Bristol - Kouroo Contexture

151 Pages·1991·5.7 MB·English

THE TOWN OF BRISTOL IN RHODE ISLAND
AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS
“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t
like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan
comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll
show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’
love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’
without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or
Rome, but not befur.”
— Dunne, Finley Peter,
OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY,
New York, 1902
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1590
Ousamequin Yellow Feather, who would become the Massasoit of his people the Wampanoag, was born in the
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village of Pokanoket near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island. This group of people were considered to be
“Those of the Dawn” because –living as they were along the seaboard– they had gone the farthest in the
direction of the sunrise.
1. Massasoit is not a personal name but a title, translating roughly as “Sachem of the Sachems,” as in “Shahanshah.”
Like most native American men of the period, he had a number of personal names. Among these were Ousamequin
or “Yellow Feather,” and Wasamegin. The above may arguably be –and may forever remain– the only statue erected by
Massachusetts in honor of a politician from Rhode Island!
2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
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1642
At Québec, Father Jean de Brébeuf was entrusted with the care of the native Americans at the reservation at
Sillery.
Another Jesuit, Father Isaac Jogues, was captured in an ambush. After being kept around as a slave for some
time in an Iroquois village, he would be tortured and murdered and in 1646 his head would be impaled
on the village’s palisade. As a comparison situation to what has happened in regard to the memory of the
martyred Metacom, we place on record here that there is now a marble statue at the scene of this historic crime
against a white man, in Auriesville, New York, a spot which wants to be known as the National Shrine of the
North American Martyrs.
4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
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The memento mori statue at the site depicts Father Jogues, already missing parts of two fingers to the torture
of the Iroquois, in the act of carving the name of Jesus into a tree. There is of course no comparable memento
mori at Mount Hope, reflecting the dismemberment of Metacom in 1676, neither because this native
religious leader would omit to carve the name of Jesus into a tree, nor because he fails to qualify as an authentic
martyr — but because he utterly flunks our test of skin color. No proper commemorative plaque marks the spot
in Salem at which that red martyr’s head was impaled.
MARTYRDOM
THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS
After Fathers Isaac Jogues and Bressani had been captured during effort to reach the Huron country, Father
Jean de Brébeuf was appointed to make a 3d attempt. He succeeded. With him on this journey were Fathers
Noel Chabanel and Garreau, both of whom would afterward be murdered. They reached St. Mary’s on the
Wye, which was the central station of the Huron Mission.
1646
A Jesuit, Father Isaac Jogues, who had been captured in 1642 in an ambush, who had been being held by the
Iroquois as a slave, was at this point tortured and murdered, and his head was impaled on the palisade of the
village. As a comparison situation to what has happened in regard to the memory of the martyred Metacom,
we place on record here that there is now a marble statue at the scene of this historic crime against a white man,
in Auriesville, New York, a spot which wants to be known as the National Shrine of the North American
Martyrs. The memento mori statue at the site depicts Father Jogues, already missing parts of two fingers to the
torture of the Iroquois, in the act of carving the name of Jesus into a tree. There is of course no comparable
memento mori at Mount Hope, reflecting the dismemberment of Metacom in 1676, neither because
this native religious leader would omit to carve the name of Jesus into a tree, nor because he fails to qualify as
an authentic martyr — but because he utterly flunks our primary test, which is that of skin color.
MARTYRDOM
THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS
1649
William Withington took half a share in the vessel Beginning, which sailed from Rhode Island via Barbados
to the Guinea coast of Africa, then back via Barbados and Antigua to Boston. What sort of cargo had this vessel
conveyed from the Guinea coast to the West Indies islands? In the absence of records, we are obliged to suspect
that it had been black slaves.
INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rigorous climate of New England, the
character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views
gave slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle
colonies. The significance of New England in the African slave-
trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early
discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation;
but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of
6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
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the New World, early took part in the carrying slave-trade and
furnished slaves to the other colonies. An inquiry, therefore,
into the efforts of the New England colonies to suppress the
slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and
chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the
participation of citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly,
an examination of the efforts made to banish the slave-trade
from New England soil.
(Over the following two centuries, about half the American participation in the international slave trade would
be sailing out of the harbors of 1st Newport and then Bristol — order of magnitude, that’s about 1,000 out of
about 2,000 middle passages.)
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1667
Swansea (Swanzy) was established, much closer than any English settlement had been to Metacom’s own
village at Mount Hope. The English were hostile to Phillip’s agenda to raise herds of pigs (for instance, they
had told him to get his pigs the hell off of Pig Island in the Narragansett Bay, where they as well as he were
keeping pigs in order to preserve them safe against forest predators); however, as James D. Drake has
commented on his page 66, “The Indians in the region were openly angry with their English neighbors,
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probably because livestock owned by the English were allowed to trespass on native land.”
“History is better than prophecy. In fact, history ‘is’
prophecy. And history says that whenever a weak and
ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and
enlightened people want, it must be yielded up.”
— Mark Twain
2. Drake bases this guess on the work of Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “King Philip’s Herds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of
Livestock in Early New England” (William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 51, October 1994).
8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
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Metacom was again summoned to Plymouth Town, as had already occurred during 1664, to provide
reassurances against their fear that he was plotting to war upon the English.
“KING PHILLIP’S WAR”
It was in this period that Deliverance Smith was born. Although we know that eventually John Smith of
Plymouth and Dartmouth would come to be the father a total of thirteen children and although the initial five,
Hassadiah, John, Josiah, Eliazer, and Hezekiah, were definitely born to his 1st wife, Friend Deborah Howland
Smith, and although the will would make it clear that Hannah, Sarah, and Deborah had been born to the 2d
wife, Friend Ruhamah Kirby Smith — about Judah, Gershom, Deliverance, Mehitable, and Eliashib we can
only infer that they would also pertain to this 2d Quaker woman, Ruhamah. As to how it was that a 2d Quaker
wife was bearing children for this man across the water in Dartmouth while in Plymouth his 1st Quaker wife
seems still to have been very much alive, and as to the details of the eventual relocation of this Smith family
from Plymouth to Dartmouth, the genealogical record has preferred to remain silent. We notice a reticence in
assigning the years of birth to the various children, as if these details would inform us of certain life patterns
of which it would be better for the world at large to remain ignorant. We only know that this child, Deliverance,
became a Friend.
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1668
Plymouth decreed that there was to be no “buying or receiving from the Indians any lands that appertain unto
Mount hope, or Cawsumsett necke.” On this basis, we may infer that “Mount Hope” was the English name for
the land which –either on account of the sharpness of the edges of the rocks in the vicinity, or on account of
the usefulness of the rocks in the vicinity as whetstones for the sharpening of metal knifeblades– to the natives
was known as Cawsumsett.
BRISTOL
RHODE ISLAND
This was, is “King Philip’s Seat” at Mount Hope:
10 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith