Posted on 11/24/2005 5:13:54 PM PST by lainie
ALCATRAZ ISLAND, United States (AFP) - A tribal chant rose from a thousands-strong prayer circle on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay as Native Americans held a sunrise "Unthanksgiving Day" ceremony.
"What we call it is Unthanksgiving," Bear Lincoln of the Wailikie Tribe told AFP as he waved burning sage to purify the area and ward off evil spirits.
"It was the saddest day for us. It was a big mistake for us to help the Pilgrims survive that first winter. They betrayed us once they got their strength."
Traditional Thanksgiving feasting in the United States is a tribute to the meal the original European Pilgrims shared with the Native Americans who helped them survive in the new land.
An estimated 3,000 people packed onto ferries that set out from Fisherman's Wharf for Alcatraz in the pre-dawn darkness Thursday, according to organizers.
A bonfire blazed at the center of a prayer circle set up on a bluff beneath the Alcatraz lighthouse. And at the base of the rock wall leading up to the ruins of the former federal prison were a pair of Indian teepees.
"Ultimately, this is their land," said Irma Pinedo, a Mexico City native who was among the Aztec dancers taking part in the ceremony. "For us, no turkey today."
Turkey, which nearly became the national bird in the United States instead of the eagle, is the main course at traditional Thanksgiving dinners.
"I take my children to this every year because I want them to understand there is another side to the story," said 41-year-old Erin Alexander, who added that the event has grown significantly since she began attending 12 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.netscape.cnn.com ...
Old World disease wiped out the Indians. For the most part if every Spaniard in the Americas from 1492 to 1550 had stood shoulder to shoulder and begun slaughtering Indians marching toward them, they'd never have run out of Indians.
There are some very good books on the arrival of the Spanish. One is called The Conquest of Peru and Mexico. Originally in Spanish and French, it was translated into English over a century ago. It's written against a background of primary and secondary records ~ not just third party opinions. I've found it to be a very good genealogical source as well.
I'd like to note here that the Indians would have eventually been wiped out by those very same diseases even if they'd been technologically superior to the Europeans they encountered, and had conquered the Old World.
We'd be telling a history about how they spilled out of the Americas and created havoc in Europe, but then one day they just died (which is how we came to take over their homeland).
***"I take my children to this every year because I want them to understand there is another side to the story,"***
If they don't like our peaches, don't shake our tree.
There is nothing to prevent them from going back and living as their stone age ancestors did.
The Indians should be happy. They are getting all those outsourcing software jobs....
The Aztecs "domesticated" the turkey. Guess eating that stuff over a period of many generations does things to your brain.
And most still vote Democrat.
They then produced to whuth lots and lots and lots of people.
In the American Revolution the Oneida were American allies and saved the Revolution more than once.
Just where did you learn your American Indian history anyway? Sounds like Souvrn' Mexico or something ~ maybe Argentina?
***You left out "drunk".***
They are not drunk. They are having religious visions.
I agree. The Indians wouldn't have "lost" their land if they understood the concept of property rights to begin with. They didn't, and a paleolithic people simply weren't going to retain their hunter/gatherer nascent agrarian lifestyle in the face of societies that had engaged in global circumnavigation and could predict planetary movements with mathematical formulas.
They were first.
Guarantee your people were napping flint and these guys had figured out copper.
I know it's a matter of convienience to dismiss the complaints of the indigenous peoples but they were tricked into trading valuable land for essentially worthless baubels, slaughtered if they resisted the movement of whites into their countries, slaughtered if they didn't resist, treatied with at the point of a gun, victimized by germ warfare with the deliberate spreading of polio into native communities, and on and on. No Europeans ever moved into an area that was not already the Country of an indigenous population. Does might make right in the taking of their land?
I think the real questions are, "Did Manifest Destiny, Devine Right or whatever other rational is given, really justify the slaughter of peoples, nations and tribes in order to steal their land? And if land is stolen does the weaker party have a right to have their land given back? Does time transfer the rights to the land that was taken from decimated peoples to the decendants of the victors?"
whining loosers.
***I'd like to note here that the Indians would have eventually been wiped out by those very same diseases even if they'd been technologically superior to the Europeans they encountered, and had conquered the Old World.
We'd be telling a history about how they spilled out of the Americas and created havoc in Europe, but then one day they just died.****
Kind of like the Martians in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H.G. Wells.
Certainly the Old world diseases had a lot to do with the deaths. I am aware of it through various sources over the years, although I have not read the book you recommend, and will check it out.
I was trying to make the point that the native tribes of North America have much to be thankful for. Their lives are much better than they would be in, say Ecuador.
You know those Indians in Mexico? They're not really all that "pure". Actually, there can be NO "pure" Indians because the Old World "childhood" diseases kill them quite readily. It's not just smallpox ~
There is only one God. I guess you and your ancestors didn't have Him on your side.
Good luck with that "ward off evil spirits" bit too.
Pantheism is paganism.
The Spaniards did not wipe out the Incas. They are still there in Peru and Bolivia.
That is nonsense. Copper has been mined in the Old World for thousands of years, since prehistoric times. Some of the oldest copper-ore deposits of antiquity were in the Sinai, Syria, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iberia and Central Europe.
Exactly. And even if the local Indians had slaughtered the Pilgrims, and even if they had done the same to Jamestown, the European conquest would still have happened. American Indians didn't have the unity or military might to permanently prevent what happened.
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