October. The month when
Americans observe Columbus Day. Or Indigenous
Peoples' Day. Or both. Or neither.s There's plenty of controversy over Columbus' legacy and what we should be observing on the second Monday of October—controversy that is not easily contained in either
our national mythology or general history courses about European mass
immigration to the North American continent which was already peopled by
somewhere between 8 million and 115 million.
This month there are two books on the docket: Mayflower which I’ve finished
and The Barbarous Years which I am still in the middle of.
Mayflower: A Story of
Courage, Community, and War (2006) by Nathaniel Philbrick
Philbrick tackles the truth behind about
the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony with its challenging first winter for which the settler were utterly unprepared. After
initial attempts between indigenous Wampanoag people and the English to co-exist
peacefully, relations collapse, culminating in King Philip’s War (1675–1678) which
nearly wiped out both English colonists and Native Americans. Plymouth Colony lost close to 8% of its adult
male population (and a smaller percentage of women and children) and many towns were burnt down and destroyed - while the
Native American population of southern New England was reduced by somewhere
between 60% to 80%. Philbrick’s final
chapter section, "Conscience," attempts to examine the conflict from
an ethical perspective and grapple with its legacy for United States history.
The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America—The Conflict
of Civilizations, 1600-1675 (2013) by Bernard Bailyn
I am still in the middle of The
Barbarous Years, and to be honest it is a difficult read. Bailyn could benefit from a good editor. As one reader commented: the auhor definitely does not hold back on naming thousands of settlers across the colonies; it is difficult to slog through all of that. The book does seem a littler scattershot in its organization and subject matter.
The Barbarous Years is not an easy read. But I’m learning a lot, and the more-than-occasional
awkward sentence structure and tendency to be over-detailed has been worth
putting up with so far. Examining Virginia, the Chesapeake area, New York, and
New England, Bailyn makes no effort to sugarcoat the Europeans’ experience in America
in the 17th century and their relationships with Native Americans. About halfway through, it has been a less-than-flattering picture of the early leaders and settlers.
