Review of 17th Century Tottenville History Comes Alive by Angie Mangino
Real history, no holds barred
★★★★★
I sorta love Angie Mangino’s 2018 book, 17th Century Tottenville History Comes Alive, about a small American community on Staten Island. I think every American should read it, but some of the occurrences related in it make me want to take a shower.
The book is actually two distinct stories and an intermittent, intervening running commentary that is a mix of feminism and observances by the author.
The first story is about European imperialism, which happened everywhere in the world for several hundred years. The tribes of the Lenni Lenape had become a moderately civilized post-hunter-gatherer agricultural society that lived in balance with the natural world for many centuries with healthy customs and a tendency towards sexual equality. It may have been wonderfully matriarchal in nature; there is some evidence presented in the book to bear that out. Few conflicts emerged because of natural abundance and a seeming lack of the concept of land ownership.
Enter European “discoverers” and all hell breaks loose. Being discovered means being subjected to the European superiority complex, racism, theft, and murder, augmented by diseases that wipe away native peoples more swiftly than musket fire. William Kieft is the most blatant villain, but Peter Minuit and Peter Stuyvesant are not blameless. The Pig War. The Whiskey War. The Peach War. All death-dealing incidents over food and drink between colonists and the natives. David De Vries tries to do the right thing with other colonists and fur traders, but imperialism is imperialism, and it isn’t pretty. Same story, different indigenous victims. The remainders of the Lenni Lenape take a few trinkets and fade into the background. Shower time.
The second story is primarily about the squabbles between the English and the Dutch. Competing imperialists make for blood and deceit on every level of endeavor. Take another shower.
Ms. Mangino admires the women who built on Tottenville as their husbands battled away with friends and foes of the hour. This is understandable: The women were strong and skillful in managing the estates they married into. But I am disappointed that the slavery and indentured servitude that were the basis for the success of these women are not more fully addressed. Martha Washington was a slave owner from a slave-owning family before she married George. Ulysses S Grant’s wife Julia owned slaves and came from a slave-owning family before she married him.
Ms. Mangino punctuates her work with asides like: “Meet” [this Dutch or English notable and read a brief biography]” and “Imagine” if you were, say, a Lenni Lenape who had just met Henry Hudson and was unknowingly being “discovered” or were accepting some beads while unknowingly selling land you didn’t have a concept of owning. These asides are humane and, possibly intentionally, leave out much of the plundering of indigenous folks. I imagine Ms. Mangino did not want to unduly distress her readers.
The book is facts and blunt-force exposition, and everyone should read it. I hope it doesn’t get banned by the nut jobs who worry their progeny will be so ashamed of their history that they will give everything back to the indigenous peoples and return to Europe.
I hope people who read this book will reflect on who we are as a people and how we got here. I hope they will admire the strength and industriousness of their ancestors but pledge never again to be as cruel as they were.
Thank you for this book, Angie Mangino.
