clair055

The Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock in November, 1620. Can you imagine moving to a “New World”? Can you imagine moving anywhere for that matter right before the rush of the Christmas season? I can’t. Maybe it’s just a woman thing, but I know what would have been on my mind had I been on the Mayflower . I would be thinking.......Here it is nearly the first of December, I have no home, and Christmas is just around the corner. I have shopping to do, the decorations need to be up (hope I remembered where I packed them), and then I have all the cooking to do. How am I going to fit 30 various parties, dinners, and gatherings into four weeks? When are the greeting cards going to get addressed? And.....how does one ship gifts back home from the “New World”? By December, 1620 many of the Pilgrims were sick with scurvy and many more were suffering from wild coughing fits   They hardly felt like celebrating, but the fact of the matter is any Pilgrims well enough spent their ...

1. Like many such proclamations and treaties the title…..Laws of Burgos…is based on a location. The document was formerly published in Burgos, Spain in 1512. 2. The laws were the first code of conduct governing how Native Americans should be treated in the Americas by Spanish foreigners in America. 3. At first the laws only included the island of Hispanola, but later Puerto Rico and Jamaica was included. 4. The laws addressed the mistreatment of natives and called for their conversion to Catholicism. 5. The laws were rarely enforced making the Laws of Burgos of little value. 6. The laws called for encomiendas…..a labor system where a Spanish citizen was granted a certain number of natives they became responsible for. Basically in exchange for religious instruction the receiver of the encomienda could exact tribute from the Natives including labor, gold or other products. 7. The laws were written due to the reports of Domingo de Mendoza, the cardinal archbishop of Seville regarding abus...

Quick! Dig down deep into that creaky file cabinet in your mind and pull out the folder labeled “Vikings” and name a few of the more famous ones for me. I’ll wait. No, not the football team. There should be another folder there for the OTHER Vikings. You know, the Norsemen who were explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates. There you go. That’s it. Wow, that folder hasn’t seen the light of day in…..well, just blow the dust off it and open it up. So, what have you got? Erik the Red Leif Ericsson ….son of Erik the Red Canute (Knut or Cnut) Sweynsson….better known as Canute the Great ….King of England, etc. Those are usually the top three names I get. Most of the time folks just give me Erik and Leif. What about Thorfinn Karlsefni? Yep, you are so very right. Who in the heck is Thorfinn Karlsefni? Well….here goes…. 1. Thorfinn was a Norse merchant who followed Leif Ericsson’s route seven years later.…around 1010 AD…to North America. 2. While on a trading trip to Greenland Thorfinn met ...