Thursday, November 22, 2012

Adventurers


You have to hand it to the Pilgrims for their ability to admit mistakes:
It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom.
But it's also worth remembering that the first successful English settlement in the Americas, in Jamestown, really was founded by capitalists:
Late in 1606, English entrepreneurs set sail with a charter from the Virginia Company of London to establish a colony in the New World.
Success did not come right away to the Jamestown settlement, either. Famine struck within a few years and, "Only 61 of the 500 colonists survived the period".

Of course, I understand why we focus on the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving, since we trace the holiday back to them.

But I'm not sure why they are so often treated as if they were the first settlers.

It's kind of a mystery,
at least to me.

Sometimes I wonder if there could be
Northern bias in our history?

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