(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.

[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.