Skip to main content

The timeline can be navigated with the “Scroll Left” and “Scroll Right” buttons or by dragging the pointer to a date on the timeline waveform (located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile). To filter by a particular topic and see a smaller section of the data, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. Hover over the abbreviated filter tags in the blue boxes to see the complete name of the filter, or click a filter to display all the data with this tag. If you want to take a deeper dive into a specific topic by viewing a narrative essay page and a curated timeline, click on “Stories.”

Read More

Settler-colonists begin to acknowledge the medicinal knowledge of Indigenous people.

1733

INDG
TFCM
COL
BH
SLA

Gilbert Falconer, a settler from Kent County, Maryland, declares that: ‘‘The Indians have many valuable Secrets among them, that are not yet communicated to the English, and perform several notable cures.’’ This is one example of the tension that exists throughout the colonial period, as settler-colonists recognize the medicinal knowledge of Indigenous people while, at the same time, minimize and dismiss Indigenous people in order to justify their land seizure.

Similar tensions exist in relationship to Black healers, as many enslaved Africans carry with them both knowledge and seeds for medicines that the white settler-colonists and slaveholders lack, desire, and, sometimes, fear.