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No Suffrage, Little Attention; Nonetheless, Some Prosperity | | | Bush Goes West | |
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< | George Bush’s African father, born in colonial India, and mother, Irish-American, inherited a fortune in 1787 from an heirless Philadelphian merchant in whose manor they served. Young Bush was educated, and he fought under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans at 21 years old. After the war, Bush fur-trapped in Oregon Country for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Bush is believed to be the first free Black man west of the Rocky Mountains. After a decade of trapping, Bush raised cattle in Illinois and Missouri. In 1844, Bush embarked from Missouri with his White wife, Isabella, four mixed-race sons, and several thousand dollars’ worth of ingot. Bush led a predominantly White party comprising several well-to-do families.
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> | George Bush’s African father, born in colonial India,
No, not even the one
source you are copying from says this. According to the
document at HistoryLink.org, "His father, Matthew Bush, of
African descent, was said to be a sailor from the British West
Indies." That's not an African from India, for sure. There are, according to the HistoryLink tertiary source, a number of secondaries to have consulted. If you did, for example for the inheritance story you tell below, which is not in any source you cite, you certainly should have cited it.
and mother, Irish-American, inherited a fortune in 1787 from an heirless Philadelphian merchant in whose manor they served. Young Bush was educated, and he fought under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans at 21 years old. After the war, Bush fur-trapped in Oregon Country for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Bush is believed to be the first free Black man west of the Rocky Mountains.
Believed by whom?
What sources on that subject were consulted? Where does the Battle
of New Orleans story come from?
After a decade of trapping, Bush raised cattle in Illinois and Missouri. In 1844, Bush embarked from Missouri with his White wife, Isabella, four mixed-race sons, and several thousand dollars’ worth of ingot. Bush led a predominantly White party comprising several well-to-do families. | | | Upon Bush’s arrival to the Willamette Valley, the present White community enforced Black Exclusion. Bush's party relocated to the southern tip of Puget Sound, at Tumwater (presently Olympia), between the Black and Deschutes Rivers. There, Bush established Bush Prairie, a successful farm, and financed a gristmill and a sawmill that served White settlers and Indians from St!sch!a's village.
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That doesn't look like a genuine citation: An entire book for one fact, with no page reference. Did you see the source?
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In 1850, Bush owned real property in Lewis County worth $3,000 (according to the federal census). Among the county’s 558 residents, only seven heads of households had real property worth more. One other Black man, William Phillips, a sailor, lived in Lewis County. A Black man and woman, each a servant to a White Army officer, lived in Clark County. In 1850, nine Black people resided in Oregon Territory north of the Columbia River, of 1,201 total inhabitants.
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| | | Washington’s White-Indian population swings can explain the legislature’s silence on Black affairs. By 1860, 40 Black people lived and worked among small encampments and budding cities. Most were single men employed by the Army or Navy. Whites numbered 11,318. Indians’ populations may have exceeded 25,000. By 1870, 207 Black and mixed-race Black people lived in Washington Territory. Whites numbered 22,195. Indians numbered 14,796. As remarked in Esther Mumford's Seattle's Black Victorians, the Black community in settler-era Washington was relatively meek, so they did not garner much legislative or political attention – nevertheless, a step up from the abject racism that many Black settlers fled.
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< | Throughout this period of Washington’s history, from settlement to territory, the legislature sought to engender White rights in predominantly Indian-held territory. The relatively few Black people did not enjoy civil rights, particularly suffrage; however, the land was rich and Washington’s policies did not strip Blacks of the right to till the soil and trade wares. Despite persistent difficulties, some natural and some social, Black people could prosper in Washington. As a result, Washington was a superior territory to Oregon for Black livelihoods. | >
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Same problem. An entire book is cited for one editorialization, without a page reference. Is the reader supposed to procure the book and look in the index for "meekness"? Did you see the source? On what basis should we conclude that there wasn't any "abject racism" facing a population of scarcely 200 Negroes among roughly 40,000 other people?
Throughout this period of Washington’s history, from settlement to territory, the legislature sought to engender White rights in predominantly Indian-held territory. The relatively few Black people did not enjoy civil rights, particularly suffrage;
"Particularly" or only? What other evidence is there concerning "civil rights"?
however, the land was rich and Washington’s policies did not strip Blacks of the right to till the soil and trade wares. Despite persistent difficulties, some natural and some social, Black people could prosper in Washington. As a result, Washington was a superior territory to Oregon for Black livelihoods.
I'm not sure what
this all adds up to. You have apparently verified that there were
no Negro voters in Washington before the 15th Amendment, though
you don't give any parallel information from the period
thereafter. Census data and electoral information should be
available for 1880 and 1890 if it is available for the earlier
period. In any event, this fact in itself doesn't give us
anything to interpret or to understand beyond the immediate negative.
The anecdotes about George Washington Bush and his offspring don't
seem to take us far beyond the run of the local history mill.
(You refer to his children as "mixed-race," and to him as "Black,"
but there doesn't seem to be any reason for the distinction. His
own father is said in the only source I could consult to be "of
African descent," and his own mother was white. Under "one drop"
doctrine such as would have applied in Louisiana or Mississippi
[were those the rules of the Oregon Territory Negro exclusion
law?] all of them were colored; under your vocabulary, they all
appear to have been of "mixed race" to an unknown degree.) How
does anything we learn about George W. Bush affect anything we are
supposed to conclude from the presence of a few dozen households
of "Black" or "Negro" people who didn't vote in Washington before
and immediately after territorial organization? | | | | |
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-- JohnOMeara - 02 Nov 2016 - 04 Dec 2017 |
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