When I was a kid, I thought nothing would have been better than to have been an Indian brave -- or what I knew in my heart I would have been -- a brave little white girl adopted by the Indians. They had horses. Bows and arrows. SPEARS. Sneaked up on any and everything without being sussed out. Made all their own stuff. They wore paint on their faces and painted their ponies' hindquarters with all sorts of symbols and cool stuff. They stayed up late by campfires, singing and dancing and smoking the peace pipe. Or the war pipe, in some cases.
Yep. Sad but true, as a kid, I fell for all that stuff crammed down our throats by Hollywood and sanitized textbooks before I found out about all the broken promises, not to mention blankets given to our brothers and sisters on the Plains and in the forests by our Pilgrim forebears, all of these blankets known by those good Christian folks to be infected with smallpox. And this was before I read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.
That certainly changed how I looked at things.
My internal landscape and my happy fantasies of a free and clear life turned a bit darker then. Reality does that, you know.
Now to see anything remotely and truly Native, one has to go into museums. And even then, I wonder -- is this real? Cleaned up? Prettied up for all the blue eyes?
Okay, okay, enough politicizing.
That's white war paint on his face, with faint black lines, and he wears a raven as his headdress.
As you know, ravens and crows are particularly important in most cultural mythologies, even our own.
I'll be back this weekend with the Rest of the Best from It's Not Easy Being Green.
Take care.
Candace in Athens.
Hi, Candace! Well-said. I like your Indian brave! :-)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post Candace! Love your Indian too! xoxo
ReplyDeleteI know just what you mean! Fo me as a kid it was "The Other Side of the Mountain" and Jack London. When Dylan met my mom for the first time for the so-you-want-to-date-my-daughter interview she asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said "an Indian". :)
ReplyDeleteHi Candance,
ReplyDeleteThank your for visiting my blog,
have a great week
Janine
It's depressing to realize how the "victorious west" has sanitized and flattened out all the cultures it has foolishly subjugated. But the truth remains. The truth is out there. Some memories are retained. In this world of climate change and shrinking resources, we could all learn a great deal from the Native American's take on his place in the universe and how to interact with it.
ReplyDeleteHi, Candace. Am I slow or what? Just learned about your "other" blog! I like the indian and your thoughts and your Green Lanterna costume girl. Like all of it. Keep going! - J.
ReplyDeleteThank you Candace for your thoughtfulness and prayers. Thank you from the heart.
ReplyDeletexox Isabel
Hi everyone and thanks for your kind comments and visits. Say, I am the one who is slow... I need to pop up some more shenanigans here from the book and from the ol' Still in Athens Wild West and Southeast Show.
ReplyDeleteTake care!
Oh, what a coincidence that I had posted about settlers and Native Americans and it's your most recent post topic here.
ReplyDeleteReading deeply about the French and Indian War I'm truly shocked at how awful and violent it was--on every side.
Best to have been an Indian pre-contact.
Certainly seems to me that women in the Iroquois Confederacy had a better life than Puritan women. Of course, that's my prejudiced, modern pov.
ah..
ReplyDeleteyes.. when I read about bury my heart at wounded knee it really changed for me as well. Glad that I am older and wiser.
And I could never understand why Thanksgiving is such a holiday in the US. I mean, the new settlers had just aobut made a mess of everythign and were bailed out by the Indians out of sheer generosity? That would have been an ambarrassing moment, I reckon.
Yep. For most folks, grrl, Thanksgiving is now just one of three things. Football and eating yourself totally stupid, not to mention drinking everyone under the table; the season to rush out the next day for the BIGGEST SHOPPING DAY IN THE YEAR; or, like most of the folks I know, a lowkey day where we remember the real shenanigans of that time and the unfortunates left in its wake up to this day --
ReplyDeleteand it sometimes means I get to see "London Jeanne", which is always good! I loved being in London a couple of years ago, where T'Day is NOT celebrated. ahhh, just any ol' day is fine with me.
Take care.
I hope you check your blog soon! Your sad reminder of the indian tribes that lived here before us is timely. Take good care of yourself. Don't work too hard. Love - Jeanne
ReplyDeleteWhat's happened to us? Did Facebook take away our mojo at blogging? Hope you are well. Jeanne
ReplyDelete