Slavery in the USA

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES — THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE — THE 1619 PROJECT — 2021

Anyone who wants to know how the United States was born, as I did in the 2010s for some publications, comes to John Smith and his first successful colony, Jamestown, in 1607 in what was to become Virginia. The name of the colony was in honor of King James 1st who had granted the colonists a ten-year license running till 1617. The colonists had a tough time, and they managed to survive thanks to their systematic looting of the Indians for food — and women — and the apparent lack of real deadly hostility on the Indian side.

They managed to survive by kidnapping the daughter of the local chief, Pocahontas, the Indian name under which she is known and honored in the US Congress rotunda. Pocahontas was an educated priestess that knew the ritualized procedure to grow and process tobacco which was a sacred plant among Indians. The colonists used Pocahontas in a way that is vastly discussed among historians and Indians. For some, she was a hostage, of course, but also what some Indians today proclaim a seemingly self-appointed (or maybe tribal) diplomat to avoid war with the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants in Jamestown. She was forced — or maybe she decided — to be christened under a Christian name (note the deculturation at work here), though the US mythology (because…