Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Yesterday's Wall Street Journal and New York Times (and many other outlets) reported that the Houghton-Mifflin trade division will be "temporarily" suspending acquisitions of new books. (The textbook division, which provides most of the company's revenues, is not

Comments

[jeff_duntemann]

My readings agree: It happened pretty much as we understand it. What a lot of people don't understand is that conflicts between English colonists and the Indians in New England did not happen immediately; in fact, there was a lot of cordial give-and-take between the two groups. The Iroquois were a libertarian culture compared to Indian cultures south and west, and according to Charles Mann, author of 1491, the Iroquois influenced the early New Englanders (who were religious absolutists fleeing the comparatively tolerant Church of England because it wasn't hard-assed enough) in the direction of individual liberty.

Especially in the first century of New England's colonization, a great many people simply wandered away from the coastal towns and threw their lot in with local tribes. They were not the first, either: The famously mysterious note, "Gone to Croatan" almost certainly meant that Roanoke colonists, facing starvation for whatever reasons, went to join the Croatan tribe.

The point that almost no one makes is that however horribly we treated the Indians in later centuries, in New England at the time of the prototypical Thanksgiving, we began with at least a semblance of tolerance and cooperation. That is worth celebrating as an emblem of hope, that different cultures can appreciate--and be thankful for--what each brings to the table.