Opinion · Community · Philadelphia, PA
A message to my Black American family, before Thanksgiving
Family,
Thanksgiving is coming. Before we set another table, we need to know what we are sitting in.
They taught us a story: long-haired people, a friendly meal, then tragedy that happened to someone else. They did not teach us that the people on this land when the ships came were dark-skinned nations, our people, already home. They did not teach us what those people were called when the first writers still told the truth about status.
They were described as Moorish. That meant sovereign. Colonial English writers spoke of New England's nations as "Indians" and "Moors" in the same breath (MacRitchie, citing 1676 usage; Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans). In the 1596 Ambras inventory of the Habsburg collection, the feather headdress is listed as a "Moorish hat," and in that same inventory Montezuma is designated "a Moorish king." In 1613 the wording was faithfully reproduced. In 1621 "Indian" was substituted for "Moorish" (Zelia Nuttall, 1888). The label change hit both the object and the status language attached to the king. William Penn described them as kings. In 1683 he wrote that their complexion was "Black, but by design, as the Gypsies in England," and that their government was by Kings. Nations. Land. Authority. Not mascots. Not background extras in someone else's holiday play.
It was not one writer's opinion. Rival nations wrote it down, and they did not coordinate. Verrazzano, sailing for France in 1524, compared the people of the Carolina coast to Ethiopians. The Dutch at Manhattan wrote "an orange color, like the Brazilians." Thomas Lechford wrote "swarthy and tawny" in 1642. Daniel Gookin wrote in 1674 that their skins were "not unlike the tawny Moors in Africa." Penn wrote "Black." Franklin in 1751 counted all of America "tawny," outside what he called the White People. Jonathan Carver in 1778 wrote "reddish or copper." Part Four lists every one, with the book, the year, and what each color means today.
Then the word changed. Indian replaced Moorish. It did not upgrade us. It downgraded us on paper, from sovereign and king to ward, savage, and manageable. Same people on the ground. Different title in the ledger. That is how the theft was written. After that came the rest of the funnel: Negro → colored → Black → African American, until the aboriginal people of this land were taught to answer to a name that points somewhere else and to celebrate a story that says the dead and the dispossessed were never us.
That is not opinion. That is the record.
The aboriginal people did not die off. We are not a remnant footnote. We are a people reclassified, given a title that points to two shores when we have only ever been grounded on this one. From our ancestors to theirs before them, and to our children after us. DNA companies will sell you a percentage and a tribe name from across the ocean while your living relatives show up in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, the South, not on the African map. That is why I wrote The Resolution Gap: so you can see why that product cannot do what it claims. And Separating the African from American: so you can walk the entire reclassification trail yourself, from sovereign and Moorish and king, through Indian as the downgrade, into the Black title they left us holding.
His-story is his story. If you only take their word, you will celebrate a tradition built on the destruction of our status while we set the table and invite the world to the cookout. We know how that ends. We have lived it. We welcomed people to this land. They rewrote us, buried the old names, and taught our grandchildren that the landlords were foreigners and the foreigners were us.
The books are open.
The Resolution Gap: why the DNA story fails the test.
Separating the African from American: the paper trail of how they moved us from sovereign people to a misnamed category.
Read them. Share them. Sit with your elders and your children and tell the truth: we were the people of this land. We still are. Not visitors. Not a mistake in the census. Not "Indians" in the ward sense they invented. The landlords. The descendants of the nations they first described as Moorish and as kings.
It is on us whether our children walk this ground as citizens begging a seat or as a free people who know the deed was written in blood and paper long before a holiday menu.
You want to hide something from us, put it in a book.
The book is open. I invite you all to read.
Len
Sources
- https://www.academia.edu/171850604/The_Resolution_Gap_A_Forensic_Audit_of_the_Genetic_Ancestry_Industry_Commercial_Academic_and_Institutional_Reference_Panels_Under_a_Single_Unresolved_Methodology
- https://www.academia.edu/172414965/SEPARATING_THE_AFRICAN_FROM_AMERICAN_A_Deconstruction_of_the_Misnomer_That_Is_African_American
- David MacRitchie, Ancient and Modern Britons (1884)
- Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (University of Illinois Press, 1993)
- Zelia Nuttall, Standard or Head-Dress? An Historical Essay on a Relic of Ancient Mexico (Peabody Museum, 1888)
- Zelia Nuttall, Standard or Head-Dress? (1888), open text: https://archive.org/details/101204093.nlm.nih.gov
- Ferdinand von Hochstetter, Ueber Mexikanische Reliquien aus der Zeit Montezuma's (Vienna, 1884)
- Henry C. Murphy, The Voyage of Verrazzano (1875), with Cogswell's translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5252
- John Smith, A Map of Virginia (Oxford, 1612): https://archive.org/details/mapofvirginiavvi00smit_0
- William Strachey, The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia (Hakluyt Society, 1849): https://archive.org/details/10465826bsb
- Isaack de Rasieres, letter (about 1628), and The Representation of New Netherland (1650), in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 (1909), pp. 105 and 300: https://archive.org/details/narrativesofnewn01jame
- Thomas Lechford, Plaine Dealing (London, 1642; reprint 1867): https://archive.org/details/plaindealingorne00lech
- Adriaen van der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands (1655), trans. Jeremiah Johnson, Collections of the New-York Historical Society, 2nd ser., vol. 1 (1841), pp. 190-191: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_ylw1AQAAMAAJ
- Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (1674), Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 1 (1792): https://archive.org/details/collectionsofmas11mass
- William Penn, Letter to the Free Society of Traders (1683), in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania (1912): https://archive.org/details/narrativesofearl00myer_0
- Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1751): https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0080
- Le Page du Pratz, The History of Louisiana (London, 1774): https://archive.org/details/historyoflouisia00lepa
- James Adair, The History of the American Indians (London, 1775)
- Jonathan Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America (3rd ed., London, 1781): https://archive.org/details/travelsthroughin00carv
- Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), vol. 1: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-dictionary-of-the-engl_johnson-samuel-lld_1755_1 ; vol. 2: https://archive.org/details/b30451541_0002
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