The American

My wife's ancestors are from new amsterdam (new york), & palatinate refugees from germany & holland. The dutch in New York were mostly indentured servants.. they worked for an investor who was making a business venture in the new world. The palatinate were religious refugees, fleeing papal persecution along the french border. This was reformation times, followed by a more enlightened thought time with science & human worth. My ancestors had massachusetts bay colony roots. They were primarily religious, almosts cult like.. a collectivist experiment that did not work (as usual!). The other side was scotch irish.. presbyterians fleeing the church of england & the pope. Then there were the virginians, the spanish in florida, georgia, & the other early colonies. They each had a part in shaping the new identity of the new nation.

But there was also the influence of the native peoples in all of these sub cultures, along with the enlightened thinkers of locke, rousseau, hobbes, bacon, & eventually jefferson & the other american founders. From this primordial soup was born the American.. not really european.. not native american.. a hybrid between the noble savage & the absolutist. This did not happen in mexico, even though there was a blend of spanish conquistadors, jesuits, & the native people, nor did it happen in canada, where the natives were kept more distant than in the us. The british monarchist system was clung to, there, & the wild natives had less influence on them. You also did not see it in s. africa, where dutch & british settlers kept very much apart from the native africans.

I'm sure that there are blends of culture in every emigration situation. None of us live in a vacuum, or are unaffected by other people. Our culture & ancestry are unique, & have made us into what we are today. It is also constantly in flux, & changing in every generation. We are moving away from a more individual, independent culture, to a more collectively centered one.. very eurocentric. Some is unavoidable, perhaps, as open land dwindles & populations increase. The time of the Historical, Traditional American may be winding down, but it was a unique evolution of a culture & governance in all of human history.