1. It's a libertarian myth that Americans lost their freedoms with the growth of the federal government. The American version of federal government seems to reflect a lot of authoritarian--even totalitarian--attitudes and practices that came from the original colonies. Massachussetts WAS a theocracy and a well-armed one at that. But that means a well-armed militia and constabulary with armories and maintained weapons.
2. It would be easy to see where the gentry would want a well-armed constabulary and militia but not a general population with weapons.
3. If you lit out for the frontier, you might take hunting weapons--the ones made in Lancaster County, PA by German craftsmen were considered the best. But if you were in a small group, your firepower would be extremely limited. So the reason people kept weapons on the frontier was more a matter of food than self-defense.
Getting back to the point the gentry would want an unarmed general population and a well-armed constabulary would be to rule and repress. For example (this will blow your mind if you don't know much about American racial subcultures):
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/melungeon.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/patrin.htm
Wayfaring Stranger:
The Black Dutch, German Gypsies, or Chicanere,
and their relation to the Melungeon
By Linda D. Griggs
Introduction
The Melungeons are an olive complected, dark eyed, dark skinned people living in
Appalachia. Their claim of Portuguese descent was largely ignored and they have
been historically dismissed as "tri-racial isolates", part African, Indian and White.
Ironically, for a people accused of miscegenation, they marry only within their
community. Some physical characteristics claimed by those of Melungeon descent
are an Anatolian bump, a donut shaped protuberance on the back of the skull;
shovel teeth, which are curved across the back rather than straight and end in a
ridge at the gum line (also common to American Indians); and Familial
Mediterranean Fever, an inherited rheumatic disease ethnically restricted to
non-Ashkenzi Jews, Armenians, Arabs and Turks. As racial tensions hardened
around the Civil War their status as mulattos deprived them of basic rights such as
property ownership and education. N. Brent Kennedy's The Melungeons: The
Resurrection of a Proud People - An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America [1]
documents the denial and loss of their history and culture.
Investigations into their origins have turned up many significant theories and clues.
One of these theories, that they are part Gypsy, was put forward as early as the
October 1889 issue of American Anthropologist by Swan Burnett, M.D. [2] and as
recently as 1999 by Henry Robert Burke, African American historian.[3] One of the
clues is the large number of Melungeon who explain away their dark skin by
claiming a Black Dutch ancestor.
In her comprehensive and objective article, In Search of the Black Dutch, Myra
Vanderpool Gormley, C.G., relates that, "The so-called 'Black Dutch' have long been
an enigma in American genealogy. Their descendants are widely reported, yet no
authoritative definition exists for this intriguing term.''[4]
Currently speculations on the meaning of Black Dutch range from American Indian
to Sephardic Jew. But rarely does German Gypsy enter the list of possibilities.
Curiously, American German Gypsies living today have always called themselves
Black Dutch, have never heard of it meaning anything but German Gypsy, and are
surprised to hear it could mean anything else.
Origin of Terms
In the 1800's German Gypsies were called Chicanere, the low German or
Pennsylvania Dutch transposition for Zigeuner. This high German word may have
been derived from the expression, "go away, thief" or from Atsinganoi, the name of
a religious group who, like the Gypsies, did not like to be touched by outsiders. It
is interesting to note that although the words "gypped" and "Gypsy" are related
(and obviously hurtful and offensive to law abiding Gypsies) the name Chicanere
has nothing to do with the word chicanery, a word which has it's origins in 14th
century France. But this unfortunate linguistic coincidence coupled with the
oppression and stereotypes that Gypsies have always faced make it impossible for
even present day Gypsies to be open about their ethnicity. The term Black Dutch,
a corruption of Deutch for German, must have come into favor fairly quickly after
their arrival in America as an obfuscating way of explaining dark features. In any
case the term begins to show up in print and I have excerpted those germane to
this article from The Dictionary of American Regional English
black Dutch n. also black Dutchman, esp. common Sth, S Midl. A
dark-complexioned people of uncertain origin: see quotations." 1854
(1932) Bell Log TX-CA Trail 35.224, "Along down the center of my breast
is a brown stripe like the stripe on a black Dutchman's [sic] back." 1930
Shoemaker 1300 Words cPA Mts (as of c1900), "Black Dutch - Dark
Pennsylvania Mountain people, probably of Near Eastern or Aboriginal
stock." 1939 Hall Coll. eTN, wNC, "Black Dutch ... a local type of people
of Germanic(?) extraction. The Foxes are known as 'Black Dutch.'
Pennsylvania is as far back as we can trace them. They are low, not tall,
small and have black features.[5]
Physical Characteristics
The second citation is taken from Henry W. Shoemaker, Chairman of the
Pennsylvania Historical Commission, who wrote and lectured about the Chicanere in
the 1920's and 30's. He remains the best authority and this paper is primarily
based on his writings. In a 1924 address he stated that "At least until the 1850's
the men were of medium size, very slim and erect, with good features and large
dark eyes. They wore their hair long; very little hair grew on their faces, but they
tied to cultivate small side-burns."[6] In a March 31, 1930 Altoona Tribune article
he described diverse Shekener girls and women ... of astounding loveliness and
their kinship to the so-called Pennsylvania German people, where strange, dark
types predominate, was apparent. In fact the Pennsylvania German is but a more
cosmopolitan scion of the She-kener ... and all spring from the same Central and
near Eastern polyglot that swarmed into Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth century of
diverse origins.[7] The Chicenere "ranks decimated whenever a chance to settle
down came in view; by these judicious marriages their blood is in the veins of
almost every "Pennsylvania Dutchman. And the Pennsylvania Dutch boys and girls
with their glorious dark eyes, wax-like complexions, wavy dark hair and features of
Araby, show the undying presence of forgotten Romany (Gypsy) forbears."[8]
Shoemakers describes their intermarriage as "giving an added dark strain to the
already swarthy Pennsylvania German type, fused as it has been from South
German, Huguenot, Esopus Spaniard, Hebrew, Swiss, Waldensian, Greek and
Indian, the type of the true Pennsylvanian, Tauranian ..."[9]
Reasons for Immigration
There have been Gypsies in America since 1640 when entire families of English
Gypsies called Romanichals were, for the crime of being Gypsy, enslaved or
"indentured for life" alongside Africans on the Virginia plantations. German Gypsies
arrived under similar duress. German Gypsies, who had "inhabited the Palatinate or
Rhine County, for many centuries, wandering the entire distance between
Schaffhausen and Middelburg on their migrations" [10] arrived in the late 1720's with
the Huguenots, Swiss Moravians, Alsatians, Jews and Waldensians searching for
freedom from oppression and an escape from the poverty and chaos caused by the
Thirty Years War (1618-48).* But Gypsies had been given additional reason to
emigrate. Since 1577 anti-Gypsy legislation had forbidden them to do business or
settle. By 1710 flogging, branding, separation from kin and exile became the
standard punishment for Gypsy men and women with no criminal charges against
them. The punishment for returning was execution. Those deemed fit for work
faced "life confinement with forced labor."[11] In 1734 Gypsy hunts became an
established and profitable sport, with a reward of "six Reichstaler for every live
Gypsy brought in and three for a dead Gypsy, as well as keeping their belongings."
In 1826, Freiherr von Lenchen displayed his trophies publicly: the severed heads of
a Gypsy woman and her child. In 1835, a Rheinish aristocrat entered into his list of
kills, "A Gypsy woman and her suckling babe."[12]
Henry W. Shoemaker in a 1924 address related that although the Gypsies were
Proscribed, hated and despised, there were strict regulations against
these Nomads being embarked in a body as if, though they were not
wanted at home, they were not allowed to go elsewhere! On a number of
occasions Gypsy bands endeavored to charter whole ships at Rotterdam,
but as they were watched with the same argus-eyed authority as are
bootleggers today, their efforts were always at the last minute frustrated.
It is related that one ship, the 'Stein-Awdler,' giving it the Pennsylvania
Dutch pronunciation, got away under cover of darkness, but during an
unfavorable tide, it still lay in the harbor at daybreak, when the papers
were scrutinized and declared invalid by the port authorities. Several
boat-loads of port wardens went in pursuit, but the boats were not to
carry the unfortunate Chi-kener back to dry land, but order them off the
ship -- they were driven overboard, men, women and children, like a
plague of rats, and had to jump out in the mud up to their waists, and
get ashore as best they could, leaving their possessions behind, which
were seized as a fine levied against them as a body. On shore the
mud-saturated refugees were attacked by a mob armed with boat-hooks
and soundly beaten, and probably quite a few died of their wounds and
exposure afterwards.[13]
Method of Immigration - Ports Entry
Forbidden to come to America as a free people, Gypsy individuals "'sold'
themselves to redemptioners for the price of their fare to America. This species of
servitude, and the selling of emigrants for their passage had not a few of the
features about it, of involuntary chattel slavery, and it was characterized at the time
as the 'German slave trade'," according to Ian Hancock's, The Pariah Syndrome: An
Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution.[14]
article abridged, see url above for full article
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