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We
hear and read these days about illegal immigration. I
began thinking about the whole subject and decided to take a very
long view. As a political entity our nation is just over two
hundred years old. In 2007 we will celebrate the 400th
anniversary of the establishment of the first English colony on
our shores at Jamestown in Virginia. Some of us know the names of
a few of our ancestors and are aware of a few generations of our
families. What we seldom consider is the fact that we are all
descended from a line of folk extending backward into the dawn of
time and the beginnings of the human race. We are all
connected at some distant point in the past.
I am aware that I am descended from both native American tribes
and Celtic tribes in the British Isles so it is logical for me to
assume that some of my ancestors were in "America"
before the end of the last ice age. As early as 20,000 years
ago my American ancestors were cooking mastodon steaks over an
open fire in places like Wyoming and Colorado. Their
descendants stood on the shores of Virginia and watched the
ancestors of the European "white eyes" come ashore
carrying "boom sticks" that roared and brought down the
deer and elk from a long way off. With time my people changed from
their ancient ways and spoke the language of the "white
eyes." They neglected the teachings of Awonawilona and took
up the religion of the newcomers.
Across the ocean, some of my Latinized Celtic ancestors in the
Roman Province of Briton guarded the wall erected by the Romans
under the direction of the Emperor Hadrian. Their mission was to
prevent my wild Scot, and Pict ancestors from entering Roman
Briton to steal cattle and worse yet to stay in Briton without a
visa or work permit. Unfortunately they were not successful.
Celtic barbarians entered Roman Briton in large numbers,
intermarried and raised large families who spoke a strange
language called Gaelic.
My father's tribal ancestors were the Celtic Silure from
Glamorganshire in Wales. My mother's ancestors were the Celtic
Dobunni tribe from Gloucestershire in Briton where they mixed
their blood with men from the Valeri Victrix Twentieth Roman
Legion. These soldiers were recruited in Belgium and transferred
to southwest Briton where upon retirement from the Legion they
were given land and settled as farmers and herdsmen. My
Celtic ancestors spoke, wrote and sang in Gaelic and Latin.
I have no doubt that some of my kinsmen served in Roman
Legions far from their homes in Roman Briton manning frontier
posts along the Danube and possibly as far away as Egypt and
Syria.
Following the collapse of Roman authority in Briton a wave of
Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians along with a large contingent
of Vikings came ashore. These barbarians raped, looted, burned,
and pillaged, and then settled down to farming and fishing. Again
blood was mixed and language and customs changed. The English
language began to take shape from Anglo-Saxon roots, not that any
of us would recognize it as our own English. The French language
brought later by the Normans who would come with William in 1066
hadn't yet pollinated it. Various forms of Christendom came with
successive waves of immigrants. Today's differences between Roman
Catholics and Protestants have some of their origins in different
observances that originated in Roman Briton as early as the first
century CE.
One of my Celtic ancestors was a young Scot from Blair Athol who
joined the "Rising of the 45" as it was called. In
1745 the Jacobites rose up in an attempt to place Bonnie Prince
Charlie on the throne of England. When the rebellion
collapsed, my ancestor wisely embarked on an immigrant ship from
Liverpool to Savannah, Georgia. He escaped the fate of his
fellow rebels who were slain without mercy by the Hanoverian
troops at Culloden Moor. I am descended from this young
warrior through my paternal grandmother.
When my mother's great grandfather immigrating from Ireland in
1845 disembarked in New York City with his wife and three children
they were met with hatred and violence by the local "citizens."
He was murdered during anti-immigrant riots in 1848 leaving behind
a widow and five children, one of whom was my great grandfather
William Marshall. William enlisted in the U.S. Army in
1861 in an Ohio regiment and fought to preserve the
Union.
William settled on a farm in
western Arkansas after the war and raised a large family. He
and his family became indistinguishable from the locals in the
Southland. They spoke the language in the local dialect,
practiced the local religion, and held the local prejudices as
evidenced by conversations I had with my grandmother. In
short, they assimilated into post Civil War Arkansas in one
generation. Other ancestors and relatives took longer and
some have never completely assimilated, nor would I wish them to.
They are much more interesting the way they are.
On both sides of the ocean, and in many generations when one set
of my people met another set of my people, they probably said,
"There goes the neighborhood. This place will never be
the same anymore!" They were right. It
never has been the same and it never will be.
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