Revisionist Blues

WARNING: THIS IS FAKE! If I find out that anybody painted an historical marker because of this JOKE, I will verbally abuse you until you bleed from the ears!

Well, where do I start? This is generally about politics. I know.. EVERYTHING is about politics. When you come right down to it, politics is best described as a power struggle over the sandbox. Educated and uneducated alike dwell in this netherworld of emotion... depending on reason ONLY when it will benefit you somehow. Our country's educational system has always been plagued by this anathema towards reality.

Yes, I'm jaded. lol

Recently, I wrote a paper that retells the genesis of Wilmington, North Carolina as a product of political changes in English politics. Earlier stories going back over a hundred years or more tell the story as though there were essentially walls up around our state. We've protected anything North Carolinian because, frankly, we've had little to protect... especially in the beginning of the colony and well into the eighteenth century.

This is what created our unique beliefs and political system which Rob Christensen, a former News & Observer reporter, wrote about in his book, The Paradox of Tarheel Politics. If you haven't read this book and you want to understand why we are the way we are, get it!

That paper I wrote? It retells the history of the Lower Cape Fear in a way that no one has ever told before. It explains the references in the Colonial Records so much better than anything written in the past (in my opinion) because it allows England to be the leader of colonial America... and it was! This is not a popular opinion. In walks the dark and menacing politics! The Revolution may be long over but, the attitudes that were cultured by that conflict still affect our beliefs, ideals, and even our current decisions... especially in North Carolina, who struggled after the Revolution to be one of the "big boys" in colonial politics. We were always attached at the hip to South Carolina, more highly favored by the British administration and still favored by the early United States as well. It stuck!

Our history has been the greatest casualty in that war. Romantic historians abused the truth everywhere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and even more so here. For example, I will illustrate this with my favorite guy to pick on... Edward Moseley (my wife gets real tired of his name). This is what George Davis had to say about the man:

“Of all the men who watched and guided the tottering footsteps of our infant State, there was not one who in intellectual ability, in solid and polite learning, in scholarly cultivation and refinement, in courage and endurance, in high Christian morality, in generous consideration for the welfare of others, in all true merit in fine, which makes a man among men, who could equal Edward Moseley.”
---- Hon. George Davis

I have recently studied this war-profiteer and I can tell you that this Davis quote is NOT the real Edward Moseley by any means! Still, historians have put the guy on a pedestal because he was one of our state's first examples of a prominent "revolutionary." He may have died in 1749, but he was still a great symbol of fighting the government (in 1776, the "oppressive" and hated ENGLISH government). Understand this: George Davis was a secessionist during the Civil War (still fairly well regarded down here), a slave owner, AND a politician. It's politics that made Moseley the hero you will find on the Highway marker down Highway 117 in Pender County. You can tell by the photo attached to this article that I've had my fun with "Eddie." Davis and dozens of other historians and politicians undoubtedly helped Moseley get on that marker. Still, North Carolina historian, Samuel Ashe (great-nephew to Edward Moseley) rarely talked about his uncle when he wrote about 100 historical figures in North Carolina. He talked a lot about the Moore family though, three generations of them! Moseley was their partner in the Lower Cape Fear adventures of 1726-1733. Still, his own kin didn't acknowledge his contributions and no definitive work has yet come out to detail Edward Moseley's life. Could it be that no one wants to hear the truth? Yep!

The revisionist atmosphere in history today may finally expose Edward Moseley for the fraud he was. I'm trying hard... lol (and taking some flack). Likewise, the story of Wilmington, as opposed to the first town on the Cape Fear river, Brunswick Town, has been suppressed as well. England made Wilmington. Still, historians are guilty of succumbing to a fear that undoubtedly kept them focused away from England and away from the entire country of America in favor of telling North Carolina's "valuable" history.

Now, I'm North Carolinian and proud of it. But, I want to know exactly what I'm proud of... the truth. There's lots to be proud of... but, people like Edward Moseley (even his kin, the early Moores of Cape Fear) are seldom the kind of neighbors you want over for supper. The only coup ever recorded in American history occurred in Wilmington in 1898 and you'll never guess who the coup's leader, Alfred Moore Waddell's grandpa was. Waddell was quoted as saying that he would keep blacks out of Wilmington government even if he has to "choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses." Maurice Moore's grandsons were still causing trouble the old-fashioned, good-ol'-boy way. Oh, yeah, Waddell was a politician, too. Then, there's Jesse Helms but let's let Rob Christensen tell that story.

What got my gourd lately was when I tried to publish this piece on Wilmington. You submit a paper, then have it reviewed by your peers, then they make a recommendation to the publishers about whether or not to publish the article. Well, I had every reasonable hope that my Brunswick-Wilmington story would make it. My university had endorsed my work by crowning it with "Honors Thesis of the Year," as well as sending me to Montana to present the work nationally. Many have told me privately that they really like my writing style as well. What's to worry about? Politics. That's what. lol

My article was rejected by the reviewer... even the publisher was trying to understand why. It's seems that the article is just the sort of history the publishers want to publish. But, the reviewer had problems with my "style" and said that it wasn't publishable quality. I admit, my style is a little different but, apparently just the shot in the arm that revisionists feel is needed. The big problem was politics... the unpopularity of the truth in social circles. So, I'm back to rewrites, trying to preserve something that will be enjoyable to read while trying to educate my fellow North Carolinians on their history. Tell me... you've just read this blog... what do you think of my style?

Mattamuskeet Indian Reservation

Complete Document; 1 April 1727: North Carolina Secretary of State Office, Land Grant Library, File 76.
His Excellency John Lord Carteret Palatine, and the rest of the true and absolute Lords Proprietors of Carolina, to persons to whome these presents shall come Greeting in our Lord God Everlasting - Know ye that we the said Lords and absolute proprietors, for and in consideration of the Sum of two Buck Skins in hand paid to our Resever General by King Squieres and the rest of the Indians, commonly called the Mattamuskeet Indians, we hereby Give, Grant, Sell, alien, enfeoff and confirm unto the said Squieres and, and the rest of the Indians commonly called the Mattamaskeet Indians, a tract of Land lying and being at Mattamuskeet on Pamplycoe sound, containing by Estimation, Ten Thousand two hundred and forty acres Beginning at the Mouth of old Mattamuskeet creek, runing up that creek and the Northern most branch of it to the head thereof, thence to the Lake SoWs (___gap___) pole, then along the Lake Southerly to Matchapungo Bluff woods, then NoEs to Pamlicoe sound, from thence along Pamlico sound to the first Station -- To Have and to Hold the said Land, with all rights and Priviledges of Hunting, Hacoking, Fishing and Fowling, with all woods, waters and rivers, with all profits and commoditys and Hereditaments to the same Belonging or appertaining, Except one half of all Gold and Silver Mines unto him the said King Squieres and Mattamuskeet Indians his Heirs and Assigns forever, Yielding and paying unto us and our Heirs and Successors Yearly, every 29th day of September the fee rent of one Shilling, for every hundred acres Hereby Granted to be Holden of us our Heirs and Successors,, in free and Common Sochage Given under the Seal of the Colloney, the first day of April, one Thousand seven hundred and twenty seven
Witness our Trusty and wall Beloved Sir Richd. Everard, Baron. Governor, and the rest of our Trusty and well Beloved Councellors who have hereunto set their Hands--
C. Gale
I. Worley
Edmd. Gale Tho. Harvey
Franics Forster
E. Mosely
I. Lovick
Richd. Everard
Wm. Reed



Is this the Mattamuskeet Reservation? If so, the Indians sold it many times, in pieces or in whole. The reference to NE from the lake edge has to be wrong. That configuration makes no sense. But, change NE to SE and we get the above plot. Edward Moseley often got his survey details wrong because he rarely surveyed them. I am sure that an Indian Reservation was not high on his list of importance as he was most concerned with personal profit and he had already reaped some rewards from Tuscarora lands, after the Indians were removed, that is.



Notice that “Long Shoal R.” (actually much farther to the north and nowhere near the lake) is the northernmost creek, then “Old Mattamuskeet Cr” (correct: about where Far Creek is, but actually should be where “Long Shoal R.” is) then “New Mattamuskeet Cr.” Third (Wysocking?). Passing all the way to the west of the lake, we find Matchapungo Bluff. The bluff is clearly directly south of the lake on other maps. I often wonder if Eddie did drugs. He probably never saw this place. I mean, how could you develop a survey like the one here for the Mattamuskeet Reservation (and he WAS the surveyor-general at the time) and still draw a map like this six years later? He was drunk or completely ignorant of the area!
There’s just one kink in this theory. If Gullrock is included in the Reservation, and Matchapungo Bluff is on the south of the lake like it is today, then this reservation was more than three times the stated 10,240 acres! But, that wouldn’t be unusual for Moseley. He never set foot on this land when it was “surveyed,” just like he did with many of his surveys. Many colonists had to have them redone because they “could not determine the sd bounds within the sd patent” or something like that. Many plots of land were as much as three times the size… or maybe that much less. I found all too common complaints in the Colonial Records.
This might explain why the supposedly “savage” (therefore, unable to take advantage of a survey error) Indians were able to sell this land at least twice… lol. If that’s the case, however, even my NE to SE fixit will not work, but Eddie drew his surveys on paper and from his 1733 map, the area that he was “surveying” was quite a bit different than he thought. It works when you look at his map! Eddie thought he was giving them a small piece of the pie.

Time to put on your genes!

We're southerners and we have one hell of a tradition. Part of that tradition, however has been to stick our collective head between our knees. I've been a genealogist for long enough now to be aware of a change in the accepted method that we genealogists use. For many years , we were taught to ignore certain parts of census records because they did not apply to us. Blacks, whites, and mulattoes have always been distinct groups. Science progresses and old methods are replaced by newer, more valid ones. It goes for history or any discipline, really. Genealogy is becoming a countrywide sensation these days thanks to DNA. However, for the longest time, genealogy was more popular in the South than it was in the North or out west. Why the attention on Southeastern America then?

We wanted to reaffirm our "purity" and record it definitively for all time. Were we worried about our heritage? I think we might have been and where there's smoke, there's fire. Recently, we have begun to accept some blending in our genetic sense of purity. It has become a delight to discover that Indian connection. Accepting the Indian connection, however, opens doors we southerners might not want to walk through. DNA virtually slams the door behind us, in fact!

The South is ground zero for the American invasion and that's where the trouble first started. The invasion was typified by English raiders (well, that's what they were). Indians (now the accepted "P.C." phrase) were pushed back and disregarded for the entire colonial period. I've lately been part of a "fact-finding" group at East Carolina University, interested in re-discovering the Indians of our earliest days. In that process, my findings (collecting Indian-related colonial records) have begun to show similar results found by both Stephen Feeley in "Tuscarora Trails" and Noeleen McIlveena in A Very Mutinous People. These records show that North Carolina started off as a "black sheep" colony and that Virginia and South Carolina, with better port access, were much more favored by English authorities, interested in taking advantage of the sea trade before the Revolution. Only since our progress in building road access and intra/inter-colonial trade through the colonies (in other words, not with England) did we climb out of the hole.

Still, that time spent in the netherworld of English disdain was critical for this state's cultural development. Yes, I said "cultural." We are very different from other states today for the very reason of being left to ourselves for so long. If you have any doubt of that fact, I encourage you to get a copy of Rob Christensen's A Paradox of Tarheel Politics and you will come away with a huge "OH....," that travels lightyears in helping us understand the enigma of Jesse Helms, among others. This was a "cultural" difference.

Now, I'd like you to ponder what that implies. I can tell you that while England's desire for settlement of America was simply financial, the Indian was completely disregarded in the accounting books, except as a supplier of certain goods (deerskins, beaver pelts, etc). These became the rage in English, French, Dutch... well, European societies. North Carolina needed the money and, so cultivated a relationship to obtain these articles. Different subsistence technologies aside, we liked Indians. Even after the Tuscarora War, we tried to maintain a congenial relationship.

One thing that South Carolinians were known for was Indian slavery. Alan Gallay, Stephen Feeley, and Neoleen McIlveena can explain this aspect best. The gist of it is that South Carolinians (and other colonies) collected Indians that they didn't want, "freighted" them to Charles Town for transfer to New England or the West Indies, anywhere but mainland America where they could continue being a nuisance to the colonists here. South Carolina was known
for this, but they were by far not the only colony to observe these practices.

Except , for the most part, North Carolina (during the colonial period, that is). What I have been seeing as I dove into the colonial and British records, is that North Carolina applied (comparatively) the greatest efforts of any colony to work with the natives that they had to share this land with. In my opinion, the fact that North Carolinians received no favors from the English government contributed greatly to their need to seek other partners and allies. The various nations next door served that purpose admirably well: Tuscarora, Bear (Bay) River, Meherrin, Nottoway, Saponi, Coree, ... the list goes on. Even after the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713 (some use 1715, but the fighting was largely over by 1713), in which South Carolinians, in an effort to make use of Tuscarora slaves before Virginia could make another "border-tribe" out of them, kidnapped several hundred, reducing the native population to a "manageable" level in North Carolina. They did this supposedly as an "aid" to the North Carolina government, desperate to survive Indian attacks, but it was a political maneuver designed to profit from the slaves. My "friend" for the past year and a half, Mr. Edward Moseley, was instrumental in that effort, being an "adopted" young castaway to Charles Town elites like the Goose Creek Moores, of which Maurice Moore was a son. His efforts as a government official in North Carolina helped The Goose Creek Indian slavers to prevent aid (thus, any future influence) from Virginia. Indeed, he may have instigated the war to obtain those slaves in the first place. Gov. Robert Johnson of South Carolina implied the use of those tactics in a 1732 note to the Board of Trade in London. Boys will be boys, as they say. Personally, I'm trying to chastise Mr. Moseley, surprisingly held in great regard by North Carolina for the past two centuries. Apparently, making a map will get you lots of kuddos!

Why do you suppose that we viewed Moseley as such a "Great Man" all these years. For instance, D.H. Hill quoted George Davis as saying, “Of all the men who watched and guided the tottering footsteps of our infant State, there was not one who in intellectual ability, in solid and polite learning, in scholarly cultivation and refinement, in courage and endurance, in high Christian morality, in generous consideration for the welfare of others, in all true merit in fine, which makes a man among men, who could equal Edward Moseley.” ---- Putting this into perspective, let me tell you that Mr. Davis was a secessionist, a slave owner, a lawyer and a politician. My impression of D.H. Hill is no better because of it, either.

North Carolinians of the late 19th and early 20th century tended to view their state as an already established, fully-functioning and organized colony in 1704 when Moseley first arrived to take over in Governor Henderson Walker’s stead as the next husband of the wealthy Ann Lillington. It was not. It was a wilderness filled with exotic natives and great uncertainty, a backwoods quarry for the larger and more popular colony of South Carolina. It’s in this paltry backwoods world that Edward Moseley should be viewed, as an opportunist in a colony of opportunists. Moseley was not well-regarded by his contemporaries (nearly convicted I should say) but was later crowned as a “king” by romantic North Carolina historians. This has much to do with national ethnocentrism following the Revolution. Anything English was thrown out with the bathwater and anyone opposed to English rules was not only accepted, but often glorified. That answers the Moseley question.

What does this have to do with genealogy? I knew you were going to ask me that so let me tell you that it's so complicated that it needs a setup like this. As I said, DNA is making tremendous changes to the art of genealogy. It has already forced my family to re-evaluate the traditional lines and we've lost many "cousins" as a result simply because we have a similar last name. This is another change of perception not unlike turning Edward Moseley from a King into a crook. Losing "family" is just one part of the impact. And, thanks to the "Hippie" generation and "Civil Rights," some southerners might be ready to hear this.

The Lost Colony Genealogy And DNA Research Group has identified several haplogroups (roughly equal to ethnicities or branches of ethnic groups) in the DNA samples of many surnames in eastern North Carolina. These surnames also may have a connection to Indian groups like the Lumbee, who traditionally claim to be descended from the Lost Colonists themselves. Q and C haplogroups have the greatest connection to Indian groups, but there were other groups present as well. Haplogroup R is representative of southern Indians, the Muskogean stock. A few generations ago, it was not cool to have Indian blood. Today, it's exciting to make that discovery! Fickle of us isn't it? Is it exciting also when you hear about early Indian tribes and ex-slaves co-existing as a single entity, intermarrying with each other? Indians accepted everyone into their culture. Horticultural societies like Indians saw no color differences like agricultural Europeans who made cultural judgments based upon it, like "racist" ones. Charles W. Chestnutt wrote in 1904 an article titled, "The Free Colored People of North Carolina" in which he said, "Another source of free colored people in certain counties was the remnant of the Cherokee and Tuscarora Indians, who, mingling with the Negroes and poor whites, left more or less of their blood among the colored people of the state"(Chestnutt, 1904, 138). What Chestnutt did not say definitively was that Native Americans also contained African blood as well. After all, it was 1904...

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to open Pandora's genetic box and find Indian, you will also discover the absolutely irrefutable truth (made possible by scientific evidence), that most of us are a mix of genes comprising European, Indian, and African. There's not only milk in the coffee, but perhaps a little coffee in the milk... maybe a little cinnamon thrown in for an extra zing! And, it's even more common than we (or even Chestnutt) thought. Our ancestors did not write down everything they were doing... do you? Just like you father's critical accusing stare, you can't hide from DNA.

So, it's time that we shut up and get along, kiddies. We are all family. Let's just get used to it. America has suffered more than any nation on the planet because of racism... and there's never been a valid reason for any of it. We've lied to ourselves since day one. Slavery was money... capitalism... political. Just like Edward Moseley. Certain things were hidden about his past for political reasons like acquisition of wealth. But, no longer at least for Moseley thanks to serious research. Now, DNA is helping us to grow up a little more. Past preconceived notions are being shot down. But, the South still has a huge emotional stake in the "race" issue despite modern progressiveness. A teacher of mine told me about the meaning of the word "race." After he did, I realized that it never applied to the difference in color; in fact, it really does not apply to human beings at all. Color is simply a factor of melanin in the skin. Red flowers still pollinate yellow flowers. Apparently, we can pollinate each other across the world and did. And, if you have any doubts as to how this was accomplished, please read William Byrd's 1728 Secret History of the Dividing Line for a description of "free love" in the 18th century.

It kinda thickens the soup in the "melting pot!" You could say that since most North Carolinians (probably most multi-generation Americans) are blends of Blacks, Whites, and Reds, that we're sort of... "Biter" varieties of the American "mutt."

National Conference on Undergraduate Research

Also subtitled, "Trip to another world, Missoula, Montana." Two groups of us came from East Carolina University to this land of the big - big land, but also big personalities and hearts. This is a place like no other. I've met more friendly and interesting people here in such a short time. From Cliff and his genuine interest in every student that climbed aboard his bus to Leann, Sue, and Delores, who treated us like family in the hotel, it has been a fantastic experience. The weather has been great, almost spring-ish even though we arrived on the tail end of a snow storm (saw patches of it still in many places. The daily temperatures easily compare to those we left in Eastern NC.

Speaking of buses, another group from North Carolina, from Western Carolina University, had 70 students accepted at NCUR and had to take a bus to Montana (cost of air travel prohibitive). They spent 45 hours on the bus to get here! That's a trip to remember, I'm sure.

Of course, the presentations were all excellent and I'm amazed at what human beings can learn in such a short time. It may not seem that short to them, however. :) They worked hard to get here and deserve the opportunity. I have to say that it is an opportunity quite rare. Our undergraduate conference even drew the governor of Montana! He seemed like a really cool guy, wearing casual attire and followed by a little dog that stuck to his heels all the way. But, what he said about renewable energy and taking it easier on Mother Earth meant a lot more to me. Alternative sources of energy are well within our grasp as we speak. The task is really to convince millions of Americans of another way to accomplish their travel objectives. Oil is not necessary. We've only just begun this debate and it will consume a great deal of time before we can all agree on the solution. But, at least, it's beginning.

Of the presentations that I saw in our group, I spoke about Brunswick Town and Wilmington (not a surprise, I know) and Sarah spoke about microbiology (a very knowledgeable treatise on bacteria on smoker vents in the inner space, benthic world of submarine spreading zones). Ellen gave her presentation on iron supplements to countereffect the loss of learning ability from the effects of alcohol-using mothers. Megan and Jacqueline told us about the shoe company Nike and their effect on the global market from their base in China. A bit of recent Chinese history came to light in this presentation - the recent trend to enter the world market and increased westernization. What effect the largest country in the world will have in the world market is somewhat worrisome, although it could be positive. Hopefully, they won't make the same mistakes that we did. Tiffany and Parteek work in the same lab and so, had different angles on the same topic. While Parteek studied the effects of Poxvirus on specific organs, Tiffany looked at "studying viral replication in organs of mice that were infected with either a 'wild type' or our deletion mutant...." This is how it was explained to me. See what I mean about learning so much in so little time? I did not get a chance to hear Deepak's presentation because he went first thing on Thursday. I will say this about Deepak, I hear him speaking to family in his native language, then to us in English, and to a waiter at Rowdy's in Spanish. He's quite the linguist. If he weren't headed for a medical career, I'd say "go linguistics!" Learning about all cultures is the best part of a trip like this, from exploring genetics, medicine, inner-space and deep-sea environments to history, astronomy and protecting the environment. Truly, the planet is in the care of these terrific guys. I'd joked with Ellen (who plans to be a Clinical psychologist) about what discounts she plans to offer (may need those one day). She is currently working as a crisis counselor to have an immediate influence on our world.

Last, but not least, I'd like to thank Dr. Mary Farwell for all her diligent efforts to get us here. She has driven us all over Montana and guided treks across the campus and even up a mountain and out to see Bison in the wild. Thank goodness she didn't have to resort to a bus across the country! Two food places I should mention are Rowdy's (the really cool Mexican restaurant with animals in the lobby) and the Big Dipper, a very popular ice cream shop with lines of customers across the parking lot on both nights that we went. For myself, I'd like to thank Dr. Wade G. Dudley for his very important contribution to my own historical exploratory talents. Without the occasional "kick in the pants," I may have floundered from time to time. He's been a guiding influence to many of us. Thank you, Dr. "D."

Well, time to hop on the plane to return to the "Old North State" and my pretty wife, Julie. We must say so long to the wide open spaces, the very roomy interstates (seriously, no fighting or crowding of cars or jammed traffic), and the friendliest and most laid back state I've ever been to. But, it will be good to get back home. See ya there!

A Tale that's Worth the Time

We came to the Phi Alpha Theta undergraduate research regional conference in Conyers, SC today. I gave my presentation on “Captain James Wimble: American Merchant, Founder, and Privateer.” We had comments afterward. One of the judges offered me some wonderful compliments on the research. I was flattered and thankful for that recognition. It’s relieving to get that after so much work. We students question what we do every day. A friend of mine told me that that’s what makes a good student… that you always believe you didn’t do well on a test but, it almost always works out that you did. You question everything you do. Still, this judge had a criticism. One comment he had was on the necessity of having a thesis to work from. I gave him some pat answer, like “Oh, I’ll remember that” or something like that. It occurred to me later in the hotel, in fact just a half hour ago, that I didn’t write it for that purpose. My story about James Wimble did not need a thesis to be important to me. And, I don’t think it needs one for any other reason, unless it needs to be pitched to someone. But, that’s not why I wrote it. In fact, I didn’t write it for a class. I wrote that piece because I was genuinely fond of Wimble’s story, that he had endured so much, and lost so much time, pride, and money to Spanish privateers and then took it back with heart-felt anger… no, not anger or vengeance, but something that I heard in a movie once. He demanded a “reckoning.” This was nearly biblical for Wimble. Evil (namely, the Spanish) lurked and threatened until it was smote by the Archangel Michael. For Wimble, there was never any failure in the Board of Trade to give him his due from all those Spanish privateers and hurricanes. It was somehow Spain’s fault.

You have to realize that I read letters, journal entries for the Board of Trade, wills and deeds. I dove head first into Wimble’s world and didn’t come up for air. I imagined a man that consistently blamed Spain for his troubles and never once felt that politicians were simply using the system against his claims for the money’s sake. James Wimble believed in a higher ideal… Wimble gave his life for that belief. There was something noble in that story, if a bit naïve. Still, there was this larger than life hero figure that looms above the normal tale and I simply believed it had to be told. The whole misconstrued, narrow focus on the historical Wilmington needed to be revised completely.

To tell the truth, I cared nothing for a thesis in this story and I don’t believe that anyone else should either. Unless you consider that this was the thesis… that James Wimble’s life was indeed common, but that how he responded to adversity was enormously instructive. His tenacity was extraordinary. I felt anger myself that this man has not been given the credit he was due simply because his story was English. But, I will argue that it was more than English, more than American… it was an uncommon human tale and North Carolina historians have been hogswaggled for decades over this wall around the historical realm of the state. This wall was impermeable to any of the outside effects from South Carolina, Virginia, and especially from the other side of the Atlantic. The story had to be North Carolinian or nothing and I couldn’t help but think that North Carolina fought as the underdog for so long that perhaps this affected our intellectual pursuit of history too. Wimble only got a single coastal hazard named after him, “Wimble Shoals.” It’s not even complimentary.

Revisionism has begun. Several recent historians have retold tales of this state as tales of a larger family, English, French, Spanish, Native American, and most certainly, African. When I speak like this, my impression of this revision is wearing round, colored sunglasses and singing “Imagine.” This is the way truth absolutely must be, not political or subjective in any way, but told for the benefit of all. REAL heroes are men who stand out from others, who seek their “reckoning” after enduring great injustice, men like James Wimble. I know he wasn’t perfect, but he certainly was better than most.

Tears in the Quill

Melvoin, Richard I. New England Outpost: War and Society in Colonial Deerfield. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1989.

Lepore, Jill. Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

In New England Outpost, Melvoin demonstrates three themes that surround the story of Deerfield, Massachusetts. These themes tend to meld Native American history into that of the European’s. “The Indians become active agents in history, not simply pawns or objects in the study of the past” (Melvoin, 1989, 11). First, war was a fundamental aspect of life in colonial America. Melvoin explores war and its effects on the microcosm of the individual community. Second, what was the long-term effect of war like on a small frontier town and its development? Third, a study of the Indians before, during, and after the war is an essential complement to the history of the European settlement of Deerfield. The most unique aspect of Melvoin’s book is that it explores a well-told story from a part of the battleground that is rarely heard from. From this perspective the story can be told afresh, with a new theme and plot, necessary to truly understand the Native American contribution to the story, the side of the frontier.

Jill Lepore, in The Name of War approaches American identity through various perceptions of war as they were written. For Lepore, “War is perhaps best understood as a violent contest for territory, resources, and political allegiances, and no less fiercely, a contest for meaning” (Lepore, 1999, x). Her exploration for meaning delves deeply into psychology and individual perceptions of the players involved. Motivations, education, desires, horrors, events, and reactions all become vital considerations for Lepore in her remarkable study. King Philip’s War became the most devastating war known to Americans and how it was expressed in more than four hundred personal accounts photographs the human mind at the focal point of the despair. Just as important as the personal accounts of the war were how colonists defended their actions in that war. So, for Lepore, the narratives tell a great deal more than just a dry account of events. America’s view of the Indian was forever hardened by their seventeenth-century experience. Whether for history or psychology, this book is essential material, a unique first in historical exploration.

Unavoidable and incomprehensible destruction and death typifies both books. Melvoin’s exploration of relationships between the destruction of both Pocumtuck and of Deerfield relate to the thoughtful comparison of English “savagery” with the “savage” Mohegan torture of a Narragansett captive. The two states of mind were shocking, misunderstood, and ill-defined at the time they occurred. Clearly, both authors encourage an understanding of events from the opposite perspective. The roles change back and forth, interchangeably blurring into each other. The result becomes a human story, the tragic mortar that built a country. Indians and Europeans alike felt the sharp birth pangs of America. Certainly, for its earliest residents, seeking solace in their writing, their quills were filled with the tears of both.

Complexity defines both authors’ efforts. Taoistic imagery was employed by the original writers of these events, extremes that helped them to arrive at an understanding of the tragedy before them. Truth lies in the middle, in the synthesis. Again, for both book authors, names transfer the meanings and preserve the feelings. From these names, these symbols evolve an unconventional historical source, almost an “oral history” archive that can reflect the motivations of the colonist’s opponents. Where “Muddy Brook” becomes “Bloody Brook,” a miry swamp, horrifying to a colonist, can be considered an Indian’s “castle.” Individual words and disconnected phrases become source material. Truth must be derived from the sources left by only one side of the equation for most Indians did not write. Still, a scant few did, colored by their white teacher’s impressions as they were. Verbal walls were built so hastily that they reveal the hidden passages through them. Lepore’s most incisive accomplishment has to be that the war's brutality caused the colonists to defend themselves against accusations, both internal and external, that they had become savages, a horrifying idea for a people motivated by God and morality. Puritans knew Aquinas’ argument that a savage inflicts pain for pleasure. Might they be guilty of this? Did not Englishmen burn numerous Indians in a manner inconsistent with the benevolent principles of the gospel? These were hard questions – a hard reality. As Melvoin indicates in his “tapestry” analogy, seventeenth-century atypical becomes America’s modern typical. As Lepore argues, Americans discovered themselves, identity evolved. At that moment, the “English” rubbed off.

Melvoin utilizes a symbolic device of impartiality to view Deerfield’s unique history. A buttonball tree in the center of the village has been alive for more than four hundred years and has witnessed the many events that led from Pocumtuck to Deerfield, Indian to European, red to white. The tree, like memory, endures. It saw the clash between Indians that destroyed the Pocumtucks, Indians that destroyed the colonists, and the clash between Europeans, assisted by Indians that destroyed Deerfield. The buttonball tree stands eternal and remains an impartial witness. Lepore’s device is literature, just as enduring. Like the tree, it stands eternal and, yet rarely impartial on the surface. Yet, through its partiality can be viewed the same perspective in time.

Melvoin and Lepore demonstrate a transition of thought from coexistence to self-preservation, that relationships between Indians and colonists began courteously, if flimsily. Intertribal warfare between the Pocumtucks, Mohawks, and Sokokis did not adversely affect the colonists, who often functioned as intermediaries at peace talks. Still, the ancient animosities between the tribes prevailed, occasionally pulling in the colonists. The most devastating effect to Indians involved whites against whites, Dutch versus French, French versus English, and English versus Dutch. These external international disputes, completely analogous to intertribal disputes, often pulled in the Indians. The English settlers simply became another tribe amongst tribes, with the Iroquois worried about their French neighbors and their conflicts with other Europeans. The Dutch contrived against the English, strengthening their alliance to Mohawks. Everyone seemed equal.

The Puritans failed to consider certain Indian rights before laying claim to their lands. They also did not concern themselves with who had the authority to sell those lands. Melvoin declares that they made bargains with people not capable of comprehending the consequences of those bargains and they imposed their system of beliefs and standards on these people. Arguably, the Puritans were not unique in this approach to Indian-Colonist relations. This would have far-reaching consequences for early Deerfield and Massachusetts as it would have for all American colonies. Whereas most historians would avoid a definitive assessment that conflict between Europeans and Indians was unavoidable, statistically speaking, it was nearly so. Modern anthropological thought states that a food-foraging, partially agricultural egalitarian society such as Native Americans were not uncommon in the world. Indeed, European society had also been in this state at one time and probably would have fought fervently for their dominance over a more primitive society, as they saw it. Statistically speaking, the conflict was inevitable.

Melvoin implies that it took only fifty years before Pocumtuck speculation and economic gain began to override the Puritan utopia. The “city upon a hill” had become just a “village in the valley” (Melvoin, 1989, 67). Even though Pocumtuck had broken free of Dedham proprietorship and grew quickly after 1671, they grew apart from their Puritan traditions in their backwoods home. Most Puritans screened their newcomers but Pocumtuck, as a new town, was settled quickly and did not achieve such precautions. Furthermore, Pocumtuck had no communal covenant to bind the town ecclesiastically. Absentee owners like John Pynchon and Henry Woodward Jr. speculated heavily in the town and while the intent may originally have been to help it grow, the possibilities were ominous for corrupt practices. John and Mary Farrington became the only original Dedham proprietors to settle at Pocumtuck. Another unusual characteristic of this Puritan town was the youthful marriages of the general populace. Pocumtuck, as a frontier Massachusetts town differentiated sharply from their Puritan brethren.

Many of Pocumtuck’s settlers also came from other Massachusetts towns as refugees from religious disputes or dissenting reforms. Many of them were outlaws, as well. Settlers from towns like Hadley, Hatfield, and Northampton included thieves, possible rapists, and adulterers. The Massachusetts frontier town was different from the typical American frontier town in that Pocumtuck exhibited all of the usual frontier aspects except the disorder and disorganization that typified the American western style. Even though Pocumtuck stood apart from other Puritan towns, they perceived little to fear from the neighboring Indians which made the events of 1675 even more horrifying and unsuspected. Northern Carolina’s Tuscarora conflict of 1711-1713 was a close comparison to the suddenness of King Philip’s War on Massachusetts, but especially on the isolated Pocumtuck. The element of surprise worked in the Indians’ favor and the effects were that much more shocking. It was this particular aspect of the war that brings Melvoin’s discussion of future Deerfield into perspective with Lepore’s psychological treatise on the affects of the unleashing of Hell upon the highly religious Puritans. It was the suddenness of the loss that forced explanation in the numerous writings, captivity accounts, records of great loss, and laments.

There was a growing social differentiation that may have frightened many hard-line purists, men like Increase Mather, Josiah Winslow, and Nathaniel Saltonstall. Lepore argues that Puritans never tried to understand Indians, never knew that they lived in towns like Europeans, and believed that they could only find common ground with fellow Christians. The attempt to Christianize the Indians resulted in drastic consequences. Indians made attacks upon Christians in retaliation against their faith. They verbally abused the colonists, taunting them with their own religious phraseology as they burned their homes, exposing Christians to their own doubts. The fire was biblical. King Philips War became a holy war. It was a symbolic and verbal reaffirmation of the truth of their native religion and a forceful revulsion of Christianity. Colonists saw it as an affirmation of their worst fears, the fear of losing their civilization, becoming savage themselves.

The colonists could not make this “savage” world in the shape of their creator. They could not build their great Christian “City Upon a Hill.” They were also exposed as unworthy of such a gift as well. They were truly alone now and the guilt they felt manifested in denial and vicious response. Colonists committed atrocities of which they never believed themselves capable. The burning of an entire Indian population, women and children included in the Great Swamp Massacre typified the fright with which they responded. “Oh, what an Indian calamity was this,” wrote the Reverend Noah Newman (Lepore, 1999, 89). These acts against the Narragansett were not consistent with religious principles. Benjamin Tompson wrote “Had we been cannibals, here we might feast” (Lepore, 1999, 89). Turner’s Falls the next year reflected English savagery in the enemy’s heads upon pikes, torn body parts, and taking of scalps. One Indian woman was even ordered to be torn apart by dogs. Like Lepore, Melvoin makes it clear that these acts were at least as savage as those of the Indians. They were exceptional in the baseness and cruelty. These Indians were family and friends who suddenly turned against the colonists. Religion was used against them, to taunt them. “Where is your, Oh God?” and “Come and pray, & sing Psalms,” the Nipmucks had spat at the citizens of Brookfield (Lepore, 1999, 104-5). The message was clear. “God” was not welcome any longer. “Creator” was supreme.

As the Mohawk tide turned against King Philip and the whites once again felt the hand of the Lord on their side, they threw revulsion back upon their tormentors. Indians had been rounded up and sold into slavery, former friends, treated with kindness, now vile creatures with no human value. Many of the Puritans understood this and the change that had taken place, yet few recognized their fear, guilt, and culpability. Hell on earth came to Massachusetts. That was the only certainty and they desperately sought to justify their actions and redeem themselves. The colonists lashed out at any and all, even other whites like Governor Edmund Andros of New York. Lepore’s in-depth psychological and methodical analysis exposes humanity of action, both good and bad. Moreover, like a mirror she exposes the colonists’ own savagery to their disbelieving eyes. Melvoin takes his time in explaining the specific affects on Pocumtuck. Once 1675 arrived, his transition to the horror of the attacks seems as sudden as the attacks actually were.

Jill Lepore stresses that this newfound revulsion of the Indian set a trend for America itself. Savagery preserved itself in the foundations of this country. She illustrates this with the disconnected normalcy with which men of faith regarded anything Indian after 1675. “Increase Mather would later relish the image of Philip being ‘hewed in pieces before the Lord’” (Lepore, 1999, 173). Philip’s rotting head remained on a pole for all to see long after the war, some bits of dried flesh tenaciously holding the pieces together after all those years. A twelve-year-old Cotton Mather, on a pilgrimage to Plymouth, irreverently separated the lower jaw from Philip’s skull to silence the blasphemous words of Philip while his father symbolically silenced other “incorrect” versions of the war with his writing. Writing was the salve for the wounds. To make sense from their devastation, their barbarism, writing normalized the tragedy in their minds. Nathaniel Saltonstall’s “True but Brief Account of our Losses,” William Hubbard’s “Narrative,” or Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative joined hundreds of attempts to understand and justify. Most significant, writing helped to harden white feeling against the Indians. It was denial.

Melvoin shows us that seventeenth-century Massachusetts was a swirl of political agendas and competing faction. Still, this reflected similar trends over the culturally-contaminating expanse of European settlement in the New World. Like Lepore, Melvoin implies a cultural evolution that resulted in modern America. The current values, impressions of Native Americans, and impressions of our world itself are cultivated in past perceptions of this conflict and in wonder at past events. Efforts to explain the strange carvings on the Mount Hope Rock in Rhode Island enlighten this tale. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was known as “Lief’s Rock,” a reference to a Viking origin. Edmund Delabarre, a psychology professor tried to disprove this hypothesis by pointing out that the inscription had not been described before about 1835 and declared it to be written in the Cherokee syllabary, which then he translated as “Metacom, Great Sachem.” Still, it must have been written by an amateur if it was. No one can really be sure of its origins, but a great deal of effort has been expended on its explanation.

Melvoin goes beyond King Philip’s war to tell how Pocumtuck, now “Deerfield,” rebuilt after the war. They epitomized once again, even more fervently than before, the frontier of the American wilderness, the drive toward democracy and the belief in a single people, regardless of breeding and status. “Selectmen” were not as select as before, land was available evenly to all, and few of the former Dedham proprietors had anything to do with the town. Deerfield became a closed, interdependent community. Deerfielders focused upon land and work. Still, the Connecticut valley was not all pastoral pleasantries. There was a building sense of religious foundering, a loss of mission that was not completely unrelated to the willingness of the town to accept all refugees.

King William’s War or the War of the League of Augsburg pitted France against the English and had its counterparts in New France and New England. The colonies in America were expected to fight without much help from home. The Indians once again became allies to the Europeans and, once again they found intertribal animosities mingling with European difficulties. What resulted was a “Covenant chain” between the Iroquois and the English against the French and Mohawks, Abenaki, and a mixture of refugees from King Philip’s War. War had come full circle and whereas New England experienced a decade of peace, it would be all they would get. Threats to Deerfield once again came from the north in 1688. At least this time, they had time to prepare. The town militia, the consistent training, and the maintenance of war materiel would benefit Deerfield, the New England “spearhead” of valley defense. Sporadic attacks over the years landed all around the town until 1693. Captain George Colton and his men prevented disaster. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1698 gave nothing for a decade of constant stress, establishing no gained territories for either side.

Deerfield found no respite from the troubles. Sarah Smith’s travails and eventual infanticide refocused the town’s attention from war. Still, Queen Anne’s War followed upon its heels while the English and French each vied for control of Indian powers in America. While numerous English colonies awaited attack and Governors Winthrop, Dudley, and Cornbury strategized all of New England against French maneuvers, Deerfield, once again became the focus of attack. It suffered mostly a financial devastation and lost the ability to defend itself.

The French threat remained persistent. The horrors of the past would come again in 1704. Only, this time a multicultural enemy, a treacherous yet “normal” enemy came in the mix. Still, the heavy snow drifts piled against the palisades of Deerfield held a deceptively protective quality. Again, narratives tell the story of the failed watch. Like Lepore’s narratives of King Philip’s War, these varying tales make little sense of his failure. The attack came suddenly and unexpectedly, not unlike attacks they had before. Again, the horrors were visited upon Deerfield. Sieur Hertel de Rouville and his Indian allies took the town by surprise and marched their captives back to Quebec, killing those that could not make the journey. The Reverend John Williams, amazed himself, made the journey. His narrative of The Redeemed Captive told of how remarkable the French found their resistance to French Catholicism. Such was the strength of their faith.

Still, Deerfield survived this blow. Unlike the previous destructions, it maintained itself through the 1704 attack. Truly, Massachusetts needed Deerfield on the frontier. Stories of the Indian captives at Deerfield galvanized resistance and preservation. Again, tales told of war were the most meaningful events of the war. The image of Mary Brooks lying in the snow next to her newborn child, killed on the northward journey, remain the most poignant. A “trail of tears” narrative would be told for the white slaves of Mohawks. Interestingly, 88 of 109 white captives survived this bitterly cold snowbound “trail,” a starkly different comparison of the 1835 journey of the Cherokee.

Melvoin takes the reader through the Indian village of Pocumtuck, the European town of Pocumtuck, the European town of Deerfield, and Deerfield, phase II. He gives an excellent description of the genesis of four separate towns, from inception, settlement, destruction, and resettlement. Surprisingly, all of them were built on the same spot. It is a story of town building and rebuilding, but certainly, disaster as well. King Philip’s War, undoubtedly, scarred people the most. Indians and Europeans alike felt the devastation of the bloodiest war in American history. Unlike Frederick Jackson Turner who saw the Massachusetts frontier as a “hedge” against the evil beyond, it was rather a point of exchange with the “other side.” Even after 1675, Indians were often welcome in Deerfield until they faded from existence by the end of the century. Melvoin’s work is a monument to the frontier fluidity of Deerfield, Massachusetts while Jill Lepore’s book is a psychological study of war and its effects on the human psyche.

Lepore was much more successful at viewing history through a different lens. The destruction, horror, guilt, and savagery of King Philip’s War are laid out and examined in detail from both sides of the dispute. She examines primary sources in a way that few ever have, as though she were the first to read them. Melvoin’s excellent efforts should not be slighted. Lepore’s work was simply that different, the first book of its kind, a new genre of historical exploration destined to be a precedent for others.

Native American and European relations suffered immeasurably, never again to be partners in the wilderness. Both books explore different attributes of Indian-European American culture, but in very different ways. King Philip’s War affected for centuries the country that became the United States. The aftereffects are still with us today. Business signs and advertisements, high schools, sports teams, even candy wrappers reflect the unseen ghosts of those days. Metamora, a nineteenth-century play designed to tell the story of the war, and of King Philip (Metacom), salved the wounds of a people whose guilt patterned their futures. Truly, America shed its tears through the pen. Only today does America begin to understand what King Philip’s War really meant to America. Human beings really only know history by what they read. Still, Lepore’s words come as close as any to bringing history to life.

Profit Margins in Black and White

Bridenbaugh, Carl and Roberta. No Peace Beyond the Line 1624-1690. New York:, Oxford University Press, 1972.

Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies 1624-1713. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.


Constant battles occurred in the capitalistic waters of the Caribbean during the period covered by two authors of books that detail the wild business world of the seventeenth-century Caribbean. Richard Dunn and the team of Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh wrote of the Atlantic world, buccaneer adventures in the English West Indies and published in the same year of 1972. No Peace Beyond the Line reflects the seventeenth-century English policy that whatever peace may have been established at home, it did not exist “beyond the line,” or west of a sometimes malleable meridian, usually at the Azores. Generally, it included everything in America south of the Tropic of Cancer and not in the familiar Atlantic world of the traditional trade routes of the Mediterranean and Africa. The West Indies was a “no man’s land” where lawlessness was rampant, the rum flowed freely, and business was the rule. This is where America was born and Quakers pounded pulpits likely until their palms bled.

The early days of Barbadian settlement under Robert Marsham on Trinidad and the fall-back on Tobago seem like Wild West forays into Indian territories, with the Carib playing the role of the Apache. The Earl of Warwick sent another expedition from Barbados to continue settlement of Tobago. It failed. Barbadians attempted Surinam in 1645 and were completely destroyed by Caribs on the main. Hackett’s attempt at the island of Hispaniola ended in bleached bones for the party led by Captain William Jackson, with 750 West Indies planters/pirates to find a few years later. They simply sloughed it off and pushed on the conquest. Eventually, these English adventurers almost got over the excitement of leaving dreary old England and settled down for a nice cup of mobbie and profit. Sugar helped to quell their island-hopping and fatten their wallets. Still, they had to make sugar a feasible product and develop the tools necessary for its manufacture. Sugar also required tremendous amounts of labor. Barbadians came up with a unique solution to that problem as well.

What must life have been like for the West Indies planter? We know a great deal about life in the Old West, but very little about the earlier version in Barbados. Dunn’s goal is to tell the social history of the planter class in Barbados, a task which he believes had never been done before. The adventurous, stalwart, and often sad existence of the West Indies frontiersmen is a tale too familiar. Too many came and too few found success. Even though the Bridenbaughs write with a flare, they adhere to a strict factual regimen that tells the story in the end. But, their result is chronologically based. Still, they manage to get across the idea that Barbadians loved to make and drink alcohol most everywhere, most anytime, and most any place but, especially at places like the Indian Bridge.

The questions that need answers all involve something new, something that no Englishman had ever experienced. Barbados, with all its beauty and exotic fauna, was obviously new to the Englishman. Barbadians developed a unique business enterprise of a magnitude never before known. Barbadians also discovered the most coveted trade secret of all, one that would not remain secret for long - that of the advent of capital-driven chattel slavery. Barbados was simply new all around. To borrow a phrase deep within the contemporary adventurous media, going to Barbados was to boldly go where no man has gone before. Moreover, going there was to risk one’s own life, assuming he went willingly. Still, Barbados promised the young adventurer riches beyond the dreams of avarice and this fact was usually sufficient to hide the dangers. Like a talented young guitar player trying to become famous, waiting for an audition in a room filled with hundreds just like him, so too were the Barbadian planter’s chances of success. And in the boom or bust frontier atmosphere, no rest or play would be tolerated. Unfortunately for the historian, there also remained little opportunity to record the events of this period. Richard Ligon probably became the most quoted Barbadian then alive and he was a biased salesman. Apparent from both versions, there was no peace beyond the line, in the Caribbean frontier world of buccaneers, “cannibal” natives, and hurricanes.

Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh tell the story of the same group of people, although more systematically – again, through Richard Ligon and a few others. They begin with a flashy buccaneer raid to take Jamaica but quickly sober and tell a story full of capital intention and accidental beginnings, but a successful enterprise nevertheless. Again, sugar and slavery answered these problems adequately.

Dunn’s first chapter reflects the Bridenbaugh’s title with “Beyond the Line.” In his portrayal of the West Indies, a 1631 English buccaneer adventure off Guadeloupe commenced in a chase of twenty Spanish warships, fully intending to repulse intruders from their “private reserve” of the Caribbean. No matter that Dunn demonstrates the raw beauty of the Caribbean. Dangers of the Spanish and “cannibal” Caribs should have frightened any Englishman away. Not Barbadians. Not “beyond the line.” It was a world of extraordinary wonder and deadly peril that both enticed and repulsed. Moreover, England took no responsibility for what happened that far away. Indeed, the King had no hand in this. Royalist coercive independent merchants, traders, dealers in black flesh hoping to make their fortunes braved the wild waters and dirty rum-filled squalor of “Little England.” No wonder that 1,200 Barbadians packed and moved en masse to New England to escape the dangerous environment - Spanish, Caribs, disease and their fellow Englishmen. Raising sugar and tobacco in this environment should have been more than problematic. It should have been absolutely impossible.

Dunn’s portrayal of Barbadian and West Indian life is a scholarly approach, almost ethnographic in context. He examines primary documents in smooth, rich detail. The Bridenbaughs are just as detailed, though a bit broader in approach. Details such as the Royal African Company’s shipping and losses permeate this work. Their focus is more upon the British world trade arena and the West Indies in that context. This nuance is only a subtle distinction. Both works are very similar in style and approach.

Dunn’s book contains so much statistical information that it makes a fantastic reference for any writer about Barbadian history. There are thirty-two tables and graphs besides what figures can be found in the text. For a book titled Sugar and Slaves, Dunn does not get around to the full discussion of either until two-thirds of the book is read. He obviously had a strong desire to talk about buccaneers and probably just could not wait. Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh approach their work from a similar approach, yet are more concerned with the transition of West Indian society as a white presence to the predominantly black presence of today. They endeavor to explain the history behind that transition. They rely certainly upon primary sources and almost as heavily upon quantitative analysis as Dunn. Tables and figures make No Peace Beyond the Line as a valuable source as Sugar and Slaves for any work upon the Caribbean.

To be sure, Englishmen came to Barbados really for one thing. Bridenbaugh says that promoters thought exclusively of profits, to get rich. At first, planters tried the time-proven methods of planting tobacco, like in their Virginia cousin plantations. After 1650, the commercial feasibility of sugar reached the dreams of Barbadians who had come from England to profit from a trade that no Englishman had ever done before. They lived under conditions that no Englishman had ever experienced before. Sugar gave them their dreams. Dunn states that in 1680, nineteen planters held an unprecedented total of more than two hundred slaves each while the next level down, at the one hundred-slave mark, there were eighty-nine planters. Enormous wealth found in such a tiny place, with 392 people per square acre. Figures like these boggle the mind. The Bridenbaughs’ figures in relation to slave shipments and their losses seem somewhat bolder.

Sugar, though was not a boom product right away. It took some transitions to make it feasible above the proven New World benefits of tobacco. Both books refer to the foreknowledge of sugar’s value. Dunn finds it remarkable that Barbadians took so long to employ it on their plantations, perhaps still believing that tobacco or cotton would supply their wants. Dunn agrees with the Bridenbaughs that Barbadians learned the trade from Dutch-managed Brazilian techniques before the Portuguese planter revolt in 1645. Dunn offers a bit more detail in that the process originally began in 1627 when the English took many plants from a Dutch outpost on Surinam and transported them, along with sugarcane to Barbados. Still, understanding how to properly plant and cultivate sugarcane proved difficult even with thirty-two natives of Surinam to show them how. Moreover, when the natives were finally successful on Barbados, while not knowing how to make sugar from the cane, they informed Barbadians about how to make a great drink from the juice. Undoubtedly, the drink was alcoholic (after all, molasses from sugarcane makes rum). This fact held the Barbadians back from making sugarcane a profitable product until official pressures focused their inebriated mind and bloodshot eyes upon the prize at hand. As Dunn says, the process developed extraordinarily quickly from 1640-1643. Fast and furious was the frontier boomtown way.

For the Bridenbaughs, another boomtown ideology was involved, the roll of the dice. They argue that gambling instinct played a crucial role in that buying out poor and struggling men’s meager parcels, consolidating them into larger plantations would eventually build the sugar plantation empire in the period 1650-1660. Combined with the proper method of planting cane (digging trenches instead of small holes), the endeavor thrived. Whether the Barbadians learned techniques from the Portuguese, Dutch, Brazilians, or Indians is a matter of who is telling the tale. James Holdip and James Drax are definitely credited with many of these innovations, including the “Dutch Sugar Mill.” Still, whether the mill came from Holland or Pernambuco holds the reader in suspense. The Bridenbaughs certainly seem more certain. Still, in this intrepid environment and the subsequent lack of data mixed with enthusiastic advertisements and their inherent problems with veracity, who could be so certain? Most people would have to fall back on reliable unreliables like Richard Ligon. Ligon, as Dunn says, regarded early English experiments on the island as poor. The sugar produced was poor and full of molasses. Ligon attributed this to English lack of knowledge. They did not know how to plant cane, harvest, grind, boil, or cure it. Dunn also resorts to Brazil as the source of their salvation. Sugar production could never have become as lucrative if it had not been for another capital innovation of a darker nature.

Metaphorically and literally, darker absolutely describes slavery. Of course, it would not be historically appropriate to speak of slavery in anachronistic terms. As deplorable as it sounds, slavery became the next best choice for Barbadian sugar production. Both books reserve their discussion of slavery, an undeniably forceful literary conclusive focus, as the best for last. As with sugar, the Dutch were primary characters in the play. Of course, both books support this with a plethora of figures. Indentured servants came first, but quickly proved their lack of worth. Moreover, with the advent of African chattel use, the Irish and English servants became more uncomfortable with their hierarchical demotion.

If any doubt remained of the status of slaves in the Caribbean, Governor Hawley of St. Christopher dispelled it in 1636 when he declared that Indian and Negro servants were to serve for life unless otherwise stipulated in their contracts. Well, may as well dispense with the useless contract. Indian slaves were popular until about 1650 (note the date), but West Africans after 1640 changed the appearance of the West Indies English plantation, now intent upon keeping slaves as permanent property. The French began slaving earlier than the English, in 1636, because engagés, or servants would not come. Moreover, Dutch traders were all too ready to supply the black labor. According to the Bridenbaughs, slavery came to the tobacco and cotton plantations before sugar production because the island economies suffered from a depression in the 1640s and Negros were simply cheaper than servants. Almost 6,000 blacks were purchased from the Dutch for labor purposes by 1643, according to the Bridenbaughs. By contrast, Richard Dunn shows a quantitative perspective that reveals the number of servants shipping from Bristol radically reduced by the 1670s. Interestingly, Dunn claims that the narrowly ethnocentric English held great aversion to dealing with other cultures, especially something as foreign as Africans. Chattel slavery was an alien concept more attuned to Spanish tastes and the English Barbadians hated the Spanish. Barbados planters increasingly treated servants brutally until by the 1640s and 1650s, so much that servants became rare and rebellious. This fact, Dunn says, prompted Barbadians to use Negroes instead. Carolina or Surinam traders in Indian slaves could not compete in the long run, for Indians made poor slaves. Settling the debate (started by the Bridenbaughs) proves difficult because the two groups of authors never really say anything directly comparable on this point. Still, Dunn’s quantitative and analytical approach seems more reasonable. He is more detailed in his explanation. As to whether the slave came to Barbados before sugar remains a minor consideration in the larger picture. It happened about the same time.

The date of 1650 was extremely important and not because that was when Richard Ligon left Barbados. Partly according to Ligon’s lonely account, that year witnessed the culmination of sugar productive feasibility combined with the use of chattel slavery. Again, Brazil proves to be a bad or good (depending on your point of view) example on Barbadians. Certainly, the facts speak for themselves. West and Central Africans had been agricultural for the centuries that Europeans were aware of them. They were used to the back-breaking labor and they could endure tropical insects, disease, and humidity. According to Dunn, the most important factor was their acquiescence to submit to slavery.

Dunn’s narrower focus on West Indian cultural development reveals itself in class structure. Number of slaves rather than acreage became the factor for determining class by 1680. Big planters held the biggest tracts of land and had sixty slaves or more, middling planters twenty to fifty-nine slaves and held significantly smaller acreage. Social stratification was high. After the middling planters, small planters had fewer than twenty slaves and still ten or more acres while the freemen were little better than servants in status. Illustrating the class distinction in 1680, seven percent of the property holders controlled fifty-four percent of the property. Where Barbadians once slept in hammocks, they now had four-post beds with luxurious furniture filling three-story homes. Only servants and slaves used hammocks. Slaves often got the floor at night.

Sugar production had produced the most affluent society in the empire. To the average Englishman who could only rarely expect to move up in the world, Barbados, the boom colony of the seventeenth century was like a beacon. Bridgetown in 1680 seemed like San Francisco during the gold rush. A fascinating statistic given by Dunn is that a 1969-1970 Barbados phonebook listed eighteen sugar factories and plantations that were still named for their seventeenth-century founders. Big planters in Barbados were so rich in fact that King Charles II felt it necessary to diffuse their arrogance and insert placemen amongst the power structure. These men never even came to the island, preferring instead to select their representatives from the not so well-landed men already there. Authoritative officials who violate the local power structure and assume undue authority can often cause trouble in affluent, arrogant, and remote places. Second generation Barbadian settlers in the Carolina settlement (“Goose Creek men”) attempted their own colony in the Cape Fear region in the early eighteenth century. Whig English officials, newly in power, had to bring them back to earth. It is frightening to realize that southern aristocracy had its roots in this kind of soil. What Dunn does not mention is that Carolina afforded these wealthy Barbadians what they could never have in England and only slightly gain on Barbados – land grants of tremendous size, thousands of acres, sometimes tens of thousands. This is an important factor in the affluence/arrogance/power equation.

Speaking of arrogance, late seventeenth-century governors Dutton and Stede became unpopular choices on Barbados because of presumed authority amongst the many planters on the islands who felt that they would have made better choices. The later actions of these placemen did not help the royal case. Revolutionary spirit brought on by the Glorious Revolution and the deposition of James II further eroded the power of the big planters. Although they regained their power, it delivered a definite blow to the arrogance, stirring anti-government and anti-tax sentiment that found another expression on the American mainland nearly a century later. Richard Dunn gives the impression that the 1680 Barbados census was a pivotal moment.

Religious friction caused a whole new dimension of trouble with Quakers at the heart of activist dissension. The mere fact that Quakers lived in a boomtown atmosphere like Barbados demonstrates their penchant for trouble. Dunn points out that out of pacifist, antislavery Quakers, six of the Barbadian variety owned more than a hundred slaves each. Moreover, they took their slaves to meetings, another Anglican bone to pick. Perhaps it is a matter of cyclical history that fundamental religious sentiment and affluence go together like a match and a gas can. Just as irritating as Quakers to good Anglicans were Sephardic Jews that they nearly taxed off the island. Another demographic of particular note shows comparisons of Bridgetown with Bristol families in England. Whereas 198 families in Bridgetown had no children, only seven out of sixty-nine families in Bristol were without issue. Obviously, Barbados was not England.
Neither were the Leeward Islands or Jamaica for that matter. Dunn gives three reasons why the Leewards rarely make it into the history books: economic, topographic, and political. Few men of substance apparently came, the terrain did not cooperate even though the climate was perfect, they were too close to the French, and religious factionalism between Protestants and Catholics all combined to hold back progress. Still, tobacco grew a little better than on Barbados. Still, the popularity engendered by the lifestyle on Barbados attracted affluent Englishmen away from the Leeward Islands. The settlers that did come were mostly the stragglers and wash-outs from Barbados. The real story of Caribbean piracy was born in “holes” like the Leewards and Jamaica. Barbados was naturally shielded by an island chain and French and Spanish conflicts kept the remainder of the Caribbean in flux. Nevis, as the only island to escape French invasion, was the only one to flourish. Lack of slave labor still held them back. Moreover, the Leeward Islands, getting started much later than Barbados met the falling end of the sugar boom. Bringing convicts to the islands as servants further eroded the social aspect of the island chain.
Dunn’s discussion of these lesser Caribbean islands had less to do with sugar or slaves and more to do with the exciting times of King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and the resulting band of Caribbean privateers turned pirates. Dunn nor the Bridenbaughs can be blamed for this minor and immensely enjoyable diversion. Playing off the Leeward Island narrative, Dunn’s best line had to be, “The Jamaicans never murdered their governor, but they earned a reputation as England’s most lawless colonists” (Dunn, 1972, 149). It was slightly more subtle than Ned Ward’s earlier interpretive reference to dung. None of these references, says Dunn, capture the true mercantile significance of Jamaica, whose only real nemesis was English rule. Still, the Maroons’ guerilla style tactics, reminiscent of today’s Central American native style, posed a serious problem in the early years of English fighting for Jamaica. The Bridenbaughs detail Maroon society nicely. Buccaneer Jamaicans like Henry Morgan cut their pirate teeth on Spanish Panama. The recently knighted Morgan’s later appointment as Lt. Governor of Jamaica illustrated, at least to former governor, Thomas Lynch, the lawlessness of Jamaica and perhaps of English government as well. Well-fortified Port Royal was the island’s great buccaneer capital in the Caribbean until an earthquake in 1692 wrecked it. Quakers accounted for this disaster as God’s vengeance and most could believe it. From the misrule of numerous governors and the French attack in 1694, Jamaica barely held on. Still, it did. After repairing their sugar facilities from the French attack, planters tried cacao as well. Problems with blight led them away from cacao and sugar remained supreme on Jamaica.

Sugar was the driving mechanism. It created the wealth, affluence, the arrogance, and a need for Negroes. Harvest the cane, crush it with cattle, horse, oxen, or wind-powered mills and boil the dark juice that is produced. All of this must be done quickly. Then, the planter could make muscovado (raw, brown sugar) or clayed, refined white sugar which fetched a better price and, consequently a higher freight charge. This was Barbados. So, of course the planters packed the white, refined variety in hogsheads labeled “muscovado.” The waste product, the molasses that seeped from the buckets was taken to a distillery, probably the second most popular location on the island. There, it was made into a colonial favorite, rum.

As with any business, the most reliable data comes from profit and loss statistics. Insurance claims filed by St. Christopher planters after a French raid in 1706 detailed 450 slaves by occupation. Dunn calls it “ruthlessly exploitive,” a device to “maximize… production,” and “nakedly racial” (Dunn, 1972, 224). Those are methods of capitalization, indeed, it is what the word means. Fly the joli rouge and declare no quarter. Maximize profit and reduce cost as low as possible. There is no variable for humanity in the equation and no controls except the meager whining of a few Quakers who owned slaves themselves. These books were both written in 1972. Richard Dunn thought it necessary to declare his stance on the issue that chattel slavery was fundamentally different from anything that had ever been seen before. In 2010, it may be appropriate (at least allowed) to continue the analogy to Barbados’ godchild, America and the continuing racial problems still plaguing that country today.

Dunn stated that the island colonists plunged while the mainland colonist inched into slavery. He does not support his statement with facts and appears to say it only because he wrote in 1972. Chattel slavery was born of a profitable business. The sugar trade was not so feasible in Carolina when Barbadians settled it and slavery stalled a few decades until rice became a profitable and proven crop in the late seventeenth century. Like sugar, rice required heavy slave labor and Barbadian immigrants took to the deed as quickly as they took to their rum. Negroes and Indians were savagely and routinely abused in Carolina as they were in Barbados. West Africans came so fast that by 1712, Gov. Glen remarked that blacks outnumbered whites in Carolina.
Taken in whole, both Richard Dunn and the Bridenbaughs express how well they understand the English West Indies. Both books are enjoyable. Both rely on strong primary evidence and both rely heavily on statistics. For a place with few remaining records, these two books explain Barbados in fascinating detail. They both offer great narratives on the buccaneer side of the story as well, a point that all pirate fans can appreciate. For 1972, slavery was a timely, if difficult subject to analyze. Some authors are bolder than others. Still, both of these works thankfully attempt to understand and relate those difficult times to us all.