Prep Note 9/28/23

The founding of Virginia in “Richmond’s Unhealed History” offered a lot more factual information than the education I was given in elementary school. European exploration was so much more horrifying now that I’ve received a lot more background information. Although I knew that religion was a large motivating factor in European exploration, reading the vivid details of how these Europeans used their religion to justify the genocide of Indigenous people really turned my stomach. Furthermore, reading the ugly language they used to call Indigenous people was also sickening because it was the truth without any filters. Even the direct quotes from primary sources brought such rich detail, so much so that I had no trouble imagining that someone actually wrote or said something back then. The maps helped in that aspect too, by allowing me to visualize where these events unfolded. What surprised me the most, however, was the atrocious amount of greed these Europeans possessed. They believed that their religion gave them permission to take over other lands and slaughter the natives in order to have economic gains. When the natives retaliated with violence, they hit back even harder and had the nerve to wonder why they did so. I feel like my prior education about Virginia’s founding was very glossed over, so this gave me a chance to learn about what really happened without any censoring.