Settlers and the Great Unsettling

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 8:37 AM

A friend of mine posted a Facebook comment to a ¹Washington Post article that I had posted a link to, entitled

"Mississippi’s first black senator was greeted with applause. But it wouldn’t last.” — By Steve Hendrix

My friend shared her continuing reading of WOMENFOLKS, a book by Shirley Abbott (published in 1983).

She described it as “beautifully written” … “It looks at the strata of settlers who got off the boats in the

South of the 18th/19th centuries, trudged into the mountains and eked out a survival. No mint juleps, no fine

holmes (many lived in 3 sided lean-tos, no cotton, no slaves, no fine foods.” … “No rose tinted glasses in

this historial perspective including the myths around The Great Cause, relationships with slaves and Native

Americans.

While I respect her point of view, lost in her exculpatory unburdening of these exampled settlers from any

direct collective guilt for Native American genocide, African American slavery, and the Confederacy is the

unsanitized history. Their heroic sedulity at survival does not pardon them of participating in that history—

whether indirectly or not. The remnants of which infect our current lives today. Their uninvited presence in

this land, irrevocably changed the lives of Native American–First American peoples; caused African slavery

and the accompaning cotton fields; ushered in the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow backlash.

Settlers and the great unsettling of life here after their entry are inseparable. Yes, pioneering life was hard:

eking out a tenuous existence surviving nature and competing Old World Powers; surviving Native Peoples’

legitimate defense of their land and lives; surviving an economic system of servitude or outright bondage.

The reflections and inheritance of which affect our disparate relations today. The broader fortune of the

human condition, attributing sameness to our origin and life essence, obliterated by prejudicial superiority

and self-interest.

If not for history, we could blame coincidence. But coincidence is a random variable; history is direct cause

and effect.

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— Carl