Before We Were White

November 1620. 

Aboard a freezing ship anchored off Cape Cod, Massachusetts...

A mutual cooperation agreement is signed by a group of men representing 101 passengers who had survived a perilous north Atlantic crossing, hoping to found a colony in the "New World".

This agreement would be important, because some of these passengers were members of a religious sect calling themselves "Saints".

The other two-thirds of the Mayflower passengers were not self-declared "Saints".

These "Saints" - later known to history as "The Pilgrims" - called the people who outnumbered them "Strangers".

Take a deep dive into America's forgotten history with this special length post-pandemic episode.

Between the founding of Jamestown in 1607, and the end of the Anglo-Powhatan Wars in 1644, there were a mere eight years of relative peace between the rightful inhabitants of Tsenacomoco and English colonisers.

Those few years of peace were largely the result of one marriage between two people from utterly different worlds.

The descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe are still here today, like seeds scattered before a whirlwind.

A middle-aged artist named John White climbed out of a rowboat onto a beach near Roanoke in America in 1590, searching for his missing daughter and grandchildren.

 

His paintings from that time and place have survived.

 

But did his family survive as well?

The sea can be pitiless.

In 1477, a small ocean-going craft was found washed ashore in County Galway, Ireland, with the dead bodies of a man and a woman still lashed to it.

Of the innumerable maritime mishaps in history, none would have a greater lasting impact on the course of world events.

Before We Were White main theme, featuring Dave McLoughlin of County Sligo, Ireland on bouzouki.

 

Theme based on the old Irish traditional Molly McAlpine, composed by famed Sligo harpist Thomas Connellan (1640 - 1698).

"Before We Were White" podcast launches Thursday, 1 Oct 2020