Thanksgiving Holocaust
Maybe I shouldn't dwell on some things as much as I do. Or maybe I shouldn't read Sherman Alexie books at Thanksgiving time.
But, today I am going to finish what I started years ago: reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
For those of you who do not know this book, it is the true story of the American Holocaust, the American wars against the Native Americans who hatched a sinister plot to populate American territory a few millennia before Christopher Columbus got lost on his trip to India.
I started reading this book years ago, and got to the last chapter and stopped. Not because it wasn't good--it was--but because I could not read it any more. It got too difficult, too painful, reading about slaughter after slaughter of men, women and children by American armies, whose only crime was that they held title to American land, and dared interfere with Manifest Destiny.
After all, I am an American. And my country is supposed to be good, not a nation that launches genocidal wars on indigenous peoples. But, there is no other description of the Indian Wars.
Thanksgiving is supposed to remind us of that day in 1621 when the Pilgrims had the Indians over for dinner, to celebrate a successful harvest. It is NOT supposed to remind us that the descendants of the host killed the descendants of the guests for the next 250 years, and who sent the survivors of this killing spree to Reservations.
Well, maybe that should be part of the day. It will for me.
But, today I am going to finish what I started years ago: reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
For those of you who do not know this book, it is the true story of the American Holocaust, the American wars against the Native Americans who hatched a sinister plot to populate American territory a few millennia before Christopher Columbus got lost on his trip to India.
I started reading this book years ago, and got to the last chapter and stopped. Not because it wasn't good--it was--but because I could not read it any more. It got too difficult, too painful, reading about slaughter after slaughter of men, women and children by American armies, whose only crime was that they held title to American land, and dared interfere with Manifest Destiny.
After all, I am an American. And my country is supposed to be good, not a nation that launches genocidal wars on indigenous peoples. But, there is no other description of the Indian Wars.
Thanksgiving is supposed to remind us of that day in 1621 when the Pilgrims had the Indians over for dinner, to celebrate a successful harvest. It is NOT supposed to remind us that the descendants of the host killed the descendants of the guests for the next 250 years, and who sent the survivors of this killing spree to Reservations.
Well, maybe that should be part of the day. It will for me.
posted by American Bad OZ @ 11/25/2004 12:13:00 PM
3 Comments:
At 11:23 AM,
Aggle said…
You gotta stop that, Oz.
Holidays are depressing enough without reading books like that!
Besides, I've been wondering about this for many years, maybe you can explain it to me. Where is the guilt supposed to come from? I just can't muster up much of it.
Sure, it makes me sad when I think of all the lives lost, but it's absolutely true that there was massacring being done on both sides, right? Anyway, I guess I just don't see a point in feeling guilty for something I couldn't control, and wasn't even alive for.
I guess the real question is: What would you have done, if you had been there?
Later
At 4:20 PM,
American Bad OZ said…
I am not sure tht we should feel guilt for something that happened almost 100 years before our lifetimes, but we need to understand the whole story. What happened after that first Thanksgiving, and why did the Pilgrims only hold that celebration once?
The question of what I would have done is a lot stickier. After all, what were the people in that era taught? Did they understand the Indians' greivances, or were they merely taught the Indians are savages?
I don't want to get sidetracked, but I see a parallel with America circia 2003: Americans were told so many stories about Iraq, and what a 'danger' it was, yada yada yada, all of which were later found to be false. But, Americans were worked up into a wargasm then, and there is no guilt feeling that I have heard about it. What if the 17th, 18th and 19th-century Americans were only told the falsehoods, the half-truths, and the propaganda then? Wouldn't everyone want to do something to stop a false horror from befalling people?
I doubt that Americans have changed all that much in the past 100 years...although I have to wonder about their repeated killings of women and children, from Sand Creek, the attempt to do so at Little Big Horn, and finally at Wounded Knee; it is a bit hard to imagine American soldiers in the 20th or 21st centuries eagerly doing that.
At 5:41 PM,
American Bad OZ said…
Aggle, from our mutual friend Diane at Karmalised:
via Tom Paine:
"...and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions..."
—from George Washington's 1789 proclamation establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
Post a Comment
<< Home