dsws, I thought "farm" was Germanic-based?

Actually, by the time the white man got here, most of the coastal NAs had been wiped out by smallpox and other diseases which had arrived with the first white men (who were just fishing for the most part, and didn't colonize, that came later). The Pilgrims in the Mayflower arrived, and wondered where all the Indians were. Most of them (90-95% by some accounts) were dead. There was ample farmland cleared by the natives, just sitting around waiting to be farmed -- meaning the first settlers in New England didn't have to clear their own land (which is a big chore). This isn't mentioned much in kids' history books, though.

-CW

Dang, did that make it in there? I fixed this error on the document where I write the columns, but I forgot to paste in the corrected version before I published the draft.

OK, give me a minute, and mea culpa for the error. I thought I had fixed it, but it didn't make it up there.

-CW

If it was 3/4 of a trillion, I thought that story would be EVERYWHERE. No biggie, I'm sure CW will agree with your correction shortly :-)

Unless my math is hazy (which is quite possible), I think you meant billion, CW.

Or possibly you were thinking of the bank bailout :) (I'm not still bitter ... I'm not still bitter).

-David

Interesting....

Thanx dsws...

I always strive to learn one new thing a day..

I can check today's off the list... :D

Michale.....

By the time the US became a nation, most Native American farmers had already been driven off their land.

And now, a random bit of trivia. Etymologically, the word "farm" is related to "firm" as in business, and refers to an arrangement wherein one pays a fixed amount for an asset of variable value. Thus, the tax farmers of ancien-regime France purchased the right to collect taxes, so the government got a predictable amount of money while the tax farmers usually made a profit. Likewise, those who till the soil have often paid a fixed rent or mortgage and had very unpredictable income. In this sense, agriculturalists in pre-Columbian America were generally not "farmers".

:D

Since the Israeli/Palestinian situation mirrors that of the US Gov/American Indian situation, it's a shame that the Middle East issue can't be solved as easily.

Michale.....