North Carolina

726 Pages·1991·24.61 MB·English

NORTH CAROLINA
And yet — in fact you need only draw a single thread
at any point you choose out of the fabric of life
and the run will make a pathway across the whole,
and down that wider pathway each of the other threads
will become successively visible, one by one.
— Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE
INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN
SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. THE
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST HAS
AS ITS OFFICIAL MOTTO “TURNING HINDSIGHT INTO FORESIGHT” —
WHICH INDICATES THAT ONLY PANDERERS ARE WELCOME THERE.
IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY
RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM
THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER,
NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE —
BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.
North Carolina “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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200 BCE
1
The 95th Olympics introduce pankration for boys, and the winner was Phaidimos of Troas.
In what is now North Carolina, people were building earthwork mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes.
1. When calculating dates by Olympiads, remember that what is being described is a repetition of the 1st event — so what we would
now term the 2d such event is on the list as the 1st.
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1,000 CE
There appears to have been some population shifting from southwestward, possibly caused by hostile conflict
with Iroquoians. During this Late Woodland period there was widespread adoption of horticulture in southern
New England. The Wampanoag who were encountered by the European intrusives of the 16th and early 17th
centuries were in this phase of their culture.
NEW ENGLAND
During the Late Prehistoric tradition, several cultures arose in different parts of Ohio. People lived in large
villages surrounded by a stockade wall. Sometimes they built their villages on a plateau overlooking a river.
They grew different plants in their gardens. Maize and beans became the most important foods (squash,
another important plant, had been being grown since the Late Archaic).
In what is now North Carolina, people of the Mississippian culture in what we describe as the Piedmont region,
were continuing to construct earthwork mounds or add onto existing ones. In the five to seven centuries
preceding the initial European contacts, this Mississippian culture would produce large, complex cities and
maintain farflung regional trading networks.
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CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
North Carolina “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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15TH CENTURY
1499
At about this point John Cabot disappears from the record, perhaps lost at sea.
A Spanish expedition under the command of Alonso de Ojeda explored Colombia’s Caribbean coast. On the
basis of Arawak rumors about the Muisca, who allegedly were showering their lake-dwelling gods with gold
dust, Ojeda would be inventing the enduring white mythology known as “El Dorado,” native City of Gold.
At this point the native tribes of North Carolina included the Bear River Indians, Cape Fear Indians, Catawba,
Cheraw, Cherokee, Chowanoc, Machapunga, Moratok, Natchez, Occaneechi, Saponi, Shakori, Tuscarora, and
Waccamaw.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
North Carolina “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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16TH CENTURY
1521
June 24, Monday (Old Style): The 1st recorded Spanish expedition reached the Carolina coast, probably near Winyah
Bay. (During this year Francisco de Gordillo and Quexos were in general exploring the Atlantic coast of North
America to Cape Hatteras off North Carolina.)
CHARLESTON
According to Quattlebaum’s THE LAND CALLED CHICORA, initially the Chicora headman at Georgetown Bay
sent 50 men to the visiting ships to deliver gifts of skins, little pearls, and a bit of silver, and then provided
guides to help the Spaniards cross the bay and explore the countryside. At the end of the month Captain
Francisco de Gordillo and another captain cut crosses into trees as a way of taking possession of the land in
the name of their king. When they had 140 Chicorans being entertained aboard ship, the Spaniards would
consider that they had taken up their allotment of Chicoran slaves, and sail for Hispaniola. Lucás Vasquéz de
Ayllon would order that the captives be returned, but he took one, whom he gave the name Francisco Chicora,
with him to Spain to meet the historians Oviedo and Peter Martyr. (The French would also explore the coast
of Carolina. Captain Jean Ribaut and crew would put down anchor at what is now Port Royal, which the
Spaniards had called Santa Elena. Two native guides for Ribaut and his lieutenant René de Laudonniere would
offer to take the Frenchmen “to see the greatest Lord of this country whom they called Chiquola.”)
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE JUNE 24TH, 1521 AT ALL ONE
MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW,
IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST).
North Carolina “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1524
Early May: Giovanni da Verrazano (or, Verazzano, or, Verrazzano) of Firenzi departed from Newport harbor in La
Dauphine to proceed with his agenda for discovering for King Francis I of France a Northwest Passage the
great markets of civilized Cathay.
First he explored the Carolina coast and noticed that he didn’t seem to be getting any closer to China. Then he
turned northward.
We may hope that he had sense enough to take away from the Narragansett Bay with him some of the luscious
Prunus maritima that he had observed — as a spot of our beach plum jam would have tasted real nice,
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while these guys were getting frustrated, sailing around in those frosty northern ocean passages:
There are no records of further visits of Europeans to the Rhode Island region until the charting of the coast
by Captain John Smith in 1614.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
North Carolina “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1526
November: There is something we need to bear in mind about our term “settler,” which has for so long been a code
designation for people who are privileged to be inheritors due to the white color of their skins. The thing we
need to bear in mind is that in this month of this year there were some 500 Spaniards under Francisco Gordillo,
a skipper for Lucás Vasquéz de Ayllon, with some 100 black slaves, at Cape Fear, forming the 1st “settlement”
on the lands that would someday be included within the United States of America. Their settlement was called
San Miguel de Gualdape, and it was located on the Pee Dee River, probably near Winyah Bay at what is now
Georgetown, South Carolina. They’d been there since August, and during this month of November, since the
whites were being decimated by a sickness, the black slaves of the settlement were able to enter into an alliance
with the local tribe of red Americans (Chicora or Shakori or Chiquola) and stage a successful revolt.
CHARLESTON
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Approximately 150 of the 500 whites managed to make their way back to Hispaniola, leaving these
approximately 100 blacks to become (disregarding for the moment, as is unfortunately conventional, native
American settlers who had been on this continent already for some 10,000 to 20,000 years) our first permanent
“settlers.”
Which is to say, when General Andrew Jackson would be down in Georgia and Florida attempting to
exterminate “Seminoles” of mixed red and black origins who had found refuge in the swamps a dozen or so
generations later, it is plausible that the persons whom he was attempting to exterminate were in actuality a
people whom we ought to be honoring as the legitimate descendants of our “first settlers”!
Had these 100 persons been white, there would now be an extensive shelflist honoring them in every bookstore
in our grand nation. They’d be part of the perennial Search For The Blue-Eyed Indian. But no, they were black,
and so they are ignored. I will quote from the presumptuous just-so story as it is told by Kevin Mulroy in 1993
in his FREEDOM ON THE BORDER: THE SEMINOLE MAROONS IN FLORIDA, THE INDIAN TERRITORY,
COAHUILA, AND TEXAS (Lubbock TX: Texas Tech UP, pages 10-11):
At the very time the Seminole band were establishing a separate
political identity in Florida, therefore, their neighbors were
treating Africans favorably. The Spaniards welcomed runaways from
southern plantations, gave them their freedom, and asked for little
in return save for their cooperation in repelling elements hostile
to both parties. The way these Europeans treated their African
associates well may have made an impression upon the Seminoles. The
Spaniards allowed Africans to live apart, own arms and property,
travel at will, choose their own leaders, organize into military
companies under black officers, and generally control their own
destinies. Several of the Mose men even had wives in the nearby
Indian villages. A separate, armed settlement of free blacks, which
enjoyed the full support of the adjacent Spanish residents, had been
established just outside St. Augustine, the two communities being
joined in a mutually beneficial alliance based primarily upon their
joint opposition to British expansionism. It seems probable that the
early Seminoles would have been aware of these developments and that
their initial perceptions helped determine the course of their own
relations with blacks.... Attracted by the semitropical climate,
sparse white settlement, and chronic political instability of
Florida, ... runaways continued to cross the border in ever-
increasing numbers. They seemingly founded maroon communities and
sought military and trading alliances with the nearby Seminole
villages. Africans became associated with the Seminoles in the late
eighteenth century in two other ways: by capture from plantations
and by purchase from whites or from other Native Americans. Those
blacks also would come to reside in the adjacent Florida maroon
communities. Though it cannot be pinpointed with any degree of
accuracy, the ethnogenesis of the Seminole maroons took place during
the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The true beginnings
of this ethnic group date from the time its individual members were