Ancestry

I've noted before that my family has deep roots on the west coast, and in the pacific northwest in particular.  On my mom's side, one set of my grandmother's grandparents came out to Oregon on the Oregon Trail.  Her grandfather, who was a toddler at the time, lost both his parents on the journey to Oregon and was lucky to have about 8 siblings who banded together to keep the family together and housed and fed.  In fact, at my grandma's house, she has a chair that came across the country on the covered wagon.  Its legs are sawed off to prevent tipping as the wagon jerked along.  Amazing.  On my dad's side, we have an ancestor named Patrick Gass who was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  He kept a journal which I haven't read, but which my dad has a copy of. 

One of my mom's brothers, my uncle Terry, has become our resident geneologist.  He's found that we're part of the line descended from William Bradford, who was a governor of the Plymouth colony, and recently sent out a fascinating email.  In it, he said that he's been doing a lot of research on a geneology website and discovered that one of our ancestors was Native American.  Her name, ultimately, although I doubt this was her original name, was Anne Philip.  She went on to have a son named John Stanton, presumably with a white man.  Her parents were the Pokanoket chief, Metacom, and his wife, Wootonckusake Metacomet.  During the time of Anne Philip's childhood, relations between the colonists and the Native Americans were reported to be good, but by the time her grandson, Samuel Stanton, was born, things had soured into all-out war.  Samuel Stanton seems to have fought on the side of the colonists.  The war, known as "Metacom's Revolt," ultimately ended up in massacres on both sides and the colonists ultimately decimating the Pokanoket tribe.

As it happens, I just started reading A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.  I certainly should have read it before now, but now I am reading it and it's fascinating.  In the first chapter, on relations between Native Americans and colonists, Zinn mentions the outrageous amount of bloodshed provoked by the colonists, and one of the battles he mentions is Metacom's Revolt.  In the first place, it's crazy to think that my family is related in a very distant way to both sides of this war.   Secondly, it makes me wonder how it all went down, back in the day.  Did Anne Philip fall in love with a white man?  Did they have a relationship or marry?  It seems like she may have, since she has an English-sounding last name.  Or was it a less pleasant encounter?  Did she keep contact with her son and grandson, who clearly allied themselves with the colonists?   Did she have other children?   I wish I could go back in time and see how it all played out.

I can't do that, though, so I guess this is about as far as I can go with this.  I've always felt a certain amount of white guilt, for all the things Europeans inflicted on Native Americans and African Americans and pretty much any other people of color they came across.  This is the first time I've ever known about a connection with a Native American in my family, and the fact that the situation was so complicated makes me unsure how to feel about it all.  I just wanted to write down my thoughts before they float out of my head.  And, I'm really grateful to my uncle for doing all that research.  I've always been fascinated by people and their stories, and learning more about the story of my own family is powerful for me.