Cartoon by Jeff Parker – Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com – http://www.cagle.com/news/Thanksgiving09/main.asp
I saw this cartoon and I had to share it with everyone. It says so much of the worldview of our conservative brethran, and yet if it was the shoe on the other foot…
Morning Monk, this is a keeper, thanks…..LOL
Very good, Monk, and very fitting!
It’s good to wake up to a hot cup of coffee and a laugh!
Although funny, I believe that Native Americans lived by higher moral standards than any Republican ever could.
So true, Kalima. At the moment I’m reading a biography of Sampson Occum, a New England native American of the late 18th century, who was, apparently, a lot more enlightened than the guys who “civilized” him! Fascinating story.
American Indians have a term that translates as “cannibals” for people who eat up everything around them, including other people’s lives. That is what they called the people from Europe.
There’s a lot written about why American Indians didn’t fight back the way they could have. And there’s also some interesting history about the native people in Brazil, who took an entirely different approach to the Portuguese who landed there — which was to kill them all off — until the Portuguese decided that they had to intermarry with the population in order to earn the right to stay.
Nellie: I have a concern when we say “the American Indians had a term…” in that it acts like the indigenous natives of this continent had a unified language base. Quite the contrary.
Perhaps 300 languages were spoken in Canada and the United States when the first Europeans arrived, and about 200 are still spoken by some 300,000 people. The American explorer and ethnologist John Wesley POWELL presented the first comprehensive classification of the languages north of Mexico in 1891, dividing them into 58 families. Various scholars have subsequently proposed consolidation of Powell’s families into a smaller number of phyla, with the most influential of these classifications credited to Edward Sapir. C.F. and F.M. Voegelin introduced the most widely accepted modern classification of American Indian languages, grouping most of the languages of the United States and Canada into seven macrophyla, with a few families and language isolates left unclassified
from http://www.indians.org/welker/americas.htm
My family is Chickahominy. I am painfully aware of the diversity of the native population here. Our own language is all but extinct, although I’m told it is very similar to Lenape — one of the fortunate few enjoying a language renaissance right now.
I’m speaking in a general terms because I guess in relation to the landing of the Europeans, I tend to refer to the eastern woodland indians — as my mother called her relatives — who were connected in many ways. These are not isolated groups. We have many conferderations, such as the Iroquois, we have many conquering and unifying concerns, such as the Powatan — who incorporated the Chickahominy, for example.
So yes, there are distinctions, but also there are unifying principles.
Nellie, I meant no offense. I just have great issues with how far too many people act as though “they’re all the same”. Different environments, different cultures, different ethics and beliefs permeate the American natives as much as they did any other distribution of people throughout the world.
No offense taken. People are always more casual when talking about their own “peeps.” Mom used to use the phrase Injun Joe as a joke.
But god forbid anyone else could say it! Except maybe me…
Hey Nellie, What area is the “eastern woodlands?” Where are the Chickahominy from? Any connection with “hominy” or am I just grasping at straws?
We are the people who were hosting Pocahontas and her dad, Chief Powatan, when John Smith arrived. My cousin recently participated in the 500 anniversary celebration in VA. We’re located on the Chickahominy River in Virginia. And yes, our name does have something to do with Hominy. It translates to the Stone Ground Corn Eating People!
But the eastern woodlands stretch all the way from Canada to Florida — imagine such a great forest before the land was so intensely developed. And the tribes that lived along that area shared many of the same traditions, philosophies. Because they dealt with each other. And whether the English landed in Massachusetts or Virginia, they were met with people who were willing to help them. Except for that Jamestown thing…
Interesting stuff. Hard to believe that was 500 years ago.
The local Arapaho tribe here in Colorado called the white man “spider people,” because they kept building webs of roads everywhere.