huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
tseedee, jongleur
in a tree
Calypte anna
tiny lichen-covered cup
in a bush, or a tree
punungkahoy
colibrí : wabĭcûc'kwe (bald eagle)
"my-bird-plumage-will-be-flying"
I am erect
Pula got drunk as a tree
and run over by a jeep in Vietnam
[...] when explaining the aversion
of the Indians to Christianity, [Proud, selon Drake],
attributes it to the character
and conduct of the whites [...]
"many of whom were of
the lowest rank and
least informed of mankind,
who flowed in from Germany, Ireland and the jails of Great Britain
[Trump: '. . . murderers and rapists'], or
who had fled from
the better inhabited parts
of the colony
to escape from justice."
[...] as early as 1722, an Indian
was barbarously killed
by some whites
within the limits of the province [proceedings
of the assembly of Pennsylvania, selon Drake].
The assembly proposed some measures
for the governor's consideration
in regard to the affair; and
mentioned the repeated requests
of the Indians, that
strong liquors should not be
carried nor sold among them.
[...] on the cause of the then
existing difficulties
between the Indians and the colonists, [treatise
published in London, in 1759, selon Drake]: 'It
would be too shocking to describe
the conduct and behavior of the traders,
when among the Indians; and
endless to enumerate
the abuses the Indians received and
bore from them,
for a series of years. Suffice it to say, that
several of the tribes were, at last,
weary of bearing [said endless abuses]; and
as these traders were the persons who were,
in some part, the representatives of the English among
the Indians, and by whom
they were to judge of our
manners and religion, they conceived
such invincible prejudices against both,
particularly our holy religion, that [...]
the War on/through/for/against/with Drugs ensued in perpetuum
"Excess of liquor [...] with the Indian
[...] has a contrary effect:
at this time he recollects
his departed friends and relations;
he laments their death very pathetically
with tears; and if near the graves
of any of them, will sometimes run out
and weep at them.
Others again will join in chorus
in a song, although unable to hold up
their heads; and it is not uncommon
for them to roll about the tent
in a fit of frenzy, and
some ancient disagreement is revived.
They sometimes have the precaution
to order the women to remove
all offensive weapons out of the tent;
but as they cannot part with their teeth,
it is not unusual to see
some of them the next morning
without a nose.
Sometimes they come off with
the loss of an ear, or joint of a finger.
In these affrays no regard is paid
to relationship, brothers and sisters
often engaging each other."
some notoriety required
binge drinking
calms the nerves
before a curve ball
no notion of, comes
it is dictated in the genes
by reason of
insanity
no Irish need apply
('insan' is an Arabic word
for soundness)
sonic reason
it only stands to, to
understand is to undermine
and usurp
gross miscarriage of justice
is an abortion
of the law
Joe Pesci's character in Good Fellas
the fulminating, humorless
trigger happy paranoiac
is in every American frontiersman
gunning down gays, injuns, gooks
you name it
getting someone's goat
means
a lot to me
put it on auto-pilot
Pontiac was born among the Ottawas
of an Ojibwe mother
and was, by adoption, an Ottawa
"[...] some portion of his power
was to be ascribed to his being
a chief of the Metai, a magical
association among the Indians of the Lakes
[...]"
Tecumseh adopted him for his model
the anopheles mosquito,
vector of paludism
as surgical drone strike
gets its target,
that is, infected
but, you may say,
the asymmetry is too great
in warfare of this nature
to make it unconscionable
a matter of terror
in the war on,
which makes it moot
the justification far outweighs
any moral question
(it has no deictic reference
it is so like an angel
that is invisible);
hence,
the conscience of the assassin
is cool, removed, remote
is in the blood
"We will not dispute it now.
"We have sufficient light from the Word of God
"for our proceedings"
they show how guys just dress up
in gis and tumble around on mats
as if that is going to cure PTSD
when that shuddering/gibbering
cannot be jolted out
tumbling around on the floor
in some shop front
martial arts school
he'll eventually blow his brains out
or get so soused on Jack Daniels every night
it's a matter of infinitesimal decimals
at vacuole level between the cell walls
little swing sets of swinging matter
while Obama-bama bobang a-bebop do-wop
plays the best and brightest guy ever
"he ain't no ghetto black,"
Marty would've said,
that of Irish-need-not-apply
depicted in caricatures as simian
in facial features,
white niggers just got off the boat
from the last parish in Ireland,
Co. Kerry
liquor and love
"pussy and boxing gloves," Chico called it--
getting drunk,-- the Mohawk iron-worker I met
at Andy's Pub on High St., O.S.U. Campus
before that stretch of High was gentrified
by order of Pres. Gordon Gie
"The men were often drunk, [...],
they sought to kill me [...]
I learned to run and hide myself
in the woods, and
I dared not return
before their drunken frolic
was over
"[...] I had never enough to eat.
The old woman [...] Ne-keek-wos-ke-cheeme-kwa--
'the Otter woman', the otter being her totem--
[ototeman/odoodemi vai (animate intransitive verb): brother-sister kin, consanguine, Totem or Do-daim
(as the Ojibways pronounce it)]
: one emerged
lifted up his flap,
eyed an Indian
who fell flat
curiosity killed the cat,
so he went back,
like the mole people
underground
five stayed back
from going back:
Awaus-e
Bus-in-aus-e
Ah-ah-wauk
Noka
Monsone/Waub-ish-ash-e
-- a blessing to the people
animal-name (l'animot)
L'animal que donc je suis (à suivre)--
the animal that therefore I become by following
the animal that therefore I follow
I am = I follow
moose, fish, sucker, loon
sturgeon, bear, marten, wolf
gull, hawk, beaver, lynx
eagle, pike, whitefish, crane
cormorant, reindeer, rattlesnake
merman, catfish, caribou, crow
kingfisher, pelican, deer, duck
Tecumseh, with contempt, to Proctor,
"I conquer to save, and you to murder."
"I have taken sides with the King, my father [Onontio],
and I will suffer my bones to bleach
upon this shore,
before I will recross that stream
to join in any council of neutrality."
Tecumseh to Brock's request not to ill-treat the prisoners,
"No! I despise them too much to meddle with them."
"[...] the horrible massacre of prisoners" at the river Raisin
"Not only the savages, but their savage leaders,
Proctor and Elliot,
would have been held in check" by Tecumseh...
"[...] the known magnanimity of his character [...]" (Drake)
Proctor the savage, Tecumseh the human(e)
"Sir," said Proctor, "your Indians cannot be commanded."
"Begone!" retorted Tecumseh, with the greatest disdain,
"You are unfit to command; go and put on petticoats."
Tecumseh was flayed in the end.
The Middle Ground: where degenerate, unregenerate whites (mean asshole hillbillies)
made them, the injuns, burnt holocaust for a regeneration
via violence
for, they were already violent in nature, the injuns,
visiting violence upon violence
the Neutrals to have violence visited upon them by the Iroquois
in turn visited violence upon the Nation of Fire
gouging out the eyes of the old men and girdling their mouths
in the pays d'un haut
the story goes, in 1653, in the period of the Middle Ground (1650-1815):
the sons of the Hurons attacked their fathers--Hurons adopted by the Iroquois attacked refugee Hurons at Green Bay
Because the attackers grew hungry, they suspended the siege and made a truce
Huron fils-et-père were reunited, the Iroquois agreeing to surrender the Hurons among them in exchange for food and a safe withdrawal
so each Iroquois warrior on the eve of departure got a loaf of poisoned corn bread
but a Huron woman was on to it
and told her son not to eat of it
and he, in turn, told the Iroquois the plot of the Ottawas
and they escaped
warfare always sows the seeds for new attacks
The Iroquois war had wars inside of it, wars inside a greater war:
the Miamis against the Senecas, for instance,
the Senecas'd destroyed a Miami village sans warriors
and taken the women and children east,
one surviving old woman told the Miami warriors when
they'd returned from the warpath.
In celebration of the return home, the Senecas
killed and ate a child, then every morning
stuck a stick through another one's head and sat it up
on the path, its face facing the Miami town they had destroyed.
Then the Miamis came in pursuit.
The Senecas, at their last campsite, within one day of their
village, sent ahead a message to prepare a great kettle
and spoon for the baby broth to come.
Two Miamis in hiding espied a Seneca chop off a head
and prepare the body for the kettle.
The cook heard a rustling in the woods (Fenimore Cooper's crackling twigs) and tossed the head,
"Oh Wolf out there in the bushes, here's a head of a Miami child for your supper."
The Miami spies retrieved it and brought it back to be
identified, I-Ded.
To make a long story short: the Miamis ambushed the Senecas
and overwhelmed them despite their guns. Killed all but six. Two escaped. Four taken prisoner. Two of
them they beheaded, ran a string through the ears of
the heads and strung them round the necks of the remain-
ing two whose hands, noses and lips they cut off.
Then they sent two to tell the tale. The
Miamis returned home with those of their relatives
whom the Senecas had spared.
The Massacre
According to the trader Henry, it was unnecessary to dwell on the sensations he experienced when he beheld the approach of the frightful assemblage of Nakawawuck at two o'clock in the afternoon. There were about sixty of them stripped to the waist. A few had blankets thrown loosely over their shoulders, their faces smeared with charcoal and bear grease, their torsos uniformly daubed with white clay in patterns of various fancies. Others had their nostrils pierced with feathers and their heads adorned with the same. They approached the trading house in single file. Each held a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other.
Minavavana entered the house first. He made a sign to the others to be seated on the floor. Henry sat with an interpreter on each side and several Canucks behind him. Minavavana did not mince words when he engaged the interpreter Campion.
Campion, since how long is the Ingleesh leave Montréal?
Great Ojibway, you must know how long, for he came the Attawawas way from Montréal.
I know how long. I am just polite. To begin a conversation, one asks how long, ça doit être longtemps, n'est-ce pas? The Attawawas raise the hairs on my head. They are great man-flesh eaters. The Ingleesh are not afraid of death. They dare to come. This solitary Ingleesh, especially.
Then the Indians paused and gravely smoked their pipes. Henry, to say the least, was in a heightened state of attention while the Indians smoked. Then a long pause ensued, their pipes now cradled in the crooks of their arms. Minavavana took a few strings of wampum in his hand, palping the beads between his fingers, and began to speak.
Ingleesh, I address to you my words. Pay careful attention to what I say. You must know that Onontio is our father, and like a father he must provide for the wants of his children. Without the French we would lack knives and kettles and all the other necessaries. We respect the commands of Onontio and have nothing more at heart than to obey them, as we are his children. You, Ingleesh, make war with our father. You are his enemy. Why do you come among us, his children, in your boldness? You know that his enemies are our enemies. Ingleesh, our father, Onontio, is old and infirm and is tired of making war on the Ingleesh. He has fallen asleep. You took possession of Canada during his sleep. But his nap is almost at an end. I think I hear him already stirring. He is asking about his children, the Indians. When he does wake up, what must become of you? He will destroy you utterly. Ingleesh, although you conquered the French, you do not conquer us yet. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods, these mountains, the manitous left to us. They are connected to us as the new born babe is connected to the mother. We cannot be severed from them. You Ingleesh think like the white people, the Long knives, that we cannot live without bread, pork and beef? No. The Great Spirit provides for us in these spacious lakes, in these wooded mountains. Ingleesh, our father, Onontio, used our young warriors to make war on your nation. Many have the Ingleesh killed. It is our custom to satisfy the needs of these dead, the manitous of the slain. First, we must spill the blood of the nation by which they fell. Second, we must cover the bodies of the dead with presents...
Campion leans towards Henry and whispers in his ear, "there is indemnification for the spirits of the dead."
in order to appease the relations of the slain who are resentful of the spilled blood of their kin. Your King, Ingleesh, does not send us presents. He has not entered into a treaty with us. So we are still at war until he does these things. Until then, we do not have a second father nor friend among the white men except Onontio, the King of France. But you, since you have ventured among us with your life in expectation we should not molest you, with arms, without malice aforethought, only peace on your mind to trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in need, we shall regard you, therefore, as a brother. You may sleep tranquilly without the fear of the Nakawawuck. As a token of our friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke. Draw three times on it.
Henry had almost shit his trousers up till this moment. He took the proffered pipe and drew on it three times, the burning kinick-kinick leaves with a pulsing orange glow at each draw, his lungs inhaling the smoke. Then he passed the pipe back to the pipe tender, who carried it to Minavavana and in turn to every man in the room. The ceremony ended, Minavavana rose, gave Henry his hand, shook it, and he was followed by all the rest of the men in turn, one by one.
Vevney on Turtle Island
Vevney got a cold reception at the fort. He had journeyed weeks without encountering a single human in the vast forest. It was the autumn of 1761.
Vevney felt himself not unlike Crusoe whenever he reached a promontory and could look out over a vast ocean of trees and view the woody waste. The natives he encountered along the way called the vast forest an island--Turtle Island (miskwaadesi minisaabik). The natives moved about the woody waste as the Phoenicians once traveled over the Mediterranean.
Vevney's knowledge of French served him well whenever he encountered a native, which was rarely, and was in disguise as a voyageur.
He had come to the fort via the Way of the Outaouacs. The Jesuits, the Black Robes, referred to people of widely different nations who traded with them as Outaouacs. They acted as middlemen in the system of trade with the French. They brought major suppliers of fur, the Crees, to Montreal to trade directly with the French. This was the case almost a hundred years ago. Nothing much had changed.
There was an odd assortment of Canucks and so-called pensioners, dwellers in the fort and outside it and camped in the surrounding forest. These pensioners were usually the elders of no distinction in the families they came from. They lived off the traders and many of them were addicted to spiritous liquors. There was a singular lack of children. The leaves had fallen off the trees.
Sartre, a Canuck, was well insulated in the moose blanket he wrapped himself in. He was a bit huffy with Vevney.
You might soon regret coming here, Ingleesh. Some Outaouacs are coming to visit you.
The French had the annoying habit of drawing out the last vowel sound in 'English' and accenting the syllable.
Well, the forest must have eyes, indeed. Vevney affected an air of hilarity. He thought nothing of Sartre's glibness and gave him the benefit of the doubt. The goods he had brought in the canoes were not only trifling presents for the Indians.
. . . the large body of water in the interior was like an island in the vast ocean of forest. It was normal for the Indians to live in the forest as it was for the Polynesians to live on the sea. Polynesians conceived of an island as a "hole" in the ocean. This conceiving of negative space is what accounts for the symbol of nothing the Polynesians invented, the zero. In other words, what is a peninsula to land people is a "bay" to the Polynesians. The penis of the sea intrudes into the female land. The bay is a penis of the sea. The sea is normal for the Polynesian sailor. The male is the sailor. The male is normal. The females dwell upon the land. To the landsman the peninsula or penis juts out into the ocean.
Ottawwaw Kitchegawme is the penis of Turtle Island.
The vastness of the forest overwhelmed Vevney. Here the trees were familiar to him though larger than in Europe. Aspen and birch grew abundantly and reached heights taller than they did in the northerly sections of the boreal forest, where he as an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company had come from on his journey to the abandoned British fort on one of the Great Lakes. Large game was abundant and he spotted a few times the great woodland deer the French call caribou. The reclusive moose he only saw once or twice. A native he met told him that the moose is difficult to track and has been reported to submerge itself under water for hours at a time, as if disappearing in a pond.
One native Vevney met during his journey told him that the Indians lived according to their dreams, as if they were dictates given to them at night during the state of dreaming. For Vevney it was hard to understand this conception of the dream, as if there were some great dream-work fabric, something that was an ongoing work in progress, a great weaving project being made like a carpet. According to this conception, a dream was not at all a goal in life to achieve, as Vevney thought. It was not as if one's attention is focused on the goal, as if focusing the lens of a microscope or telescope on some infinitesimally small or distant object. Rather, the dream-work allowed for unceasing digressions, as if one's attention during the day was a 360° circle that took everything into account. The greatest dreamers, the medicine men, could even go beyond the confines of this world, a kind of fourth dimensional view of things where the senses conflated things, such that they were not objects per se. The medicine men were in touch with dead spirits or autochthonous ghosts and even plant sprites. The native said these spirits were the manitous, including and especially animal spirits. It sounded like witchcraft to Vevney.
cruelty and bloodshed
cruelty and wanton bloodshed
have distinguished the career
of the savage . . . white or red
red or white
the American Indian has no monopoly upon
cruelty, rapine and thirst for human blood
To wit:
murder of Conestoga Indians in December, 1763
by some Pennsylvanians
murder of Moravian Indians at Schoenbrun, Salem,
and Gnadenhuetten by Williamson & assocs. with
tomahawks
murder of Logan's family at Yellow Creek by angry whites latter part of April, 1774
assassination of Bald Eagle (Delaware sachem) in May, 1774
Cornstalk & son Elinipsico
(Drake, p. 23)
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
huitzilopochtli
tseedee, jongleur
in a tree
Calypte anna
tiny lichen-covered cup
in a bush, or a tree
punungkahoy
colibrí : wabĭcûc'kwe (bald eagle)
"my-bird-plumage-will-be-flying"
I am erect
Pula got drunk as a tree
and run over by a jeep in Vietnam
[...] when explaining the aversion
of the Indians to Christianity, [Proud, selon Drake],
attributes it to the character
and conduct of the whites [...]
"many of whom were of
the lowest rank and
least informed of mankind,
who flowed in from Germany, Ireland and the jails of Great Britain
[Trump: '. . . murderers and rapists'], or
who had fled from
the better inhabited parts
of the colony
to escape from justice."
[...] as early as 1722, an Indian
was barbarously killed
by some whites
within the limits of the province [proceedings
of the assembly of Pennsylvania, selon Drake].
The assembly proposed some measures
for the governor's consideration
in regard to the affair; and
mentioned the repeated requests
of the Indians, that
strong liquors should not be
carried nor sold among them.
[...] on the cause of the then
existing difficulties
between the Indians and the colonists, [treatise
published in London, in 1759, selon Drake]: 'It
would be too shocking to describe
the conduct and behavior of the traders,
when among the Indians; and
endless to enumerate
the abuses the Indians received and
bore from them,
for a series of years. Suffice it to say, that
several of the tribes were, at last,
weary of bearing [said endless abuses]; and
as these traders were the persons who were,
in some part, the representatives of the English among
the Indians, and by whom
they were to judge of our
manners and religion, they conceived
such invincible prejudices against both,
particularly our holy religion, that [...]
the War on/through/for/against/with Drugs ensued in perpetuum
"Excess of liquor [...] with the Indian
[...] has a contrary effect:
at this time he recollects
his departed friends and relations;
he laments their death very pathetically
with tears; and if near the graves
of any of them, will sometimes run out
and weep at them.
Others again will join in chorus
in a song, although unable to hold up
their heads; and it is not uncommon
for them to roll about the tent
in a fit of frenzy, and
some ancient disagreement is revived.
They sometimes have the precaution
to order the women to remove
all offensive weapons out of the tent;
but as they cannot part with their teeth,
it is not unusual to see
some of them the next morning
without a nose.
Sometimes they come off with
the loss of an ear, or joint of a finger.
In these affrays no regard is paid
to relationship, brothers and sisters
often engaging each other."
some notoriety required
binge drinking
calms the nerves
before a curve ball
no notion of, comes
it is dictated in the genes
by reason of
insanity
no Irish need apply
('insan' is an Arabic word
for soundness)
sonic reason
it only stands to, to
understand is to undermine
and usurp
gross miscarriage of justice
is an abortion
of the law
Joe Pesci's character in Good Fellas
the fulminating, humorless
trigger happy paranoiac
is in every American frontiersman
gunning down gays, injuns, gooks
you name it
getting someone's goat
means
a lot to me
put it on auto-pilot
Pontiac was born among the Ottawas
of an Ojibwe mother
and was, by adoption, an Ottawa
"[...] some portion of his power
was to be ascribed to his being
a chief of the Metai, a magical
association among the Indians of the Lakes
[...]"
Tecumseh adopted him for his model
the anopheles mosquito,
vector of paludism
as surgical drone strike
gets its target,
that is, infected
but, you may say,
the asymmetry is too great
in warfare of this nature
to make it unconscionable
a matter of terror
in the war on,
which makes it moot
the justification far outweighs
any moral question
(it has no deictic reference
it is so like an angel
that is invisible);
hence,
the conscience of the assassin
is cool, removed, remote
is in the blood
"We will not dispute it now.
"We have sufficient light from the Word of God
"for our proceedings"
they show how guys just dress up
in gis and tumble around on mats
as if that is going to cure PTSD
when that shuddering/gibbering
cannot be jolted out
tumbling around on the floor
in some shop front
martial arts school
he'll eventually blow his brains out
or get so soused on Jack Daniels every night
it's a matter of infinitesimal decimals
at vacuole level between the cell walls
little swing sets of swinging matter
while Obama-bama bobang a-bebop do-wop
plays the best and brightest guy ever
"he ain't no ghetto black,"
Marty would've said,
that of Irish-need-not-apply
depicted in caricatures as simian
in facial features,
white niggers just got off the boat
from the last parish in Ireland,
Co. Kerry
liquor and love
"pussy and boxing gloves," Chico called it--
getting drunk,-- the Mohawk iron-worker I met
at Andy's Pub on High St., O.S.U. Campus
before that stretch of High was gentrified
by order of Pres. Gordon Gie
"The men were often drunk, [...],
they sought to kill me [...]
I learned to run and hide myself
in the woods, and
I dared not return
before their drunken frolic
was over
"[...] I had never enough to eat.
The old woman [...] Ne-keek-wos-ke-cheeme-kwa--
'the Otter woman', the otter being her totem--
[ototeman/odoodemi vai (animate intransitive verb): brother-sister kin, consanguine, Totem or Do-daim
(as the Ojibways pronounce it)]
: one emerged
lifted up his flap,
eyed an Indian
who fell flat
curiosity killed the cat,
so he went back,
like the mole people
underground
five stayed back
from going back:
Awaus-e
Bus-in-aus-e
Ah-ah-wauk
Noka
Monsone/Waub-ish-ash-e
-- a blessing to the people
animal-name (l'animot)
L'animal que donc je suis (à suivre)--
the animal that therefore I become by following
the animal that therefore I follow
I am = I follow
moose, fish, sucker, loon
sturgeon, bear, marten, wolf
gull, hawk, beaver, lynx
eagle, pike, whitefish, crane
cormorant, reindeer, rattlesnake
merman, catfish, caribou, crow
kingfisher, pelican, deer, duck
Tecumseh, with contempt, to Proctor,
"I conquer to save, and you to murder."
"I have taken sides with the King, my father [Onontio],
and I will suffer my bones to bleach
upon this shore,
before I will recross that stream
to join in any council of neutrality."
Tecumseh to Brock's request not to ill-treat the prisoners,
"No! I despise them too much to meddle with them."
"[...] the horrible massacre of prisoners" at the river Raisin
"Not only the savages, but their savage leaders,
Proctor and Elliot,
would have been held in check" by Tecumseh...
"[...] the known magnanimity of his character [...]" (Drake)
Proctor the savage, Tecumseh the human(e)
"Sir," said Proctor, "your Indians cannot be commanded."
"Begone!" retorted Tecumseh, with the greatest disdain,
"You are unfit to command; go and put on petticoats."
Tecumseh was flayed in the end.
The Middle Ground: where degenerate, unregenerate whites (mean asshole hillbillies)
made them, the injuns, burnt holocaust for a regeneration
via violence
for, they were already violent in nature, the injuns,
visiting violence upon violence
the Neutrals to have violence visited upon them by the Iroquois
in turn visited violence upon the Nation of Fire
gouging out the eyes of the old men and girdling their mouths
in the pays d'un haut
the story goes, in 1653, in the period of the Middle Ground (1650-1815):
the sons of the Hurons attacked their fathers--Hurons adopted by the Iroquois attacked refugee Hurons at Green Bay
Because the attackers grew hungry, they suspended the siege and made a truce
Huron fils-et-père were reunited, the Iroquois agreeing to surrender the Hurons among them in exchange for food and a safe withdrawal
so each Iroquois warrior on the eve of departure got a loaf of poisoned corn bread
but a Huron woman was on to it
and told her son not to eat of it
and he, in turn, told the Iroquois the plot of the Ottawas
and they escaped
warfare always sows the seeds for new attacks
The Iroquois war had wars inside of it, wars inside a greater war:
the Miamis against the Senecas, for instance,
the Senecas'd destroyed a Miami village sans warriors
and taken the women and children east,
one surviving old woman told the Miami warriors when
they'd returned from the warpath.
In celebration of the return home, the Senecas
killed and ate a child, then every morning
stuck a stick through another one's head and sat it up
on the path, its face facing the Miami town they had destroyed.
Then the Miamis came in pursuit.
The Senecas, at their last campsite, within one day of their
village, sent ahead a message to prepare a great kettle
and spoon for the baby broth to come.
Two Miamis in hiding espied a Seneca chop off a head
and prepare the body for the kettle.
The cook heard a rustling in the woods (Fenimore Cooper's crackling twigs) and tossed the head,
"Oh Wolf out there in the bushes, here's a head of a Miami child for your supper."
The Miami spies retrieved it and brought it back to be
identified, I-Ded.
To make a long story short: the Miamis ambushed the Senecas
and overwhelmed them despite their guns. Killed all but six. Two escaped. Four taken prisoner. Two of
them they beheaded, ran a string through the ears of
the heads and strung them round the necks of the remain-
ing two whose hands, noses and lips they cut off.
Then they sent two to tell the tale. The
Miamis returned home with those of their relatives
whom the Senecas had spared.
The Massacre
According to the trader Henry, it was unnecessary to dwell on the sensations he experienced when he beheld the approach of the frightful assemblage of Nakawawuck at two o'clock in the afternoon. There were about sixty of them stripped to the waist. A few had blankets thrown loosely over their shoulders, their faces smeared with charcoal and bear grease, their torsos uniformly daubed with white clay in patterns of various fancies. Others had their nostrils pierced with feathers and their heads adorned with the same. They approached the trading house in single file. Each held a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other.
Minavavana entered the house first. He made a sign to the others to be seated on the floor. Henry sat with an interpreter on each side and several Canucks behind him. Minavavana did not mince words when he engaged the interpreter Campion.
Campion, since how long is the Ingleesh leave Montréal?
Great Ojibway, you must know how long, for he came the Attawawas way from Montréal.
I know how long. I am just polite. To begin a conversation, one asks how long, ça doit être longtemps, n'est-ce pas? The Attawawas raise the hairs on my head. They are great man-flesh eaters. The Ingleesh are not afraid of death. They dare to come. This solitary Ingleesh, especially.
Then the Indians paused and gravely smoked their pipes. Henry, to say the least, was in a heightened state of attention while the Indians smoked. Then a long pause ensued, their pipes now cradled in the crooks of their arms. Minavavana took a few strings of wampum in his hand, palping the beads between his fingers, and began to speak.
Ingleesh, I address to you my words. Pay careful attention to what I say. You must know that Onontio is our father, and like a father he must provide for the wants of his children. Without the French we would lack knives and kettles and all the other necessaries. We respect the commands of Onontio and have nothing more at heart than to obey them, as we are his children. You, Ingleesh, make war with our father. You are his enemy. Why do you come among us, his children, in your boldness? You know that his enemies are our enemies. Ingleesh, our father, Onontio, is old and infirm and is tired of making war on the Ingleesh. He has fallen asleep. You took possession of Canada during his sleep. But his nap is almost at an end. I think I hear him already stirring. He is asking about his children, the Indians. When he does wake up, what must become of you? He will destroy you utterly. Ingleesh, although you conquered the French, you do not conquer us yet. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods, these mountains, the manitous left to us. They are connected to us as the new born babe is connected to the mother. We cannot be severed from them. You Ingleesh think like the white people, the Long knives, that we cannot live without bread, pork and beef? No. The Great Spirit provides for us in these spacious lakes, in these wooded mountains. Ingleesh, our father, Onontio, used our young warriors to make war on your nation. Many have the Ingleesh killed. It is our custom to satisfy the needs of these dead, the manitous of the slain. First, we must spill the blood of the nation by which they fell. Second, we must cover the bodies of the dead with presents...
Campion leans towards Henry and whispers in his ear, "there is indemnification for the spirits of the dead."
in order to appease the relations of the slain who are resentful of the spilled blood of their kin. Your King, Ingleesh, does not send us presents. He has not entered into a treaty with us. So we are still at war until he does these things. Until then, we do not have a second father nor friend among the white men except Onontio, the King of France. But you, since you have ventured among us with your life in expectation we should not molest you, with arms, without malice aforethought, only peace on your mind to trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in need, we shall regard you, therefore, as a brother. You may sleep tranquilly without the fear of the Nakawawuck. As a token of our friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke. Draw three times on it.
Henry had almost shit his trousers up till this moment. He took the proffered pipe and drew on it three times, the burning kinick-kinick leaves with a pulsing orange glow at each draw, his lungs inhaling the smoke. Then he passed the pipe back to the pipe tender, who carried it to Minavavana and in turn to every man in the room. The ceremony ended, Minavavana rose, gave Henry his hand, shook it, and he was followed by all the rest of the men in turn, one by one.
Vevney on Turtle Island
Vevney got a cold reception at the fort. He had journeyed weeks without encountering a single human in the vast forest. It was the autumn of 1761.
Vevney felt himself not unlike Crusoe whenever he reached a promontory and could look out over a vast ocean of trees and view the woody waste. The natives he encountered along the way called the vast forest an island--Turtle Island (miskwaadesi minisaabik). The natives moved about the woody waste as the Phoenicians once traveled over the Mediterranean.
Vevney's knowledge of French served him well whenever he encountered a native, which was rarely, and was in disguise as a voyageur.
He had come to the fort via the Way of the Outaouacs. The Jesuits, the Black Robes, referred to people of widely different nations who traded with them as Outaouacs. They acted as middlemen in the system of trade with the French. They brought major suppliers of fur, the Crees, to Montreal to trade directly with the French. This was the case almost a hundred years ago. Nothing much had changed.
There was an odd assortment of Canucks and so-called pensioners, dwellers in the fort and outside it and camped in the surrounding forest. These pensioners were usually the elders of no distinction in the families they came from. They lived off the traders and many of them were addicted to spiritous liquors. There was a singular lack of children. The leaves had fallen off the trees.
Sartre, a Canuck, was well insulated in the moose blanket he wrapped himself in. He was a bit huffy with Vevney.
You might soon regret coming here, Ingleesh. Some Outaouacs are coming to visit you.
The French had the annoying habit of drawing out the last vowel sound in 'English' and accenting the syllable.
Well, the forest must have eyes, indeed. Vevney affected an air of hilarity. He thought nothing of Sartre's glibness and gave him the benefit of the doubt. The goods he had brought in the canoes were not only trifling presents for the Indians.
. . . the large body of water in the interior was like an island in the vast ocean of forest. It was normal for the Indians to live in the forest as it was for the Polynesians to live on the sea. Polynesians conceived of an island as a "hole" in the ocean. This conceiving of negative space is what accounts for the symbol of nothing the Polynesians invented, the zero. In other words, what is a peninsula to land people is a "bay" to the Polynesians. The penis of the sea intrudes into the female land. The bay is a penis of the sea. The sea is normal for the Polynesian sailor. The male is the sailor. The male is normal. The females dwell upon the land. To the landsman the peninsula or penis juts out into the ocean.
Ottawwaw Kitchegawme is the penis of Turtle Island.
The vastness of the forest overwhelmed Vevney. Here the trees were familiar to him though larger than in Europe. Aspen and birch grew abundantly and reached heights taller than they did in the northerly sections of the boreal forest, where he as an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company had come from on his journey to the abandoned British fort on one of the Great Lakes. Large game was abundant and he spotted a few times the great woodland deer the French call caribou. The reclusive moose he only saw once or twice. A native he met told him that the moose is difficult to track and has been reported to submerge itself under water for hours at a time, as if disappearing in a pond.
One native Vevney met during his journey told him that the Indians lived according to their dreams, as if they were dictates given to them at night during the state of dreaming. For Vevney it was hard to understand this conception of the dream, as if there were some great dream-work fabric, something that was an ongoing work in progress, a great weaving project being made like a carpet. According to this conception, a dream was not at all a goal in life to achieve, as Vevney thought. It was not as if one's attention is focused on the goal, as if focusing the lens of a microscope or telescope on some infinitesimally small or distant object. Rather, the dream-work allowed for unceasing digressions, as if one's attention during the day was a 360° circle that took everything into account. The greatest dreamers, the medicine men, could even go beyond the confines of this world, a kind of fourth dimensional view of things where the senses conflated things, such that they were not objects per se. The medicine men were in touch with dead spirits or autochthonous ghosts and even plant sprites. The native said these spirits were the manitous, including and especially animal spirits. It sounded like witchcraft to Vevney.
cruelty and bloodshed
cruelty and wanton bloodshed
have distinguished the career
of the savage . . . white or red
red or white
the American Indian has no monopoly upon
cruelty, rapine and thirst for human blood
To wit:
murder of Conestoga Indians in December, 1763
by some Pennsylvanians
murder of Moravian Indians at Schoenbrun, Salem,
and Gnadenhuetten by Williamson & assocs. with
tomahawks
murder of Logan's family at Yellow Creek by angry whites latter part of April, 1774
assassination of Bald Eagle (Delaware sachem) in May, 1774
Cornstalk & son Elinipsico
(Drake, p. 23)
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