In reply to p_bubel You're the winner so fsr

What the heck did someone say on here to earn a ban?!?

In reply to McInnis

McInnis said:

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The lower Mississippi ran out of its banks and killed over 500 people. Flood waters over 30 ft in depth were measured and millions of people were displaced. It was a major factor in the flight of many black farmers to the cities. Herbert Hoover who was mentioned earlier in this thread for his relief effort in the early days of the Soviet Union was Sect.of Commerce at the time and also led the flood relief effort.

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Led Zeppelin's "When the levee breaks" is the reworking of a 1929 song about this flood by African-American performer Memphis Minnie.

I don't think it is mind blowing to say Hungarian Goulash contains LOTS of paprika, but the history of how that came to be does have some surprises.

https://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Goulash/

Edit to add that as a kid, I referred to any plate of mixed unknowns as "goosh" -
think I know where that came from now.

In reply to p_bubel Hugh Grant was in a movie about his life/story in 1989.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_Charlie_(miniseries)

In reply to nortex97

nortex97 said:

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Hugh Grant was in a movie about his life/story in 1989.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_Charlie_(miniseries)

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Heh. That's cool

In reply to CanyonAg77

CanyonAg77 said:

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I have little doubt that blacks owned slaves. But when I see those numbers, I always wonder how many of those are really family members.

If you are a free black, would buying your wife or children be a way to get them out of slavery, while keeping them in a safe status?

For instance, if a free black bought his children, would it be safer, legally, to hold them as slaves, or could you free them? Would a free black child be safe to live in the South, or would they be protected better by being "a slave"?

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I recall that if an indentured black man met the time requirement of his contract, he was considered free. However, the children of his wife weren't. If he became a slave owner, he could manumit (free) his slaves.

In reply to Cen-Tex

Cen-Tex said:

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CanyonAg77 said:

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I have little doubt that blacks owned slaves. But when I see those numbers, I always wonder how many of those are really family members.

If you are a free black, would buying your wife or children be a way to get them out of slavery, while keeping them in a safe status?

For instance, if a free black bought his children, would it be safer, legally, to hold them as slaves, or could you free them? Would a free black child be safe to live in the South, or would they be protected better by being "a slave"?

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I recall that if an indentured black man met the time requirement of his contract, he was considered free. However, the children of his wife weren't. If he became a slave owner, he could manumit (free) his slaves.

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That actually depends when and where you're talking about. In SC and MS, along with many other slave states, manumission after 1820 or so required an act of the legislature.

In reply to CanyonAg77

CanyonAg77 said:

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DatTallArchitect said:

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CT'97 said:

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In 1490, prior to Columbus coming to the America's, the third largest city in the world was near modern day Saint Louis and stretched over 6 square miles. The population would have fluctuated but would have dwarfed Paris at the time which was only about 150,000 people.

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Do you have an article you can share on this?

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I don't recall if that city was covered in the book below, but if you want to see what America was like before European diseases arrived....

https://a.co/d/2uOhLSD

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A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:

• In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
• Certain cities - such as Tenochtitln, the Aztec capital - were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitln, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
• The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
• Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering".
• Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it - a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
• Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings.

Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.

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This post amazed me and made me think that I want to find this book. Well after reading this, the very next time I went to the public library I saw it sticking out on a shelf staring at me, so I checked it out. I'm only in Chapter 2, but this is a fascinating book.

I knew that native Indian populations were pretty well devasted by diseases that Europeans brought, but not to the extent. That even started before the Pilgrims established their settlement at Plymouth. A few years before the Pilgrims, some Massachusetts Indians captured sailors from a French fishing boat and held them in captivity, They contracted a viral form of hepatitis that spread along the New England coast with a fatality rate of over 90%. The coast had been heavily (for that time) populated by fishing villages which had been abandoned by 1620.

And another interesting fact. The Indian named Tisquantum (called Squanto by the English) that helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter had spent several years in England prior to the Pilgrims arrival. He had been captured by a captain in John Smith's (of Pocahantas fame) expedition and taken to England where he was kept as a curiosity by a rich man before finding his way back to North America. When he returned to New England he was amazed by the depopulation that had occurred. The Pilgrims were incredibly lucky to have his help getting through that first winter. They arrived just before winter set in with no livestock, too late to plant, and ignorant of the ways of fishing there. The first food they found was what they stole from an Indian burial site. The old legend is that the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to fertilize corn with dead fish, but there's evidence that Tisquantum may have learned that trick while living in Europe.

Would anyone be interested in a separate thread about life in Americas pre-Columbus?

In reply to McInnis Tisquantum is a fascinating character along with Opechancanough, the Powhatan werowance following Powhatan himself who led the 1622 attack on Jamestown and may likely have been taken to Spain as a child and baptized as Don Luis.

In reply to Jabin

Jabin said:

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Would anyone be interested in a separate thread about life in Americas pre-Columbus?

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Yes.

I've seen estimates from anthropologists and archaeologists that the pre-European population of North America may have been 150 million or even more. Many folks though simply refuse to believe that.

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Then I'm going to start such a new thread. Unless someone else wants to get it going sooner I'm going to get further into the book first so I'll have a bit more to contribute.

In reply to Green2Maroon

Green2Maroon said:

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The 150 million estimate seems like a pretty high number. We have something like 450 million people on this continent today.

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And?

In reply to Green2Maroon We will never know the population for certain, but I am not sure that technology is that big of a limiting factor in keeping the population low. Ancient bronze age cities had huge populations. We have just gotten so used to the advantages of technology that we assume would be impossible to maintain large populations without it.

In reply to Sapper Redux Well, I may have been wrong on the 150 million number, as Canyon points out it looks like the high estimates are ~110 million.

In reply to CanyonAg77

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I think the book 1491 argues for around 100 million, while other estimates seem to be anywhere from 10 to 110 million.

Some estimates put it around 60-70 million, which is certainly possible.

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I read the book years ago and can't remember the exact details regarding the population estimates. However, the main point I came away with was that the native populations that Europeans encountered as they moved in and colonialized, had as rule of thumb, largely been depopulated by disease in the century's prior to colonial expansion.

Had Louis & Clark started their expedition in 1504 instead of 1804, they would have encountered a shockingly more amount of people.

I can't remember if it was in the in the 1491 book or where I read it, but one argument of specifically North America's depopulation is the linguistic and genetic evidence suggesting there had been a decent amount of movement around North America by native tribes in the couple centuries prior to European expansion. The claim being this movement is evidence of native populations traditional (pre-contact) political boundaries having been whipped away by disease and who and where people were in 1750 - 1850 was not a indication of what was happening pre-contact.

In reply to CanyonAg77 Similiar to your Red River battles, there was a show on The Little Bighorn (I believe History Detectives) where they used spent cartridges to track individual troopers and Indians movements. Pretty neat stuff.

In reply to CanyonAg77 Rush was also a pioneer in psychiatric medicine. Being a strong republican, he created a diagnosis called "revolutiania" or "Tory Rot" which he identified as a type of hypochondria. I've included a link to a textbook he wrote on psychiatric diagnoses and treatments for anyone interested. Revolutiania is not in this particular book.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Rush_Diseases_of_the_Mind_1812_edition.pdf

In reply to Sapper Redux The Treaty of Windsor (1386) between England and Portugal
is the longest running alliance in the world.
It started after the Portuguese won a few very nasty battles from the Castilians with English help despite the French helping the Castilians.
Start at the 4:30 mark to skip the intro & commercial.

In reply to Rongagin71

Rongagin71 said:

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Did someone say mental?

https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

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I'd say wanting us to log into tumblr is mental

In reply to CanyonAg77 After seeing how badly it worked, I changed it out to Treaty of Windsor.