Arming America

Charles Jannuzi b_rieux at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 26 00:11:35 PDT 2002


A lot of the basic arguments for a weapons-saturated US coming post-Civil War make sense. A few things I can think of in just a few moments of thinking about the issue (I was a history major but am not a practicing historian):

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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