FOUNDATIONS apparell, saving before their privities," wrote an English traveler during his visit to Cape Verde in the 1560s. "These people are all blacke, and are called Negros, without anyģ 50 ". Two decades later, in 1578, voyager George Best stated: "I myself have seen an Ethiopian as black as coal brought into England, who taking a faire English woman to wife, begat a son in all respects as black as the father was"," Best speculated about the cause of the African's skin color: "It seemeth this blackness proceedeth rather of some natural infection of that man, which was so strong that neither the nature of the Clime, neither the good complexion of the mother concurring, could anything alter."2 What struck the English most about Africans was their color. In 1554, according to trader William Towrson, five "Negroes" were transported to England where they were "kept till they could speak the language," and then they were taken back to Africa as translators for English traders. His father was a demon and his mother was Sycorax, a witch who had lived in Africa 1 Some people in the audience might have seen Africans in England. As they watched The Tempest in London in 1611, theatergoers were told that Caliban was "freckled," dark in complexion. Like Prospero before him, Jefferson saw the westward advance of the frontier as the movement from "savagery" to "civilization." 3 -~~- THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY BUT CALIBAN COULD have been African. Such a view carried dire consequences for the Calibans of America called Indians. This, in fact, is equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress of man from infancy to the present day.52 Here was a Jeffersonian version of John Winthrop's "city upon a hill." The land was not to be allowed to "lie waste without any improvement," the early forefathers had commanded, and now the republican "errand into the wilderness" was requiring the citizens of the new nation to subdue the land and advance their frontier westward. Then succeed Qur own semi-barbarous citizens, the pioneers of the advance of civilization, and so in progress he would meet the gradual shades of improving man until he would reach his, as yet, most improved state in OUf seaport towns. He would next find those on our frontiers in the pastoral state, raising domestic animals to supply the defects of hunting. There he would observe in the earliest stage of association living under no law but that of nature, subsisting and covering themselves with flesh and skins of wild beasts. I I!, I:! i 48 c>'> FOUNDATIONS Let a philosophic observer commence a journey from the savages of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly towards our sea-coast. 1 RONALD TAKAKI A ALSO BY RONALD TAKAKI A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade Violence in the Black Imagination: Essays and Documents Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb A Larger Memory: A History of Our Diversity, with Voices Debating Diversity: Clashing Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II DIFFERENT MIRROR A History of Multicultural America REVISED EDITION BACK BAY BOOKS LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTONĢ L.
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