Seattle's School District's Turkey of a Thanksgiving

The Seattle school district's letter to teachers about the "mourning" of Native Americans on Thanksgiving Day [posted all over the blogosphere] should make Charlestonians thankful not to live there. Its writers should be required to read Mayflower, an accurate history of the Pilgrims and their "city on a hill" at Plymouth.

It turns out that the area that the Pilgrims settled had been a large settlement a few years before with productive fields cultivated by Indians, yes. However, when Bradford and his congregation landed there in 1620, the settlement was completely gone and the land was empty--with scattered bones suggesting a holocaust of sorts, not by Pilgrims or other Indians but by, as we know now, epidemic.

Now, one could argue that epidemics that wiped out Indian villages along the coast were brought by Europeans. Probably true. Those would originate with explorers, fishermen, and trappers who frequented the coast beginning shortly after Columbus's discovery of the New World. There is no way that contamination could that have been avoided once the rest of the world knew the land was there, especially when they didn't even realize they were bringing new diseases and germs.

In fact, another recent (if controversial in its conclusions) book called 1491 makes the case that the Americas were heavily populated prior to Columbus's discovery and that the Indians of both North and South America were both genetically and environmentally susceptible to the diseases brought in by newcomers. If so, this was a holocaust waiting to happen.

As it was, the Pilgrims, after their persecution in England, just wanted to be separate, and the empty land near Plymouth Rock fit their purposes. Squanto, they believed, was sent by God to help them. Farther south and a few years earlier, John Smith, far from being racist, wanted to promote alliances with the Indians in Virginia by intermarriage--one epitomized by the marriage of John Rolfe, made wealthy by his discovery of tobacco as a cash crop, and Pocahontas, daughter of the area's most important chieftan.

Yes, later Indians were mistreated, but let's not blame it on William Bradford. His intentions were for the "city on a hill" to enlighten the rest of the world. Some of us would like to believe that legacy still survives.

Lest We Forget--Family Veterans

Lest we forget, especially family members who have served: husbands, fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, who-knows-how many-great-grandfathers--we salute you.

St. Andrew's? What's That?

On All Saints' Day I cannot help but be reminded of a well-known song that I do not associate with the day itself:

Oh, when the saints go marching in
Oh, when the saints go marching in
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in


What better song for a high school football team?

Once upon a time a public high school in Charleston County went by the confusing name of St. Andrew's Parish High School. Now that same area is saddled with a high school with the santized name of West Ashley.

Why this desire to discard local history in a city where so much effort is put into preserving local buildings? Why, even Byrnes Downs (named after a former governor and erroneously identified around town as "Byrnes Down") has become the subject of preservation!

Did it become too burdensome for St. Andrews' graduates to explain that they did not graduate from a Catholic high school? Was the Charleston County School District making sure that non-Episcopalians would not suffer the slings and arrows of Anglicanism that the school's name suggested? Or was CCSD ignorant too?

Probably only a small percentage of the area's residents realize that they live in one of the earliest Church of England parishes of the colonies, or even that the Lowcountry was originally divided into parishes, or even that Anglicanism was the official religion of the colony of South Carolina. It's history, too.

Also, the school's ring, apart from using St. Andrew's cross, featured a carving of a crossed pick and shovel. No, it did not purport to be educating ditch-diggers; the school was built on the site of an old phosphate mine. There were phosphate mines all over the area, in fact.

Oh, yes--THAT's why it's called Ashley PHOSPHATE Road!

"West Ashley"? Small wonder, despite its size, it's a pale shadow of the original in terms of education. Next thing you know, they'll take the "St. Andrew's" out of St. Andrew's Elementary.

I know. They can use the Russian solution--as done to St. Petersburg in Russia--change it to "Andrew's Elementary." Even better, name it after a local school board member. That should be memorable.