Date:         Fri, 2 Oct 1998 11:30:30 -0500
Reply-To:     FN 
Sender:       FN 
From:         David Rider 
Subject:      [FN] try to kill this...
To:           FIRST_NATIONS@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
In-Reply-To:  

Prof mentions that huge increase in population in Europe fueled emigration and 'settlement' in America. Prof looks at me and says "David, do you have a problem with this?" I say, well, why was there such a big increase in Euro population when you're also telling us and the textbook is telling us that Europe was in hard times with the downfall of feudalism and the rise of the underclass, and beggars and thieves and all. If it was so bad there, why were there so many more people in Europe during the hard times than there were in the good times just a century or so before?

Prof shrugs and says, "David, why don't you tell us what you think." David says: Coz Europeans suddenly underwent a revolution in agriculture when they stole beans and potatoes and tomatos and peppers and corn from the Indians and transplanted them back home...and now they have more food, more nutritious food, tastier food than they'd ever had before with their white flour from wheat diet. Now the Irish have potatos, the English can invent fish 'n' chips, the italians can invent spaghetti...and they can raise more children coz they've got plenty to eat.

Prof talks about George Washington and the reasons leading up to the American revolution, the tea tax, the stamp tax...prof looks at me and says, "David, do you have a problem with this?" I say, George Washington held land claims for thousands of acres of land in the Ohio River valley that the English Crown now says [after the Peace of Paris agreement, 1763] white people couldn't settle, coz it belonged to Indians. So what really led up to the revolution? Land hungry Americans...and why did they have that stamp tax and tea tax and all those other taxes the English were suddenly imposing on the colonists? Coz they were paying off the war debt incurred when they committed biological warfare on the Ottawa and Huron and Shawnee and Delaware and Potawatomi, in the so-called 7-years-war, the French-Indian war some people call it. that's why...

I ask prof in class about the murder of 5 Susquehanna "chieftains", as our textbook called them, murdered in cold blood after luring them to a peaceful little meeting. I ask prof if he knows who committed those murders. Prof isn't sure. George Washington's grandpa, that's who. Any ideas where ol' GW got his Indian-killing ways?

Prof was talking about Anne Hutchinson who challenged the Puritans up in Massachusetts so bad she got deported to Rhode Island. Lost her baby and the Puritans said it was God's will, to punish her. She moved to Long Island and lived with the Dutch for a spell before being killed in an "Indian massacre." Prof looks at me and say, "David, do you have a problem with that." I say, well, why was she killed? What sparked the Indians to commit a "massacre":?  The Dutch decided just three years before the attack that it might be a good idea to practice what the English were doing, putting a thick wall of settlers around theire New Amsterdam headquarters. So to get some land to 'settle' they had to commit a few massacres of their own. They even hired Englishman John Underhill to repeat basically what he did to the pequots in 1637, and to do the same thing in 1641 only against the Raritans and the |Wappingers. He did. Indians finally said enough was enough and they issued a counter-attack; Anne H was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so to speak. And once after one of those Dutch massacres, a small group of mostly women and children [13? 18? I can't remember] came into New Amsterdam for some help, since the Dutch had signed Tribute with the Indians and promised to protect them against just the kind of thing that now was happening on a routine basis. What did the head Dutchman in charge do? He beheaded every one of them and used one of the heads in a drunken afternoon game of soccer.... 

I asked the prof the other day why he always looks at me and asks me if I have a problem in class. Prof told me it's coz I always look disturbed in class...I always look depressed, angry, something... 

Last night I was sitting at the picnic table in our kitchen, smoking a cigarette and having some drink and despair, lost in my private thoughts...when Michaela came into the room and asked me if I was mad. She gently put her hand on my shoulder when she asked, and I said 'no', I wasn't mad. She said, but Daddy you look mad. I told her I was just thinking about some things, that's all, and I gave her a hug.

Several days ago, Jordan said this: "still, truly has come to pass re being careful about what you seek cause, sometimes, oftimes, you will find it as have i. then, there, it is, a shadow, haunting, shoulder borne always...to bear you down. down under heavy. down under pain."

Yes, some of us will find it...and yes, here we are, here i am...and here comes my daughter Michaela, following in her big brother Justin's footsteps...here they are, too...try to kill this. they can kill some of us, but they will not kill all of us, who try to salvage what there is to salvage, and try to bring strength where there has been weakness for too long...

dave

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