People of the First Light

February 2, 2013 — American history, Colonists, First Light, imperialist, King Philip

The Wampanoag tribe is known as the People of the First Light because they lived, hunted, fished and made wampum along the outer banks of New England before the Pilgrims landed. The dawn as viewed on this side of the Atlantic assures one that Europe is distant. New dawn in a new world is powerful natural medicine. As goes the story all across the nation, that medicine proved to be easily hackable by flim flam Euros. The First Light, and all the real estate with a fine view of same was desired by colonial imperialists as soon as they found it. Bare naked greed was employed to occupy the territory, form a government, and launch right into a big fat slave trade with big fat profits. Early in the disagreements King Philip, a native with a following, attempted to oust the invaders. This was used by the colonists as an excuse to starve and otherwise decimate the surviving native inhabitants in order to occupy all their real estate.

These same religious zealots who gave us the Salem witch trials used  the Harvard Indian College as a political ploy to gain financial support in England for conversion of whatever was left of the heathen native people.  This institution in Cambridge, like the Indian boarding schools in the western US, was designed to strip the natives of language and culture in order to make them good Christian citizens.  Why colonize a place if you can’t decimate the population and make good fearful Christians of  the survivors?