Jamestown was starving and would have perished completely if not for the help of the local Native people, who brought them dinner, friendship, and the first home cooked meal many had had in a while.
This dinner, now know as the first Thanksgiving was the beginning of a long stained relationship between the two peoples.
Although, they had offered much aid in that first winter, the natives lived by the motto that to give a man corn could feed him for a day, but teach him to grow corn and he can rely on his own resources. However, after starving and having many of their people drop like flies, Jamestown was not exactly in the mood for instruction.
Understanding that to continue to offer so much aid to the settlers would negatively affect their own propensity for survival, the natives had no choice but to turn the settlers away. And the settlers had no choice but to steal in order to insure their own survival. This lead to a mistrust between the to cultures, which only escalated as more settlers came to American shores.
At the same time, African people also traveled to the New World. Although, some came over with European settlers as free men, while others came over in chains, within a few decades new American laws forced both free and chained into slavery.
In the Caribbean, most slave plantations kept families together, thereby maintaining much culture, language, and traditions of the people. And by doing so allowed for an under-current of strength, which later united the people to not only overthrow slavery, but to chase the colonizers off island.
The US plantations, learning from the mistakes of their brethren to the south, kept families apart and mixed African ethnic groups to create a wholly new culture. Strangely enough, this was not the strategy adopted in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Rather, in these islands, families where kept together- keeping traditions and evolving — not to unlike the Caribbean islands. These people referred to themselves as Gullah or Geechie. And in their evolution, also like the Caribbean, they mixed with the local native (Cherokee) population.
Not long after emancipation, many of the Gullah/Cherokee people crossed over to the main land in search of new opportunities and a fresh start. Mary’s family migrated to Savanna, we she was able to meet and fall in love with Emigrant. Soon they started a family with 5 girls and one son, who they named George. While George was still a young boy, his parents found the Georgia was becoming increasingly more inhospitable to African and Native people. So they decided to migrate to New York city. This migration allowed George to grow strong and smart.
In college he discovered a young woman named Diana. Although, it was her beauty that attracted him, it was the similarities in her Trini culture to his on Gullah culture that felt familiar and comfortable and helped to maintain his interest. And when she taught him about Calypso and fête-ing he was hooked. Soon all this jump-up lead — as it usually does — to the side effect of conception and on a lovely day in June I was born.
Many people object to the celebration of Thanksgiving as it marks the change of destiny and massive genocide for the Native populations of America. However, it is such a tumultuous history that made it possible for African and Native populations to mix, thereby creating my bloodline and my life.
So on this day, I give thanks to those ancestors.
And thus ends part two of holidays I can directly relate to my birth. Enjoy your weekend!
