I just realized that this year is the 400th anniversary of my European ancestors
coming to America, the very first -- that I know of -- a French
Huguenot, born in Lorraine, arrived on these shores in 1624. I've written about him
before, but I didn't connect this year with his escape to the promised
land four centuries ago. Others came in ensuing years, Quakers,
Dunkards, a British army deserter, a Dutchman, Swiss, Normans, Norwegians...all fleeing intolerable situations
that made them cast their fate with America as it was then, a wild,
unknown land full of danger and terror.
They did not steal the land,
they fought for it, even if they did not want to fight. The Quakers and
Dunkards were pacifists. Were it not for the wars of the French and
British for control of the continent, they would have gotten along well
with the Indians they encountered. The Dunkards bought land from the
Indians, converted them to Christianity and tried to stay out of the way
of the marching armies. They didn't fight even when the British
authorities showed up at their farms and told them they were trespassing
on Crown land and had to get off, pay the king for "his" land or else.
The "or else" being attack by Indian mercenaries in the pay of the British, Senecas in New York, Shawnees in Pennsylvania. The British paid the Indians $8 a scalp, man, woman or child, of those who resisted paying. So they paid. When the Revolution began, the British sent their Indian allies down on them anyway. Rape, looting and slaughter ensued. They called it the Year of the Bloody Sevens, 1777.
In ensuing years, my direct ancestors made it west, to the Rocky Mountains, where one married into the Northern Cheyenne tribe and lived as a trapper and Indian trader working out of Fort Bent in Colorado. Others followed the Appalachians down to the south and west, ending up in Texas. Still others Montana and California. But most, I've learned, stayed in the East, Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and western Maryland, Ohio.
And what did they do? The were farmers, printers, blacksmiths, gunsmiths and wainwrights in the East, traders, Indian fighters, scouts, ranchers and cavalrymen in the West, engineers, gold miners, loggers, railroad and land speculators, surveyors and orchardmen in California. In the 20th century they have been oilmen, real estate developers, university professors, airline pilots, policemen, naval and air force officers, engineers and ranchers.
What will my children be? My grandchildren and great grandchildren? I don't know. Will my line have another 400 years in these United States? I don't know. I do wonder. But I expect that some of my line will be somewhere in North America for many centuries to come. And some, perhaps many, will, just as our long ago European ancestors left their homelands of centuries, leave to cast their fate with a new land somewhere beyond the horizon.
But I hope some will always be here. This land is their land, this country exists because they created it. It wasn't here until they made it. The first truly new country in the world. They all can't just abandon it. They can't.
