History "Re-Visited"

-By Jim Culp

As we approach Memorial Day this year, I am once again on memory lane, and will speak of the fallen this coming Monday. But I also revisit my studies of our own history, the last 240 years, the amount of time our young nation has prospered on this North American continent.

One anniversary of a historic event passed just two days ago.

Buried in the embarrassing pages of history, under the woes of the American Indian, the anniversary of the signing of the Indian Removal Act was just two days ago.

It was 1830, and the War between the States had not happened yet, but the sorrow and bloodshed of that great tragedy simply overshadowed what had been happening to the American Indian for years.

Andrew Jackson was President of the United States, and the nation was growing, and growing fast. Bankers were promising big change, and plantation owners were expanding, opening greater trade deals and larger bank accounts near and abroad.

 The North American Indian was promised equitable land near places where he was removed, and told that his new land was to be his forever. It sounded good, but after all, he was owed this, because the white man had taken land that was his in the first place. The Indians had lived highly civilized and often peaceful lives, in organized cities, in these southern states, for over 1300 years.

Men that respected the Indian and his culture fought against this outrage, including Congressman Day Crockett.

The Five Civilized Tribes....the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Muscogee (Creek), the Chickasaw, and the Seminole...were the tribes so described because of their willingness to accept European customs, at least some of them, and willingly be assimilated into the White Man's culture, and his strange religion that told of an angry God that wiped out enemies and offered unconditional love.

Other Indian tribes, less noted in history, would include the Wyandot, the Kickapoo, the Potowatomi, the Shawnee, and the Lenape.

Thousands of persons of all of these would be lost on events such as the Trail of Tears, a 2,200 mile "relocation" of the Cherokee, where between 4,000 and 6,000 people lost their lives due to freezing temperatures, starvation, and dysentery.

What some history pages do not tell you is that "Americans" participated in the ethnic cleansing of an entire culture of people, across 60 tribes, over a period of a hundred years, practically erasing those cultures from the face of our planet.

I've told you that story to make something clear. Sometimes an idea, religion, or concept seems right popular to a vast majority of people. Sometimes they are good ones; but sometimes they are huge mistakes that can never be reconciled.

 My next blog will be a continuation of this one. It will cover the plight of the American Bison.