American Beauty – III

Dear Sir,

According to historians, the native population of the Americas plummeted by an estimated 80 per cent, from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650. Massacres such as the one at Wounded Knee occurred across the land. Other methods for ‘Indian Removal’ and ‘clearing’ included military slaughter of tribal villages, bounties on native scalps, and ‘biological warfare’ where British agents  gave the native tribes blankets which were intentionally contaminated with smallpox. Over 100,000 died among the Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee and other Ohio River nations. Others died during forced marches at bayonet-point to relocation settlements.

Sir, I am sure you know that this exodus of native peoples to Indian Territory is known as the Trail of Tears. More than 100,000 American-Indians eventually crossed the Mississippi River under the authority of the Indian Removal Act. As I drove through the earliest colonies of the US, I tried to imagine what it must have been like, to be herded like cattle, forcibly removed from the land which held the bones of your ancestors, which held the seed which would issue forth rich harvests in time to come. What does it feel like, Sir, to go into exile, to be severed from the land which has nurtured you, the sky which has sheltered you?

As we drove past quaint country hamlets, complete with post office and corner grocery store offering maple syrup and Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream, amongst other delights, I could not but remember the words of the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish who wrote about exile:  “What have we done, Mother, to die twice, once in life and once in death!”  But that is another story, Mr President, which shall require more of your time and patience. For the moment let me get back to the first wars which the colonialists, the soon to be Americans, fought against persons like Chief Seattle, famous for the most beautiful and profound homage to nature ever spoken.  Let me share with you his haunting words, spoken in response to a proposed treaty under which the Indians in the area now known as Washington State, were persuaded to sell two million acres of land for $150,000:

“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people… Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man. The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth… and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man — all belong to the same family.”

Sir, as I stood on the platform of the tiny train station at Whitehall, waiting for the Montrealer to take me back to New York, a strange stench of death suspended itself in the otherwise unspoiled air. I had not noticed this while driving past the abandoned buildings, the antique shops shut down for want of customers, the coffee shops deserted, warehouses boarded up. Yes, there was the smell of dereliction and decrepitude, a soggy mustiness, as if life itself had gone to seed in this tiny town. But the stench of blood?  Could it be wafting across the fields from the abattoir I had seen on the way here? A meat packing business was all that seemed to be flourishing in small town America, and the smell of animal blood mingled with the memory of atrocities committed in the name of America, in this land and others, far away.

The afternoon lingered on like a bad memory, and I listened inside myself for Chief Seattle’s words: “This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors”.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th, 2010.