mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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I did not start studying genealogy with the expectation of spending years involved with my family tree. I did not expect to find much data, and thought I would be finished in a couple of weeks. In my sixth year of tracing my family back in time I could not imagine life without this research. I have now relearned history by tracing my own DNA through it. Believe me it becomes more interesting when you picture your own ancestors in events. The timeline is an important tool in life to assess progress and enlightenment. The same can be said of a much longer timeline, such as human history. I am starting to understand the mass migrations caused by religions that have shaped the political world. My people were motivated to take great risks and leave their known environments to follow religious convictions. They crossed the Atlantic in rickety boats with nothing but beer to drink. They froze and starved in the early American colonies. They adventured way out west to Ohio and beyond after the Revolutionary War. They fought on both sides of every British and American war, which is most revealing.
Ancestry.com is run by humans and therefore human error is part of it. The site has gathered and continues to gather public records to share as well as trees published by members who make them public. Often an unsubstantiated piece of data will be shared and repeated in the public tree arena. Fortunately there are also wizards who find some errors, and advise the owners of bogus trees to double check the data. I have twice needed to erase several generations of mistaken identity when I was given more information by a fellow family member. Bittersweet, erasing..I had become fond of the ancestors who were not really my own. It was a horrible blow to be wrong about them, but this study is about verification and facts, not just being up in your tree.
I have been asked which are my favorite ancestors, to which I generally reply I like them all for surviving so I could be here now. There are a few that I might love more than the others:
They are either well known or unknown, but all important to me and my existence. If you take the two week trial I bet you will find something remarkable in your own family history.
My single Wampanoag ancestor, Quadequina is the only true American in my tribe. My DNA tests out at 96% from the British Isles. My pedigree is what is known in the US as blue blooded. My ancestors almost all left Europe in the early 1600’s to colonize America. They had a religious problem with the locals who were freaking out all over Europe in different religious ways. Suffice it to say the move to Plymouth or Jamestown was done with more than a little religious arrogance. The locals here had a perfectly adequate religious practice, but the Pilgrims and Virginians were bound to convert and enslave them in an exciting new monotheistic way. The God who sailed over with the Pilgrims was that angry, vengeful ,all by himself God who just had no patience or tolerance for the beliefs of others. This God provided for the English on American soil by making sure the king back home had power to scare the beJesus out of any non-believer.
Imagine the dismay of the locals in Massachusetts when they learned that the colonists not only sucked down their erstwhile property and hunting rights, but planned to take more of the same. King Philip , AKA my great uncle, planned and executed a revolution against the colonists, which is when things got ugly quickly and forever. When I visited Mashpee, the land that was given by the English to the tribe, by arrangement with the King in 1655, I thought I would see the graves of the elders who started Thanksgiving. I was mighty upset with my Pilgrim ancestors, even though one of them married into the tribe, the group in general was highly rude and creepy. I saw the graves of the Mayflower passengers, and their church….but not a clue as to the location of Quadequina’s resting place. Bury my heart at Mashpee.
I learned much about the way American history has been reconstructed, but I also got to meet some young Wampanoag people who have great pride and are reviving the language. I became very angry again when I found out the wampum belts that document this history are in England…and the tribe asked them to return the property to Mashpee. Wampum is a shell currency used to create agreements and make purchases. The belt was a form of contract used to define, for instance, real estate deals made with Brits. The state of Rhode Island was purchased with wampum. I have no power to get the wampum artifacts returned, or change the facts of history. I just wear the wampum I got on Cape Cod as a reminder of by beloved American tribe. On behalf of 96% of my blood, I apologize.
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?
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