(no subject)

[nightdog_barks]

Tuesday [July] 6 [1847] start 8 oclock. go 18 miles. camp on the bank of a stream from the platt river where the Indians had camped. we burnt their wickeups for wood. some waided the river to get wood. brought it over on their backs. the camp did not all get up last night neither have they to night. Smoots co have not been heard from since Monday. Grants co did not get up to night.

~ "The Diary of Patty Sessions, 1847," Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849, page 168. I have added punctuation, month, and year.

You guys, this is a great book, but when I got to this part I actually SAID OUT LOUD, "But that didn't belong to you!" See? They came across a Native American camp, tore the shelters apart, and burned them for fuel. Now, yes, maybe the Indians had abandoned the camp and weren't coming back, but how could these settlers have known that? Omfg. :-(

Anyway. Here is something awesome -- a first print, first edition, SIGNED COPY of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Omfg again, but in a good way. His WORKING COPY. This is like ... a holy grail. :DDD

Comments

[silverjackal]

Well in their opinion the First Nations people just needed to disappear anyway (and they were taking over their land) so...

I come across the same thing when I read about exploration and early natural history collection. So much is fascinating, and to think of discovering it for the first time, and yet there is so much that is utterly repugnant to anyone with decent sensibilities in re: the racism, the sexism, the sheer idiotic Eurocentrism.

[nightdog_barks]

Oh my god, Jackal. OH MY GOD. I wanted to reach back through the mists of time and SHAKE THESE PEOPLE TILL THEIR TEETH RATTLED.

THIS WAS WRONG ON EVERY LEVEL OF WRONG.

For whatever it's worth, this was the first clear-cut case of Bad Settler Behavior I've encountered in the book so far. Up until now, everyone has either ignored the Indians, or cautiously traded with them, or just generally interacted with them in a peaceful way. Something to keep in mind, though, is that we are early in the westward U.S. expansion phase. The American Civil War hasn't even happened yet.

I was just so shocked by this. They burned the shelters of PEOPLE they didn't even know. And they didn't even think twice about it. Obviously it didn't make much of a memorable impression on Mrs. Patty Sessions. Who actually has a Wikipedia entry all her own.

[silverjackal]

I have direct experience of a similar attitude in modern times. Scattered here and there where I live are great stone constructions made by First Nations people. They are medicine wheels -- stone spirals of great spiritual and cultural meaning. Most are located on private land, and few people here even know they exist apart from the First Nations people who still use them, and the landowners upon whose property they stand. I have been sufficiently fortunate to visit several. I am always awed, as I would be by the greatest cathedrals or other sacred structures. While I was visiting on more than one occasion I witnessed other visitors (instead of being reverent) deliberately moving stones, defacing them, or scraping their feet on them in a gesture of contempt. They are threatened that such things exist, which are not part of their own particular narrow parochial branch of Christianity. On one occasion when I was in uniform (and so perceived as authority, though my actual authority has nothing to do with the subject and is very small) I even evicted two such desecrating scum with a firm "Right, it's time for you to leave. Now.". They whined and grumbled and left, and the interpreter thanked me because she knew they would not have heeded her had she spoken up.

Their needs, their desires, their religion, their culture... they are all that matters in their eyes. Everything and everyone else is lesser. I know that this mode of thought exists, though I do not share it.

[taiga13]

My boss shared an interesting story with us the other day. When you mine, the rock you have to remove to get to the ore is called waste rock. As you can imagine there's a lot of it, and our expertise is handling this rock. (We do other things but this is the biggest.) The client, meaning the mining company, held a consultation with the local Indigenous people and my boss presented on plans for handling the waste rock. Afterwards one of them told him "Don't call it waste rock. According to our creation stories that mountain is our ancestor. Our ancestor is not waste." So now we're all learning to say "mine rock" instead of "waste rock", and it really does change how you think of it.

[nightdog_barks]

That is a VERY COOL STORY. Seriously. Reminded me that the Native American Paiute had a creation story about Stone Mother.