1602 makes a major character out of Virginia Dare, the legendary first white person born in North America. This puts 1602 into the same kind of Pocohontas-related territory as SM Stirling's alternative history novel, Conquistador, although I confess to not remembering all the details of that while writing this now! (However, see Three Timelines.) I did read Conquistador twice and discussed it on this blog both times on the principle that Stirling is a worthy colleague and successor of Poul Anderson who also wrote alternative histories, e.g., A Midsummer Tempest. Some later writers focused more specifically on this sub-genre.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Not quite! Plenty of white Spaniards were being born in New Castile/Mexico long before Virginia Dare's birth. And New Castile is part of North America. But the Spanish made no particular note of who was born first.
Ad astra! Sean
OK.
There was a lot more of both formal intermarriage and concubinage with Indian women in New Spain than in Virginia. For a number of reasons, starting with but not limited to the greater percentage of English female emigrants.
The Spanish had a different approach -- not necessarily more pro-Indian, but more class-bound. Nobles were nobles, regardless of where they were born, to their way of thinking.
And Spanish men took more care for illegitimate offpsring than Englishmen did.
Yet again, pro-Sassenach PR obscures the reality that the Norse in Greenland had children... ;)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Dave!
Mr. Stirling: I did have that in the back of my mind, how the Spanish were more willing to marry Indian women or have Indian concubines. And I remembered how the conquerors of Mexico and Peru, Cortes and Pizarro, had illegitimate children who were taken care of by Cortes or Pizarro's family after his assassination.
I also recall reading of how descendants of how descendants of the Aztec and Inca royal families became members of the Spanish aristocracy.
Dave: But the Norse colony in Greenland died out some time after 1300 and was almost forgotten.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the first couple of attempts at English colonies in the Americas died out, too -- Roanoke is the most famous example, but not the only one.
And Jamestown -nearly- failed. 90% of the English who landed there were dead within a year. They decided to give up at one point, and only changed their minds when reinforcements and supplies arrived.
It wasn't until after 1700 that the English colonial population in the Chesapeake really became self-sustaining -- that is, until the birth rate consistently exceeded the death rate.
The main differences between the failed Norse and successful English 'plantations' in North America are that the British picked better places, which were accessible due to better sailing technology and knowledge of the deep-ocean wind and current patterns, -and- because they had a much bigger population of people willing to accept a high-risk gamble via migration.
After all, 10% of each generation moved to London in the 17th century... and London had 4 or more burials for every baptism. You took your life in your hands if you went to London, but there were opportunities you couldn't get back in your home village.
The Caribbean was even worse, of course.
It's notable how the death rate fell with successive colonial implantations in the English colonies -- IIRC, Pennsylvania was the first where there wasn't a 'dying time'. Even with the Pilgrims in 1620, nearly half the settlers died in the first two years or so.
Sean - Sure, but the "interesting" people who played up the "Virginia Dare was the first white child" into a thing in the early 20th Century in North Carolina had a goal in mind. Nobody tried to turn "Snorri Thorfinnsson" into a political - or marketing - statement. ;)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Dave!
Mr. Stirling: I think Jamestown nearly failed at least twice--the second time due to the English settlers nearly losing a war with the Indians. If that had happened, the English might again have lost interest in America. Esp. as Great Britain was moving towards the crisis between the Crown and Parliament, the Civil War, the dictatorship of Cromwell, the Restoration, etc. It might not have been till the later 1660's that any attempts at founding colonies would be made. There would be incalculable consequences from that scenario!
Dave: I don't really care bout the politics about Virginia Dare being allegedly the first white child being born in N. America, only its accuracy or not.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, it's not, obviously. If "white" in this case is a reference to a child of "European/Caucasian/etc." parents, then no, plenty of children were born to Norse parents in Greenland and Vinland, Spanish/Portuguese/Iberian/etc. parents in the Caribbean, Caribbean littoral, and various other odds and ends in points west, north, and south from there before the English landed in what is now North Carolina...
And the politics is key to the popular culture.
Kaor, Dave!
The Little Ice Age probably would have doomed the Greenland colony, due to being cut off from Iceland and the rest of Europe.
I have wondered what might have happened if the Norse had founded a permanent colony in Vinland.
Ad astra! Sean
I too have speculated, what if the Norse had been less beligerant toward the 'Skraelings' and had initiated a trading relationship with them.
I would expect a mixed Norse-native culture to spread up the St. Lawrence & south along the N. American coast. Norse iron-working & crops adapted to the cool climate of Vinland would give that culture an advantage over other culture groups in the area. Since the Greenland Norse had already started converting to Christianity, this Norse-native culture probaby would also.
The more difficult communication with Europe would slow the introduction of Eurasian diseases to the Americas, so the Amerindians would get an epidemic every few decades rather than getting all of those diseases at once. So the Amerindian populations would get time to recover inbetween. Overall a much better result for the Amerindians than the history we know.
Kaor, Jim!
I partly agree, if the Norse had founded a permanent colony in Vinland, there might soon have arisen hybrid European/Indian kingdoms and confederacies. The level of technology then existing in Europe would not have been so high that some of the Indian tribes and sachems could not adapt and catch up.
I am more skeptical of the Indians escaping the virgin field plagues which so devastated them after 1492. So many thousands of years of isolation from the rest of the human race made them esp. susceptible to diseases like measles, smallpox, mumps, etc. Even the common cold would have been as bad as these!
So we might not have seen something anything like what I speculated about in my first paragraph.
Ad astra! Sean
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