Re: native American personas (fwd)

[clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)]

Poster: clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)

> Poster: Christoph Hintze <chhintze@bmd.clis.com>
> 
> My Lords & Ladies,
> 
> This may be flogging a dead horse, but I wanted to get my twa pence in.  
> 
> Now for a small piece of Scottish - New World history:
> 
> In the year of our Lord 1398, Prince Henery Sinclair from Clan Sinclair
> along with several other kinghts, assorted men at arms and other staff, from
> Scotland sailed for the New World.  BTW, the re-enactment of this voyoge is
> to take place next year (I wish that I could be on that crew).  During this
> cruise and after sailing as far down the coast as Massachusetts from Nova
> Scotia (New Scotland) a knight from Clan Gunn was killed in an American
> Indian attack.  Said Knight was buried there with a stone to mark his grave.
> This stone, which has been found and authenticated, was located there in
> recent years. BTW it is engraved with the device of Clan Gunn.
> 
> During this same time period the chapel at Roslin Castle (then the seat of
> Clan Sinclair and currently the home of the Queen Mother) was completed.  In
> the chapel are stones engraved with figures from the New World (among other
> things tobaco leaves).

I wouldn't mind seeing the documentation whence you've taken this
material. I've studied maritime history for several years now,
and I don't recall running across this story. This is a pity, as
I wrote my Master's thesis on fifteenth century English naval
policy, and since the Scots had such...neighborly relations, I'm
sure that rumors of a New World would have run far and wide-and
made it into some of the PRO and BM documents I read.

> Also during this same period the Knights Templer had a thriving settlement
> in Nova Scotia.

I doubt this very strongly. Where's the doc's for this? We've got
a very good idea of what lands the Templars held, thanks to the
hearings at their dissolution, and I doubt that something as
unusual as this would've escaped the ears of the recording clerk.

> Like my Lady wife I will not even start to touch on the Norse exploration
> and settlement of the New World.

Ah, but I shall. The Northmen never lingered as the Spaniard and
the Portuguese would in later years, and cultural exchange of the
level that we have to thank for Indian corn in Europe and tobacco
in Turkey only developed at the very tail end of our period. I
think we have to look at this much as one might at space
exploration. Have we gone to the Moon? Sure! But do we regularly
go there? No! Our presence on the Moon is about what many of
these pre-Columbian contacts were-brief forays at the very limit
of possibility, both in terms of technology and in terms of
historicity, in most cases, the Moonshots excepted.

> I am of the opinion that if a person was to dig deep enough they would find
> more than just a few references to American Indians actualy travelling to
> the Old World in period.  Please do not try to remove a whole avenue of
> research and persona development, just because you do not believe, in your
> opinion that it is not period.  This kind of broad statement of opinion as
> fact has a very bad habit of returning to bite you in very serious parts of
> your ego.

At the risk of raising your hackles and those of others, I'd say
that an American Indian persona is very much a fringe character
in the SCA. One might liken him not so much to the rugby player
at an American football game like the Oriental, but rather to one
who really thought it was a soccer game instead-both are
"football," but...

Pedro de Alcazar, AoA
Barony of Storvik, Atlantia
Pursuivant Extraordinary and Junior Minion
Or, six Castles Vert within a Bordure Gules semy of Roundels Or
-- 
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~clevin/index.html 
clevin@ripco.com
Craig Levin
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