Revolutions March 12, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, History, Politics, Religion, travel
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The always grasping never satisfied Stuart dynasty had a rough time during their four reigns as the kings of England. They sought absolute power and ended up losing the constitutional power they had. The second one was beheaded by his own people and the last one was chased out of the country. The first and the third were wastrels who partied themselves to distraction and spent themselves into poverty. They are best remembered for the line applied to their restoration after the regicide and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell; “They never learned anything and never forgot anything.” All in all, they were a sad interlude in a proud heritage.
When the people of England could suffer these inept political neophytes no longer, they rose up in what is known as the Glorious Revolution, chased James II from the country and welcomed William of Orange the husband of James’ daughter Mary as the Protestant replacements to the hated Catholic James.
The coup was greeted in the colonies with jubilation on the part of those seeking greater independence. They quickly seized upon the revolution as an opportunity to cast the appointees of James as recalcitrant adherents to the old regime and themselves as ardent supporters of the new. This led to the overturning of every royal colonial government and the installation of more independent and more liberty minded groups.
William of Orange now styled William III of England, was a battle-hardened veteran of the long and bitter continental wars against the aggrandizements of Louis XIV. His main reason for coveting the crown of England was to subtract England from its alliance with France and to add it to his coalition against that same power. He had little concern for the colonies except as they figured into his consolidation of power in England and his mobilization of its power against France.
In consequence to this he picked and chose winners and losers in the colonial power struggles based upon his own calculations not the calculations or interests of the colonists. Sometime this coincided with colonial interests In Pennsylvania William suspended the charter because Penn had been a favorite of James, and he thus made Pennsylvania a royal colony. In Maryland he allowed Lord Baltimore to retain his ownership but took the government of the colonies out of his Catholic hands and put it into the hands of an appointed Protestant governor. In Massachusetts William refused to allow a return to their original charter, and he retained them as royal colonies, but he allowed them a great degree of autonomy and independence in local matters. The smaller New England colonies were allowed to reinstitute their original charters.
William plunged England into a long-lasting series of European wars all designed to hobble France for the benefit of his native Holland. These wars cost England more than anyone could have imagined. They led to a level of taxation never before known to support a massive increase in the military establishment both on land and on the sea. This also meant that William and the crown were occupied elsewhere. They had precious little resources to send to America and sought nothing more than revenue to fight on in Europe. The king didn’t really care what was going on in the colonies as long as they didn’t cause him to divert men or material from his main theater of action and as long as the contributed money to the war effort. Under these circumstances the colonists were able to gain a degree of freedom and independence not known back in England.
During these years the crowns of England and Scotland were formally united. They had become united when James VI of Scotland was crowned as James I of England. Though united in the person of the king and still united after the regicide in the Commonwealth they were officially united in 1707 and after that date the Scots soon came to outnumber the English as immigrants to the colonies. This marks the birth of Great Britain and the end of Scotland as an independent nation.
Another feature of the Eighteenth-Century British Empire was its suppression of the pirates which had once been an unofficial arm of its own foreign policy against the Spanish. As the Spanish Empire declined, and the British became the dominant sea power the pirates had become more and more of a nuisance. Eventually the British used the same tactics which have always worked against pirates, sink their ships, burn their bases and hang those captured. This effectively suppressed the pirates and brought a measure of peace to the sea lanes so a commercial empire like Britain could thrive.
The British were preeminently an empire of shopkeepers and merchants. They may not have had raw political power, but they held economic power that could sway the powers that be. The colonies had been founded as economic enterprises and even after most of them devolved or evolved into royal colonies they remained primarily economic enterprises.
Following the tenants of Mercantilism, ever uppermost in the mid of the royal government was how can the colonies benefit the homeland? How can they contribute to the power of the crown? And while the empire of the English now spread around the world it was profoundly an Atlantic worldview that predominated the thinking of the empire builders just as it was a European worldview that had predominated the mind of King William allowing the colonies to further develop as independent minded enclaves in the midst of a far-flung empire.
The Middle Colonies March 5, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: canada, europe, History, Religion, travel
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Between the Chesapeake Colonies and New England there existed an expanse of coast and its associated hinterlands that would soon join the English holdings and become known collectively as the Middle Colonies. They had a better climate than New England and healthier than the Chesapeake region. They proved extremely well suited for growing grains and raising cattle. They soon boasted a large and growing population.
Initially however this population wasn’t made up of the English. They ignored the area for the first part of the Seventeenth Century finding the New England venture and the Chesapeake area enough to keep them busy. In the interim the Dutch established a flourishing New Netherland along the Hudson River and the Swedes built their New Sweden along the Delaware. The English weren’t happy about this incursion in an area they considered their own, but they did not directly confront either rival immediately for two reasons. One, they were not strong enough and two; both of their new world rivals were their Old-World friends. Both Sweden and the Netherlands were Protestant powers, and both were valuable allies in the religious wars and power diplomacy of the times.
In the latter half of the Seventeenth Century things changed. For one thing the Dutch had swallowed New Sweden and then the Dutch, who were now England’s main commercial rival in Europe and world-wide were swallowed in turn by the expanding English New Netherlands being renamed, New York in 1664.
Unlike the Spanish, French and Dutch the English crown exerted little direct power over their colonies. Following the tenants of Mercantilism to their logical conclusions, they instead sought commercial benefit through taxation and the belief that every raw material such as wood or tar that they could produce at home or in a colony made them stronger. Also, they did not fund the colonies out of the royal treasury as the other European colonizing powers did. Instead, the cash-strapped English relied upon private enterprise and entrepreneurship leading to what many think is the greatest contribution of the British Empire to economics, the limited liability corporation. This left much latitude and personal individuality to the separate colonies and also had a great influence on the future development of the United States.
Besides the commercial tradition of free enterprise this situation also had a profound impact on the political developments in the English colonies. All except New England were controlled by absentee proprietors who were thousands of miles away and often extremely short of cash. The colonists as they became firmly established and self-sufficient, following in a long line of English tradition, began to flex their economic muscle and the power of the purse to increase their political leverage. They wrested concession from the proprietors in the form of autonomous assemblies with real power to shape local events. They also sought control of courts and customs. In some cases, they even staged coups such as in Carolina declaring pseudo independence or as in Georgia where they appealed to the crown for protection from the leadership guidelines or strictures of the absentee proprietors.
A special case was New England. As stated earlier, the proprietors were wealthy Puritans who formed the Massachusetts Bay Company which actually relocated to the colonies. Having a royal charter themselves and having the principles of the company as actual participating members of the colony made them in everything but name independent and they acted as if they were in fact independent, asking no leave and taking every privilege. They developed republican forms such as their famous town meetings and looked to no one besides themselves and God for all they wanted, needed, or desired.
Gradually as the proprietors found themselves in financial problems they turned to the crown for a bail-out. The price of this help always came with strings and eventually the crown gained not only control but the title of colony after colony. The Puritans even began to fear that the royal fist was next going to aim at them. But instead, the crown was diverted by the rich prize which lay just to the south of the semi-independent New England. In 1664 a mighty fleet of English warships descended upon the future port and near perfect harbor of New Amsterdam ascending the Hudson and conquering New Netherland.
The Dutch had built an American empire that was thriving by the time it was appropriated by the English. It was anchored by the growing community of New Amsterdam located at the mouth of the Hudson River. This city was founded initially to provide a secure transport hub for the furs coming down river from Fort Orange and the extensive and valuable trade with the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederation. As time moved, on the Dutch expanded their presence building farms along the river to supply their colonists with food. These farms soon had a surplus that became a valuable export being used mainly to feed other Dutch colonists in the West Indies. The Dutch colony was prosperous and growing when it was suddenly plucked like ripe fruit by the English. It was however a small colony on the fringe of a vast worldwide empire and the overextended Dutch had to pick their battles carefully, so they did not attempt to retake the colony.
A small nation of only 1.5 million the Dutch had risen in a relatively short time from being a province of Spain to the greatest commercial empire in the world boasting the greatest navy. While the religious wars wracked Europe and while the other European powers were all united to counterbalance the overwhelming preponderance of Spain little Netherlands was safe behind its dykes and secure in the enjoyment of their wealth. However, as the religious wars subsided and as they themselves impoverished the Spaniards by stealing their treasure and conquering their outposts others began to look at the growing power of this tiny nation as a slight against them. Soon England on the high seas and France on land began to seek ways to challenge the Dutch. In the Americas this translated into the English conquest of New Netherlands.
This conquest had an ulterior motive. As a matter of fact, when the English fleet sailed there was speculation that it was headed for Boston to assert royal control over the semi-independent New England. Although the blow fell on the Dutch instead of the Puritans the lesson was not lost. The crown intended to take a more active role and the establishment of a royal colony on their southern border let the Puritans know that from then on, the representatives of the king would not be far away.
The Covenant Chain
Once the English supplanted the Dutch as the dominant European power and the traders at Fort Orange (renamed Albany) they took the place of the Dutch in their alliance with the Five Nation Iroquois Confederation. The two allies stood together against the French and swore to help each other against all other enemies. The Five Nations claimed to have conquered the western regions as far south as Ohio and as far west as the furthest reaches of the Great Lakes. These claims were more hyperbole than reality, but the English acknowledged them as true and by extension claimed that since they asserted their suzerainty over the Five Nation by extension, they said they held title to all these far-flung territories. This was a claim the French bitterly refused to acknowledge basing their competing claims on their far-ranging exploration and the many relationships they had established with the tribes who controlled the territories.
The English not only traded with the Five Nations and used their boasts to expand their claims they also used them as enforcers regarding the other smaller Indian nations in the area. This alliance came to be the lynch pin of English American diplomacy regarding the relations with the Native Americans North of the Chesapeake Colonies. It was the source and the summit of power. The guns given to the Iroquois became the tip of the English lance towards any tribe that dared try to stand against them.
New Jersey
The House of Stuart had ambitions of becoming absolute monarchs on the model of the French. But they were held back by English tradition and a lack of money. They did not have the vast estates and the power to tax by decree that the French monarch had. Instead, they had to wheel and deal with an often intractable and always jealous parliament. One place they looked to increase their riches which would increase their power was the colonies. They wanted more royal control so they could tax the continually growing commerce. After the royal conquest of New York, it appeared that they were finally on their way to establishing direct royal control but then they took a divergent course which added to the diversity of the American colonies instead of to the size of the royal treasury.
Unable to keep a strategy headed in the right direction and almost immediately after seizing New York the King’s brother the Duke of York granted a charter to two wealthy patrons for political consideration. This grant was for all the land between the Hudson and the Delaware rivers as a separate colony called New Jersey. The reduction of royal control was further diluted when these two absentee proprietors sold off their rights to two separate groups. One was headed by a Scotsman and the other group was headed by Quakers. These two groups promptly divided the colony into East and West New Jersey. The Scotts took East Jersey, and the Quakers took West Jersey.
This situation lasted until 1702 when the crown reunited the two Jerseys into the royal colony of New Jersey. The fact that the proprietors retained legal title to the land led to many disputes in East Jersey due to the exorbitant rents and demands made upon the rent holders. This led to riots and to a depressed rate of economic growth which contributed to the fact that New Jersey lagged behind its neighbors both to the North and the South for generations in development and wealth.
Pennsylvania
William Penn was a rich gentleman descended from a famous and well-connected admiral. He was also a creditor of the king. The always cashed strapped Stuart King James I settled a debt with Penn by granting him 45,000 square miles of land beyond the Delaware River. This was augmented by grants from the Duke of York. Penn, a rich and grand living Quaker founded a colony where religious tolerance and economic opportunity soon established a thriving colony filled with industrious people. The Quakers had withstood persecution in England because they refused to take part in or support the established church. Penn himself was jailed on several occasions as an unlicensed preacher. Therefore, there was a ready impetus for them to immigrate to Pennsylvania. Like the Puritans of New England many of the settlers in Pennsylvania were families with their own resources. They were tradesmen and merchants, farmers and artisans. This type of population adapted well, worked hard and soon established growing communities ever deeper into the woods, always moving west.
William Penn was a shrewd and good administrator of his colony. He treated the Indians with respect and acknowledged them as the rightful owners of the land. He did not trick them or appropriate their land he purchased it and he didn’t allow anyone to settle on any land unless he first purchased it from the Indians. This led to a more peaceful occupation of the land than in any other colony.
The harmony of the colony was disrupted by sectional rivalries which plague the commonwealth to this day. The counties to the east are pitted against the counties to the west each always striving for their own advantage. In colonial times this could deal with the perceived need for fortifications or roads, Indian relations or economic developments. The profitable colony could not keep pace with the lavish lifestyle of its proprietor and in 1707 William Penn found himself sentenced to an English debtor prison even though he personally owned a colony bigger than some European countries.
Puritans and Indians February 12, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: History, pilgrims, puritans, Religion, Thanksgiving
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The Puritans didn’t see the land they colonized as pristine, which it wasn’t, and they didn’t see it as merely undeveloped, which it wasn’t, instead they saw it as a “hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men.” With such an outlook is it any wonder that they looked upon the land as something to be conquered? Is it any wonder that they looked upon the Native Americans as inferior members of an inferior culture to be shunted aside at best and eliminated at worst?
The Native Americans the Puritans encountered in New England were mainly from the Algonquian linguistic group. They were divided along linguistic lines by dialect and along clan lines by families. The main groups subdivided over and over and there was much individual freedom to move between groups along these inter-relational lines. They possessed the same advanced horticultural techniques which were almost universal along the Eastern coast of North America. They grew the same crops and used the same weapons as the Natives encountered by the English in Virginia but they did not have the same level of political development. There were no great confederations like the Five Nations or the Powhatan. And so the Puritans did not have to fit into local power structures as the least powerful and newest entrants on a varied and dynamic political stage. Instead they moved into abandoned villages left empty by the ravages of European imported diseases and claimed well cleared fields left fallow by the death of their owners. They even went so far as to say God had cleared out the heathen so they could enter in, and they believed it was true.
At a very early point the growing Puritan colonies began pushing the Indians out of more and more land. They saw every agreement on the part of the natives as an abject acceptance of English sovereignty. They used trade goods and the ability to traverse great distances between various tribes as a means to not only capture much of the intertribal trade but to use it to their advantage playing one tribe against another.
A prime example of the exploitation of rivalry is found in the history of the Pequot War. The usual story is that the Pequot were recent invaders who came in and mercilessly subjugated the local Mohegan and Narragansett and that the New English merely aided them in freeing themselves from the hated oppressors. In reality the Puritans wanted to incorporate the lands of the Pequot into their growing commonwealth and to do so they lured the other Indians into guiding them to the isolated Pequot villages.
The traditional mode of combat among the Indians was long on show and short on mayhem. They sought to capture women and children to incorporate them into their tribes to make themselves stronger and their enemies weaker. They did not engage in wholesale slaughter and the general conquest of the lands of others but that is just what they signed on for in the Pequot War. In less than two years’ time the Puritans had so decimated the tribe that they declared the Pequot to have ceased to exist as a tribe. Later they resurrected the Pequot by convincing some who had been adopted into the Narragansett to once again reconstitute their tribe as allies of the Puritans in a war against the Narragansett. One side against the other until the Puritans were the only side left.
Missionary Activities & Praying Towns
Pushed and prodded by their fellow believers back in England the Puritans began actively attempting to evangelize the Indians beginning in the late 1640s. Many members of the smaller and weaker bands of Indians had decided that it was foolish to try and resist the ever increasing English and so they sought protection and advancement by adopting Christianity and following European ways. They gathered together in large inter-tribal villages known as “Praying Towns” where they could learn from the English and begin to gain the advancements that civilization had to offer. Though the larger and most powerful of the tribes never found the Praying towns or the missionaries appealing these towns did grow and become an important part of the Puritan scene in Massachusetts. This venture eventually crashed against the shoals of the bloodiest war ever fought between the Indians and the Puritans.
King Phillip’s War
Victors write History. This is a reality which has colored the perception of events since the First Emperor of China made himself the first emperor by destroying all the records of anything that had gone before. Thus it is with “King Phillip’s War.” King Phillip wasn’t even the name of the man the Puritan’s have immortalized as the Machiavellian leader of the coordinated attack against the innocent English in 1675.
After seizing the land and displacing the cultures of the many tribes and bands who were the original possessors of the land the Puritans began acting in a very high handed manner by imposing their laws and conventions on the members of any and all tribes in their vicinity. In the spring of 1675 they arrested and hanging several Indians who had killed an Indian from one of the Praying Towns who was considered a traitor by other Indians for guiding the English to their camps.
This act of self-declared sovereignty over the people of another nation led to spontaneous reactions from the Indians. These people believed in blood feuds and retribution, revenge raids and reciprocity and the Indians who were hung all had relatives and friends. Soon many of the tribes joined in a massive effort to rid their lands of the ever more intrusive English, but it was too late. The Great Migration and a prodigious birth rate had increased the English population to the point that they easily outnumbered all the local tribes combined.
The technological advantage had been lost. Greedy traders had ignored the law against selling firearms to Indians and they had gained flintlock rifles and become very adept at using them. However, the English, held a monopoly on the repair of broken firearms and the production of gunpowder. In addition, contrary to the myth which has been perpetrated and preserved, the English held an overwhelming advantage in organization. The tribes never united. Each tribe fought under their own leaders in their own way for their own goals. The English on the other hand immediately ceased their petty disputes and stood united against the tribes.
The Indians sought to cleanse their land by destroying every visage of the Europeans. They burned buildings, knocked down fences and killed livestock. They were so intent on cleansing the land that they even killed many families including women and children contrary to their own custom of adopting women and children. They had learned the lesson of total war from the English during the Pequot War and they were using that knowledge to restore their sovereignty in the land that had once been their own.
The Indians had also adapted their tactics as well as their strategy. Instead of fighting in massed formations with great displays to prove their bravery they set ambushes and fought a gorilla style campaign that proved highly effective since they knew the terrain so much better than their enemies. They would stage a surprise attack and then retreat. When they were pursued they would set ambushes choosing the place to fight and inflicting heavy casualties on their pursuers. In frustration at not being able to find or defeat their foes the English turned against the Indians of the praying towns attacking and killing the defenseless Christianized Indians because they could.
Eventually the English learned a valuable lesson. They abandoned their traditional European style tactics of massed formations and adopted the same gorilla style as the Indians which worked so well in the thick forests and swamps. Using other Indians as guides and scouts they were soon inflicting serious losses on the tribes and whereas the English could absorb the losses they had sustained and rebound the Indians could not. When the food supplies or equipment of the Indians was destroyed in a raid they could not requisition replacements from the coast as the English could. Instead they starved. When they ran out of shot and powder they couldn’t get more from their storehouses they had to retreat before the firepower of the English.
The Mohawk Indians, one of the Five Nation Iroquois also allied themselves with the English seeing this as a perfect opportunity to smash their longtime rivals the Algonquians. As the tribes began to surrender one by one the war fizzled to a close when Metacom, the man immortalized as King Phillip, was killed by one of the Praying Town Indians in the service of the English. The Puritans cut off Metacom’s head and mounted it on a pike at Plymouth as a warning to all who would dare resist their conquest of New England and thus died the hopes, dreams and memories of the proud Indian nations who had once owned the land.
New England February 5, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, History, Politics, puritans, Religion
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Originally it was considered the northern part of Virginia and after a few unsuccessful attempts a colonization that froze and starved their way to failure it was considered an undesirable place to attempt a colony. Then Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame made a voyage there and published a popular travelogue including a map and a new name, “New England” which enticed colonists into believing it was a fair approximation of Old England across the pond, and it became an enduring success.
The English Puritans were followers of the Protestant reformation. They believed that the Church of England which had been founded by King Henry VIII when he was unable to obtain a divorce from the Pope retained too much of the rights and rituals of the Catholic Church. They might be called purists. They wanted simple services and plain churches. The Church of England retained statues, stained glass windows, golden crosses, ministers they called “Priests” and “Father” adorned in splendid vestments.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Church of England was the “Established’ church. Meaning it was a part of the state. The King or Queen was (and is) the head of the church no matter how worldly they were or even if they didn’t believe in God. They appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the other Bishops. Every citizen was required to support and attend the church. The clergy were paid by the state. The church courts were often used by the state to punish people that the government suspected of disloyalty to the crown. As in all countries with established churches the ideas of heresy and treason became confounded.
Many puritans wanted to remain active members of the established church and reform it from within. Other wanted to immediately separate and form their own pure congregations, these were known as separatists, and they were the object of sporadic and often horrendous persecution. Some of the separatists left the country, many finding sanctuary in Holland where the religious toleration allowed them to worship as they wished.
Socially the Puritans believed in what they saw as the Biblical principles of thrift, diligence and hard work. They were mostly from the middleclass and had much more than most Englishmen who were struggling just to get by. When persecution rose to a crescendo in the 1620s and 1630s the Puritans were finally spurred to action. The Massachusetts Bay Company was founded in London by people who had remained in the Church of England and were able to operate within the legal structure of the day. They sought and received a royal charter to found a colony in the New World. This is where they did something entirely different than the Virginia Company which maintained itself in England as a limited liability company which had shareholders and used its resources to send out expeditions and settlers hoping for a profit. Instead of operating after the model previously established by the Virginia Company the Massachusetts Bay Company relocated to the new World thus establishing itself as self-governing colony with only nominal connection to the royal government.
Landing in an area where a great plague of European diseases had swept away the Native population the Puritans were able to move into deserted villages and plant in abandoned fields. They saw it as the providence of God. The Natives obviously saw it as something altogether different. The Puritan colonists were by nature hardworking and frugal and so had a much easier time establishing a self-sufficient colony than did the indolent and wealth seeking colonists in Virginia. In addition, there was a huge influx of people, men, women and children, whole families that not only added to the population but were also able to multiply it quickly. Within a few decades, by 1640 they were already spreading out and founding secondary colonies such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.
Land was granted to groups of people who banded together to find towns. These lands were then held in common and divided among the families according to the wishes of the town. The colony would outline the town’s area but they left it up to the towns to decide upon their internal policies. The land needed clearing and tending. The livestock needed pasture and each village divided the land and managed as they saw fit. Women were accorded equal status in religious matters except the posts of leadership, teaching and preaching, which means they were able to be saved, join the church and work but only men could lead. However, women in New England had more rights and privileges than women in the Chesapeake Colonies.
When the Great Migration ended in the 1640s an economic depression followed the cessation of this constant infusion of new people and money. And this is when the commerce which was to make New England famous around the world began to manifest itself. First the fishing banks of the coast were exploited for local consumption as well as for export to Europe. Next the great and developing agricultural surplus was soon being shipped to Europe as well. Building upon the abundant resources shipbuilding was soon an expanding industry building both ships for the coastal trade and ocean going vessels.
The Bible Commonwealth
The Puritans saw their earthly mission to build God’s kingdom on earth. The Puritans followed the beliefs of the other reformers that everyone should read and know the Bible for themselves. Therefore, printing was an early and an important industry for there was a constant call for more Bibles and other study materials. There were many more churches and more preachers in New England than in Virginia. Since church attendance and hearing the educated preachers was a major source of the education of the day when combined with the higher level of literacy required to read the Bible for themselves the level of education was consequently much higher in New England than in the Chesapeake Colonies.
The insular aspects of the Puritan colonies led to disputes with the non-Puritans who were inevitably drawn to a successful colony. The purity of the colony was diluted by those who came after. The laws had to be loosened to fit the changing circumstances and there were also those who just had different ideas. There were Baptists and Quakers, Anglicans and Catholics all of which were attracted by the material success but who wanted a more inclusive vision. Nontraditional leaders such as Anne Hutchinson, one of the founders of Rhode Island and occurrences such as the witchcraft trails combined to split the once unified and relatively homogeneous New England into competing visions for a fractious future.
It may have faltered as a shining city on a hill and it certainly didn’t create heaven on earth but it was a successful model for a flourishing colony. Materially prosperous and politically independent New England held out a promise that the New World could become something that really was new.
Virginia January 22, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: american-revolution, books, History, Religion, revolutionary-war
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Between the Spanish to the South and the French to the North the English sought to carve out their own colonies in what they called “Virginia” named for the virgin queen Elizabeth I. The English relied on private investors operating under royal permission to found colonies that were some of the first international joint stock companies. These promoters sought the quick riches of conquest and gold. But instead, they found themselves in an area with a climate which initially proved deadly to Europeans and a land that had no easily obtainable minerals and that wouldn’t grow the preferred money crop, sugar.
In addition, after a false start at Roanoke they decided to try to establish themselves at Jamestown within the territory of a large tribal power known as the Powhatan Confederacy. The first years of the colony were ones of short lives and brutal work. Most people were either indentured servants who were worked to death or gentleman who refused to work. The colony needed constant infusions of people to make up for the large death rate.
Emerging from a series of wars and revolutions the British Isles had eventually been unified under the scepter of the English monarch. The social structure was a carryover from feudal times a steep pyramid with many poor people on the bottom and a few wealthy at the top. Several occurrences such as the Civil War had begun to empower Parliament and mitigate the suffering of the people. The franchise was exclusively for men with property but at least the Monarchy was no longer absolute, and the beginnings of a democratic structure were growing. The enclosure of the land to facilitate animal husbandry as opposed to crops left many former peasants landless and uprooted from their homes. These became the grist for the colonial mill supplying a large pool of ready workers and easy transplants.
The colonists eventually grew in number and after the introduction of tobacco they had a cash crop. Spreading out quickly within a generation they were hundreds of miles into the interior building forts and plantations. The freed indentured servants built new towns and constantly pushed deeper and deeper into the continent. When the Indians had finally had enough it was too late. The wars against the Indians cost the lives of many colonists but they decimated the Indians. By the 1670s there were more than 40,000 colonists and they were pushing the Indians back and out through the piedmont and into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Canada and Iriquoia January 16, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: canada, History, native-americans, Religion, travel
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While the Spanish claimed all North America their practical power did not extend far north of what is today the border between Florida and Georgia. In Europe the power of Spain forced the English and the French to diplomatically deny for some time that they were in fact seeking to found colonies in the Americas. The first colonies of both powers were strategically placed in the interior close to but off the coast to avoid detection and destruction. As the Sixteenth Century progressed the power of Spain waned as the power of England, France, and the Netherlands expanded. By 1541the King of Spain decided not to attempt to stop the French from founding a colony along the St. Lawrence. This opened the flood gates and soon all these secondary powers began working to establish their own empires in North America.
The Spanish gave the coldness of the climate and the poverty of the land as their reasons for allowing others to build colonies in lands they claimed as their own. And the lack of ready plunder from defenseless natives and of easy to exploit precious metals did make the first expeditions of the newcomers unprofitable since those two things were what they were seeking. However, as time went on the French took the lead in the fur trade quickly followed by the English and the Dutch. Then the English discovered that they could make fortunes growing tobacco for export to a rapidly growing European market.
The French, English and Dutch did not conquer the Native Americans as the Spanish did, they instead began by entering into alliances and trading agreements. The many tribes of the eastern portion of North America’s vast woodland were divided into two distinct groups roughly founded on language, the Algonquians and the Iroquoian. Both groups were often rivals within their respective divisions and often between each other. The alignment of these groups came to play a very important part in the shape of the growing colonies.
The fur trade quickly rose to become the greatest source of financial gain for the Europeans and the greatest source of trade goods for the Indians. And both sides soon came to depend upon the other in more ways than either could have ever imagined. As the Indians spread out further and further seeking the furs and skins the European desired, they began to neglect their traditional sources of strength as they depleted their own lands and lusted for the lands of others. In addition, as they became more dependent on manufactured goods, they began to lose the skills they had developed over centuries to live off the land. It even reached the point that if trade goods were cut-off the Indians faced starvation. This became so pronounced that the Indians came to consider a cut-off of trade as a declaration of war.
Tribes who lived closest to a source of trade goods began to conquer and plunder tribes that lived further away using their monopoly on firearms to their advantage. These disruptions spread the influence and impact of the European settlements to Native Americans who never saw a colonist. The destruction of the beaver also had a dramatic impact on the environment as the previously ubiquitous lakes and ponds formed by beaver dams disappeared. These ponds and lakes had been an important source of water and habitat for other animals and as they dried up the patterns of wildlife changed forever.
In addition, the diseases of the Europeans decimated the native population in some places creating the wilderness the Europeans have always said was there. It weakened many tribes so much they merged with others and their independent history ended often after many generations of existence. And there was also alcohol. Indians had always brewed a type of beer, but they had never distilled hard liquor. The impact of this import had a debilitating effect on individuals and cultures that was often purposefully exploited by the Europeans.
The French were the early leaders. They followed the St. Lawrence River more than 1,000 miles into the interior of the continent opening trade with hitherto untouched regions. They made fortunes exporting a huge volume of furs and pelts. At first it was so lucrative a trade that they did not even want to establish permanent colonies for fear of disrupting the natives and the gathering of furs. However, in 1608 Quebec was founded and soon some permanent settlers began to fan out through the vast area France claimed as their own. France soon became embroiled in the many wars of their Indian allies. They were allied with the Algonquians and Huron making enemies of the Five Nation Iroquois. The introduction of firearms into the traditional Indian warfare led to radical changes in tactics. They went from massed formations to hit and run styles. It also convinced the tribes that they needed above all to attain firearms or face defeat.
The Five Nation Iroquois
Unfortunately for the French they had aligned themselves with the first people they met which can easily be understood as a means of gaming furs fast and easy but when looked at from a strategic standpoint it made little sense. The Northern Algonquians and the Montagnais were hunter gatherers with no permanent settlements and little surplus of any kind. The Huron, an Iroquoian speaking people were possessors of advanced horticulture and lived in large well-fortified villages. But all of them together were no match for the unified might of the Five Nation Iroquois. This confederation of tribes possessed the strongest military and the most advanced social system in North America since the demise of the ancient races of the Southwest and the Mound Builders of the Mississippi basin.
The tribes of the Northeast had long histories of warfare and the introduction of the Europeans into the mix merely changed the weapons and the tactics. The strategy remained the same gain land and captives which could be adopted into the tribe thereby making it bigger and its enemies smaller. The Five Nations were the best organized and the largest. They had been the most powerful and stable of all the Indian alliances in the area before the Europeans came and they remained so for centuries after.
Shortly after the first French intervention in the wars between the Huron and the Iroquois the Dutch arrived. They soon established themselves along the Hudson River and began supplying the Five Nations with arms. This leveled the playing field and soon the French and their Indian allies were in full retreat as the Five Nations flexed their muscles to the north. The long-lasting enmity between the French and the Five Nations would not be extinguished until the final fall of New France.
The Jesuits followed the French as the religious order that made the strongest inroads amongst the Indians, especially the Huron. Many Huron villages became Christian as did large numbers of the people. This made for many disagreements and disputes among the tribe. Many wanted to retain their traditional beliefs and lifestyles while others seeing the power of the Europeans wanted to adapt to the changing circumstances. This dissension led to aggressive actions on the part of the Five Nations. Seeing the opportunity to crush their ancient enemies and to obtain many captives they mounted sustained attacks eventually leading to the complete destruction of the Huron nation.
Marley’s Chains May 29, 2019
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Faith, Faith alone, legalism, Religion, religious customs, religious systems, religious traditions
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To paraphrase scripture as presented in the Message we see that not only has the Church become Israel many have become spies only pretending to be Christians, who slipped in to find out just how free true Christians are who seek to pervert the freedom from religious legalism Christ gives us. They want to build their own kingdoms and feather their own nests by bringing others into the same religious bondage they drag around like Marley’s chains through a life that reeks of the grave.
Now the paraphrase of Romans 2:17-29:
If you’re brought up Christian, don’t assume that you can lean back in the arms of your religion and take it easy, feeling smug because you’re an insider to God’s revelation, a connoisseur of the best things of God, informed on the latest doctrines! I have a special word of caution for you who are sure that you have it all together yourselves and, because you know God’s revealed Word inside and out, feel qualified to guide others through their blind alleys and dark nights and confused emotions to God. While you are guiding others, who is going to guide you? I’m quite serious. While preaching “Don’t steal!” are you going to rob people blind? Who would suspect you? It is the same with adultery. And it is the same with idolatry. You can get by with almost anything if you front it with eloquent talk about God and his law. The line from Scripture, “It’s because of you Christians that the outsiders are down on God,” shows it’s an old problem that isn’t going to go away.
Baptism, the ritual that marks you as a Christian, is great if you live in accord with God’s law. But if you don’t, it’s worse than not being baptized. The reverse is also true: The unbaptized who keep God’s ways are as good as the baptized —in fact, better. Better to keep God’s law unbaptized than break it baptized. Don’t you see: It’s not the submerging in water that makes a Christian. You become a Christian by who you are. It’s the submerging of your heart in God, not the water on your skin that makes you a Christian. And the recognition comes from God, not legalistic critics.
Not only are we warned to avoid the legalism of religion we are specifically warned about false teachers and wolves disguised as Christians who seek to build their own kingdoms and lead others astray.
At the end of the book of Romans Paul warns us; One final word of counsel, friends. Keep a sharp eye out for those who take bits and pieces of the teaching that you learned and then use them to make trouble. Give these people a wide berth. They have no intention of living for our Master Christ. They’re only in this for what they can get out of it, and aren’t above using pious sweet talk to dupe unsuspecting innocents.
And in Philippians 3:17-19 Paul tells us; Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
I’m not knocking anyone’s beliefs or their traditions. What I am doing is trying to warn those who want to follow Christ. We can’t let anyone, anything, or the peer pressure of any community fool us into elevating a system of man over the freedom of Christ. We should ask ourselves, “How can customs, traditions, holidays, and ceremonies transplanted from paganism to attract or mollify converts as faith in Christ was spread, sometimes by the sword, across barbarian Europe after the fall of Rome save us?” Anything that obscures the fact that it’s by faith alone that we’re saved and by obedience alone we’re changed is something holding us back from becoming what God created us to be.
Once again turning to Paul, the Apostle of the heart set free, we find in Galatians a stunning rebuke of those trying to turn a living faith into a religious structure. In Chapter three he says, “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one.
Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” After faith comes we’re free. Holding on to the structure of religion may make following easier but making ourselves a slave to it doesn’t set us free. And Christ came to set us free.
Remember whatever is not of faith is sin and no one can snatch us out of the hand of God but we can sure jump.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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