Virginia Dare, after whom VDARE.com is named, was the first child of English parents born in what is now the United States of America, on August 18th in 1587. She may be considered the foremother of the Historic American Nation, which is not descended from such rival claimants for the title of First Child as Snorri Porfinnsson (allegedly born in “Vinland” in the eleventh century) and Martin De Arguelles, born in a part of New Spain which is now St. Augustine, Florida. They were earlier, but they were not what America today is descended from—culturally.
As a settler in a land full of what Thomas Jefferson would later refer to as “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions,” Virginia Dare was a white minority.
And as far as we know, she, and her whole family, were either massacred or enslaved by local Indians.
VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow wrote in 1999, when he founded VDARE.com, that
I have always been fascinated by the story of Virginia Dare. She was the first English child to be born in the New World, in August 1587, shortly after the founding of what was to become known as “The Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast. It says something about the mettle of those settlers that any pregnant woman would cross the Atlantic, the equivalent of a lunar expedition at that time—and Virginia’s mother Elenor was no less than the daughter of John White, the colony’s governor.
Perhaps you have to have a daughter yourself to appreciate what White must have felt three years later, when he finally returned from a supply trip to England, much delayed by the Spanish Armada. The smoke he took at first to be proof of occupation turned out to be brushfires. The settlement stood abandoned. Over a hundred settlers, his daughter and granddaughter among them, had vanished. He would never see them again.
There’s a sort of tradition that Virginia Dare may have survived, assimilated into a local Indian tribe, and even had descendants. There’s a legend, as distinct from a tradition, that she was transformed by shamanic magic into a white doe.
This may or may not be true (Wikipedia gives her birthdate and says “date of death unknown”). But if it is, it’s kind of horrifying.
Tamar Jacoby once smeared us, criticizing VDARE.com’s immigration restrictionism in the Wall Street Journal, that "Virginia Dare is thought to have eventually married into a local Indian tribe, or to have been killed by it—almost equally unfortunate possibilities [emphasis added] in the minds of VDARE[.COM]'s writers, who make no secret of their concern about the way America's original Anglo-Saxon stock is being transformed by immigration" [Too Many Immigrants? No. America needs more foreign workers. by Tamar Jacoby, April 4, 2002].
At that time I replied that I didn't think, like John Wayne in The Searchers, that Virginia Dare would be off better dead, but that "yes, it would be unpleasant to be kidnapped from a massacred colony, and forced to marry into an Indian tribe."
That’s why, in subsequent years, I’ve written columns titled Virginia Dare, White Minority? and On Virginia Dare’s Birthday: Will Her Fate Be The Fate Of America?
Recently we’ve learned that, according to the Census, America’s white population is declining in absolute terms and that, according to various Main Stream Media thinkers, this is a Good Thing, because it means that evil whiteness is declining.
That’s why we shouldn’t forget that if you’re a “white minority,” you face serious challenges. However, from the Lost Colony of Virginia rose the American Nation, and it’s been kind of hard to suppress since.
On Virginia Dare’s Birthday, let’s not forget what the Historic American Nation created—and that it has a future as well as a past.
Previous Virginia Dare Birthday Columns
