There are no indigenous people to the US. The first people to come from Asia wiped out the huge indigenous animals which then roamed the continent. Yet some unhappy people don’t want anyone to celebrate the immigrant known as Columbus. They want an “Indigenous Peoples Day.” They want us to celebrate the people who wiped out these beautiful animals. I say celebrate Columbus Day by getting out and exploring the little Nature we have left. It’s the best time of the year to be in the Delta. No mosquitoes, cool temperatures, low humidity.
City councils of many US cities don’t have enough to do. These politicians do have time to grease the squeaky wheel, though. And the vast Know-Nothing-but-indignant-about-everything crowd is squeaking, “indigenous, indigenous!!!”
St. Paul, Albuquerque and a growing slew of other ignorant city councils have declared today Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day. I do like indigenous people, they strewed around a lot of arrowheads for me to find. I found a prehistoric knife sharpener on this trip to Meadowcreek.
I’m not sure which indigenous peoples I should celebrate today, though. The first humans to leave any calling cards on the North American continent migrated from Asia. They are called paleoindians or Clovis people, hunted the mastodon, mammoth, horse, tapir, ground sloth, giant bison, giant beaver, giant tortoise, American lion, short-faced bear, and saber-toothed tiger. Over-hunting caused the mass extinction of these animals as the Ice Age ended. More than thirty species of large animals became extinct. By about 10,500 years ago, megafauna no longer roamed North America.
So, if these city councils were less igno
rant, I’m sure they would not want to glorify the paleoindians because they wiped out some species that we all would like to see. Kinda like the Africans of today are wiping out the rhinos and all the other big species that the Chinese want for some revolting practice.
The paleoindians were in turn wiped out by the more advanced Hopewell people. The Hopewell people knew how to garden a little (so they could stay healthier than the Clovis people when game got scarce due to over-hunting) and they made captivating mound art. On my way to visit the Worstell Building in Athens, Ohio, I stopped at the Serpent Mound. Any modern artist would be extremely cocky if he had produced this 1330 foot long earth sculpture. It’s impossible to describe it, but look at this drawing of it and you get a feel for it. If you’re ever on the road between Cincinnati and Athens, Ohio, you gotta stop and see it.
Nearby have been found some giant skeletons in burial mounds. These are similar to skeletons found from the eastern Mediterranean, mainland Europe, and the British Isles. These folks appear to have shared an identical material culture, a religion of constructing burial mounds for the dead and solar temples to track the movement of the sun.
According to the folks who investigated the site on a high point in Highland County, Ohio, these graves were made of large limestone slabs, two and a half to three feet in length and a foot wide. These were set on edge about a foot apart. Similar slabs covered the graves. A single one somewhat larger was at the head and another at the foot. The top of the grave was two feet below the present surface.
Some think these were the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible. That seems pretty far-fetched to me, but if the Nephilim are the “indigenous peoples” the city councils are honoring, then I’d be all for it.
Maybe, though, the city councils mean to honor the tribe which wiped out the Hopewell. I could see the politically correct honoring this culture (called the Mississippian). This tribe invaded from Mexico, kinda similar to today, with an extremely resilient agricultural system. They grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and gourds. They kept turkeys and dogs for food and feather coats.
Or maybe the city councils meant the tribes from the Plains who learned how to ride the horses they stole from the Spanish and used their new skills to conquer the more civilized folks who had previously invaded from Mexico.
I guess I just know too much about “indigenous peoples” (who are all related to ancient Asians and not really indigenous at all) for my own good. It just makes it really hard to figure out why the city councils are honoring these blood-thirsty sun worshippers over some blood-thirsty Christians. They were both pretty horrible to modern, politically correct sensibilities.
It must be some kind of self-hatred since most of these city council folk are white people. Either that or they just don’t like Italians like Christopher Columbus.
Resilience 