Tsalagi152@aol.com wrote: >... It is interesting, as a Native American, to > read this kind of propaganda and distortion of history....the freedom > referred to was for a select few, at the same thime this was being"framed" by > your " founding fathers", my ancestors were fighting off attitudes that they > were "savages" and not even human beings.,fighting against their enslavement > (yes, First Americans were sold as slaves prior to persons of African > heritage), and fighting to keep their homes, farms and land. July 4 has no > value to me nor do the "signers"; its just anoter day to have fun, get > together with friends/family. Catherine I feel sorry and dismayed by statements like these from you and others with similar attitudes. The past is the past. Investigating the facts of 'native Americans' would reveal that most of the tribes carried on territorial wars and took slaves from other tribes. War and slavery have no singularity with any race or nation. Black races in Africa also had wars and slaves. Many white races were also subjected to rape, pillaging, slavery, barbarism, etc. Raids on the British Isles before they were called that were full of the above atrocities. And there was serfdom, which was for all practical purposes slavery. As a genealogist you must be aware of the arithmetic expansion of the number of ancestors each of us comes from when you go back only 300 or 400 years. Most every person on earth could probably prove ancestry to someone enslaved at some point in time if there were records to do so. What is important is that all the inequities, atrocities, slaughter and slavery which have taken place at various times in every part of this globe do not justify hatred for another race, nor indifference to the benefits and freedoms we enjoy in the United States. Independence Day is not a celebration of what's wrong with society, but is for the hope of freedom, liberty and happiness of the future. If you don't believe this is the land of freedom and opportunity why do you think so many others wish to come to the U.S.? Maybe one of those families who can't come to this country because of immigration quotas would be glad to change places with you. Jeffrey S. Owens Sorry for this off topic message on the list, but no other subject is more important to me. I felt a public response necessary.