Did my ancestor need to apologize to the Indians?
Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by kchristieh in history, religion
If my kids were to construct a physical family tree to reflect what we know of their ancestors, it would be incredibly lopsided. My husband can barely trace his ancestors back to his great grandparents, whereas I can trace at least one branch of my family tree back to the late 1500’s. One of my more famous ancestors was Everardus Bogardus, who was the second minister of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, which we now know as New York.
So it was with great interest that I read that Rev. Robert Chase from Collegiate Church, which is the current incarnation of the Reformed Dutch Church, recently apologized to descendants of the Lenape Indians for the church’s role in their massacre and displacement. (see the AP photo to the right)
“We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land,” the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. “With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events.”
As a center of the new colony, it’s not surprising that the church would have played a role in persecuting the Indians. Still, it was disappointing to envision an ancestor of mine playing such a big role in it. Fortunately, I found an article about Everardus Bogardus that says that he actually was kind to the Indians.
Before arriving in New Amsterdam in 1633, The Dutch minister had served as a ‘ziekentrooster’ (comforter of the sick) on the Guinea coast. While there, he developed a concern for the spiritual condition of Africans that carried over into his dealings with New Amsterdam’s West Africans. In 1636, Bogardus pleaded for a schoolmaster to be sent from Holland. As New Amsterdam’s minister, he routinely married African men and women and baptized their children, and made a great effort to welcome Africans into New Amsterdam’s Reformed Protestant Church.
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Everardus Bogardus was a controversial figure in more than one way. He was at odds with one of the settlement’s first leaders, Willem Kieft. Bogardus denounced Kieft from his pulpit due to Kieft’s decisions to initiate wars with the local Indians.
I wish I could meet my ancestors. It’d be amazing to see firsthand what their lives were like and why they made the decisions they did.
I found a website dedicated to tracing descendancy to Everardus Bogardus and his wife Anneke. It says there are probably a million people who can claim them as ancestors. I wonder if this is true. If so, it shows that many of us are more related than we ever imagined. The website also puts to rest rumors that Anneke was descended from King William the Silent in Holland. I always wondered how I could descend from someone who was silent. Instead, it turns out she was born in Norway. That adds yet another country to my list of Northern European countries I descend from, so that’s cool.
And why doesn’t it surprise me that you descended from someone who was known in history as being kind? It doesn’t surprise me at all!
But it is an interesting question to consider, whether we need to apologize for the actions of our ancestors that occured hundreds of years ago. The part of me that would say yes, would be purely in the interest of pursuing peace with all humanity, and acknowledging that we recognize slavery or racial genocide as being wrong. I think when we do that, we also back it up by moving through our own lives with actions that communicate our new understanding of respect and equality for all.
But the flip side is as you discovered, that there are times our ancestors may have actually been going against the tide of the culture and didn’t participate, thus having nothing to confess.
I know that in my family, we can trace back to the Jamestown Colony, and he became a captain in the Revolutionary War, in the battle of Yorktown when Cornwalis surrendered to Washington. But some of his descendents lived in the South and had slaves. Do I need to apologize for that? I am not sure. Even though I disagree with it and would never own a slave.I do lead my life in such a way as to be just in race relations. Is that not an apology in itself?
Gee, what should I do?
Half of my gene pool belongs to some barbarians who brutally raped my grand-grand-grand-grand European mother. This is a troubling issue for me, because the half of me yearns to apologize to my other half, but I am not sure which half is which.
I am in trouble.
Furthermore, and please don’t share this secret with anyone, given a choice I’d rather be an aggressor than a victim. Shame on me. I learned this lesson on the National Geographic Channel. It is a serious moral dilemma for me.
Good thing, 99% of mankind is in the same predicament. If they only look hard into their history, people will find someone to whom they need to apologize, or convesely, someone who victimized their ancestors and needs to appologize to them.
I think that every human being should just apologize to the world for something, and things will take care of themselves. Let’s get it over with. What a peachy way to make one feel morally superior and move on with life (or get a life).