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Independence Day again —
time to look back and reflect on the origins of this Country
— time to gaze back through the mists of time, where somewhere
we may yet watch as our Puritan forefathers purchase the land
for a few beads. Or, pushing the clock ahead a bit, we could
observe Benjamin Franklin a few years before the Revolution,
when he was publishing his famed Almanack and was universally
revered and honored by his fellow townfolk. We could even leap
further ahead yet, to watch as the Founding Fathers create our
Constitution, using the democratic tenets of Ancient Greece as
its model.
Well, we could look back on
all that — but we can't. None of what I just mentioned happened
that way. As far as the beads go, you may already know that,
first off, it was only Manhattan Island that was the objective
of that legendary Real Estate deal. Secondly, the purchase was
not made by Puritans or any other English types — it was
the Dutch who had laid claim to the area now known as New York,
and specifically it was acting Governor Peter Minuit who supposedly
purchased Manhattan for twenty four dollars in glass beads. As
it turns out, though, there were probably no beads involved in
the transaction, either — at least not the glass sort that
legend and certain nineteenth century New York historians with
a bit too much imagination would have it! It was, however, customary
to trade Wampum — shell beads used as currency by Native
and European alike — to seal deals such as this.
As far as Ben Franklin, he
typically stirred up too much trouble to be revered in those
days. The final straw however came in the 1760's, when, on learning
of a retaliatory massacre on some innocent Native Americans by
some misguided Scotch immigrants, Franklin fired off the angriest
column he'd ever produced. He was summarily drummed out of local
politics and shipped off to England. And this is on the eve of
the Revolution!
Finally, the Constitution was
not based on anything remotely European, but was closely modeled
on the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy — a political
covenant that had been created between 1400 and 1500 AD!
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