history, warts and all, but the judgmental attitudes of
> those weighing in from their various cultural perspectives is getting 
> really
> old.
>
> There is ample documentation available that in a general sense, the 
> English
> wanted to deal fairly with the Indians. Granted it didn't always come out
> that way in practice but there was some acknowledgement of the rights of 
> the
> Indians.
>
> I think the Lawes Divine, Moral, and Martial first instituted by Sir 
> Thomas
> Gates in May of 1610, amply illustrates this.
>
> Some excerpts:
>
> article 1.9
> ...No man shall ravish or force any woman, maid or Indian, or other, upon
> pain of death,...
>
> article 1.16
> No man shall rifle or despoil, by force or violence, take away any thing 
> from
> any Indian coming to trade, or otherwise, upon pain of death.
>
> article 2.44
> Whosoever shall give offence to the Indians in that nature, which truly
> examined, shall found to have been cause of breach of their league, and
> friendship, which with so great travail, desire, and circumspection, we 
> have
> or shall at any time obtain from them without commission so to do , from 
> him
> that has authority for the same, shall be punished with death.
>
> article 2.45
> Whosoever shall wilfully, or negligently set fire on any Indian dwelling
> house, or Quioquisock house or temple, or upon any storehouse, or garner 
> of
> grain , or provision of what quality soever, or disvaledge, ransack , or 
> ill
> intreat the people of the country, where any war, or where through any 
> march
> shall be made except it be proclaimed, or without commandment of the chief
> officers shall be punished with death.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 21 May 2007 12:52:34 -0400, Lyle E. Browning wrote
>> The end result of being overly PC, apart from cultural emasculation,
>>  seems to be a sort of acontextual Yassir Arafat variant of "Never
>>  missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" for fear of the
>> possibility of offenses real or imagined.
>>
>> Two cultures collided in VA. One dominated the other after years of
>> struggle and opportunity to do otherwise. To negate that also
>> negates  what we became later as in the United States of America.
>> The end  result of had we been PC way back then was that we don't
>> now exist.  Now that's a nice image and one I find to be rather pathetic.
>>
>> Lyle Browning