Chapter 9: The Other Triangle of Evil. The Golden Triangle was not the only despicable triangle trade system that the New England colonists employed. Another evil system began with the New England fishing fleets. The colonial fishing fleets sold their fish primarily to England and to the other colonies, but the parts of the fish considered unfit for human consumption were dried and shipped down to the West Indies as food for the slaves there.
In the West Indies, the merchants exchanged their dried fish parts for molasses. This molasses was then shipped to New England to be made into rum. The third leg of this second triangle of evil was to trade this New England rum to the Indians in exchange for furs. This triangle was particularly evil because liquor had such a devastating impact on the Indians. One of the colonists, Thomas Morton, wrote in 1637 about liquor and the Indians: "Drunkenness can justly be called a vice, which the savages were ignorant of.
Yet the benefit to the settler that comes from the sale of strong liquor to the savages is very great, as the savages are much taken with the delight of it, for they will pawn their wits to purchase the acquaintance of it. But they say, 'If I come to the northern parts of the country, that is, New England, I shall have no trade if I will not supply them with lusty liquors.
It is the life of the trade in all those parts.'" So before the white man came to New England, the Indians knew nothing of alcoholism and drunkenness. The Puritans and Pilgrims introduced liquor to the Indians, and then they used the Indians' new weakness for alcohol to their commercial advantage. I don't know if it's a matter of genetics or culture, but from the days of the first American colonists through today, Indians have had a huge weakness for alcohol.
They develop an addiction to alcohol easier than most races, and they tend to drink themselves into drunken stupors. In colonial times, Indians didn't have the technical knowledge to make their own distilled liquors such as rum and whiskey. Distilled liquor, often referred to as hard liquor, is created by boiling a fermented mixture and then trapping and condensing the alcohol vapors to create a drink that has a much higher amount of alcohol than could be produced naturally.
The Indians were totally dependent on the white settlers for their hard liquor, and the settlers turned it into a profitable enterprise. In addition to commerce, the white settlers often used the inducement of liquor to negotiate treaties with the Indians, which typically worked to the disadvantage of the Indians.
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes a treaty that he helped to negotiate with the Indians with a promise of liquor once the treaty was signed: "As those people are extremely apt to get drunk, and, when so, are very quarrelsome and disorderly, we strictly forbade the selling of any liquor to them. And when they complained of this restriction, we told them that if they would continue sober during the treaty, we would give them plenty of rum when business was over.
They promised this, and they kept their promise because otherwise they could get no liquor. The treaty was conducted very orderly, and it concluded to mutual satisfaction. Then they claimed and received the rum. This was in the afternoon. They were near one hundred men, women, and children, and were lodged in temporary cabins built in the form of a square just outside the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, the commissioners walked out to see what was the matter.
We found they had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square. They were all drunk, men and women, quarreling and fighting, their dark-colored bodies, half-naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yelling, formed a scene the most resembling our ideas of hell that could well be imagined. There was no appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our lodging.
At midnight, a number of them came thundering at our door demanding more rum, of which we took no notice." This Indian weakness for alcohol is still with us today. Some years ago, I flew into Guatemala City to attend language school in Antigua. Guatemala still has a large Indian population. I arrived in Guatemala City late at night, and a driver from the language school had met me at the airport.
As we were driving on the freeway, I suddenly noticed some sort of object lying on the freeway and yelled, "Look out!" The driver immediately swerved, narrowly missing the object. He then slammed on his brakes and backed up to see what it was. To our amazement, we discovered that the object lying in the freeway was a drunken Indian. He was alive, but he had drunk himself into such a stupor that he had passed out in the middle of the freeway.
The Praiseworthy Side of Colonial Life In these past few chapters, we've been looking at the dark side of American history, the areas in which the colonists failed to trust in God. These matters represent the part of colonial America that Christian textbooks and sometimes secular textbooks don't like to discuss.
They are the parts of history that God would no doubt have included if He had inspired someone to write a history about colonial America, and they stand in contrast to the popular Christian myth that colonial America was a nation of saintly farmers and godly merchants whose primary concern in life was to serve their God. Non-believers enjoy pointing out these inconsistencies of the Christian colonists. However, the secular-minded colonists certainly behaved no better. Often, they behaved much worse.
New York City, the secular hub of colonial America, boasted the largest number of taverns per capita in the colonies. Like religious New England, it too was a huge center for slave trafficking. Like the New Englanders, New Yorkers committed their own atrocious Indian massacres, and when they suspected slaves of setting several fires in 1741, they burned thirteen of them alive at the stake.
However, the evils we've reviewed on the part of both Christians and secularists represent only one part of colonial American life. Although tobacco, rum, and slave trading were among the largest industries in colonial America, there were other important industries, such as lumbering, papermaking, printing, shipbuilding, fishing, whaling, pitch and tar production, and iron-making. Although tobacco was the key crop in the South, many Southern farmers grew rice and indigo.
In the Middle Colonies, farmers mainly grew wheat, corn, barley, and other grains. There was truly an admirable side to colonial America, as well as a dark one. The laws passed by the colonial legislators gave the American colonists superior personal rights and greater political control than any people on Earth at the time. Colonies such as Rhode Island granted greater religious freedom than anywhere else in the world. Most of the colonists were hardworking, church-going people.
Yet, without a question, our American forefathers fell far short of the standards set by Jesus. Too often, they failed to trust in God and in His methods. Far too many of the colonists put their ultimate trust in their guns, their tobacco, their rum, and their mammon. Regrettably, it didn't have to happen that way. English Christians could have established colonies in America without violating any of Jesus' teachings. Their economies didn't have to be built on tobacco, rum, and the slave trade.
They didn't have to cheat and exterminate the Indians. What I'm saying is not theoretical. It's a fact. For one man proved beyond all doubt that it could be done. His name was William Penn.