On mornings from our deck, we can the reflection of the rising sun lighting up the Mt. Evans range in reds and rose and sparkling on the snow.  This is the part of the Rockies that forms the western view of Denver and the smaller towns in the Front Range of Colorado.  The mountain peak is named for territorial Governor John Evans who facilitated the slaughter of men, women, and children of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes in 1864.  He was forced to resign in disgrace, and yet the mountain was named for him.  Evanston, Illinois also bears his name but Mount Evans will soon be renamed, probably Mount Blue Sky.  There is still some dispute over the renaming process.  Some Native Americans are saying that “Blue Sky” is part of their religious heritage and the naming would appropriate their sacred beliefs. 

President Biden has restored the 3.2 million acre national heritage sites of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, areas that former President Trump had slashed to 200,000 acres and opened them up to mining and other development.  The Bears Ears national monument is sacred to Native Americans.  It is “a place of healing … a place of reverence and a sacred homeland to hundreds of generations of native peoples,” Biden said.

Biden has also opened to drilling the Alaskan Willow Project that some tribes oppose as destructive to their way of life.  In Arizona, Native people are suing to stop copper mining on sacred land.  Also in opposition to this project are Jews, Muslims, Catholics and other religious groups.

That religion is being cited as a fundamental in a land dispute is frequent in Indian affairs.  It is a core value among the Judeo-Christian religions as well.  In Land, How Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, Simon Winchester notes the John Winthrop, the governor of the early Bay Colony, proclaimed the it was man’s Christian duty to improve the land and fulfill the biblical injunction to “increase and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it.”  In fact the royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony was based on the long held claim that the king was a viceroy of God and since all land was God’s then it was the king’s right and duty to parcel it out as the king saw fit.  Popes, also “vicars of Christ on earth” also allotted vast areas of the Americas and Africa to Portuguese or Spain or whomever were in papal favor.

Native peoples hold a different view of land, although it is also a view support by the indigenous American sacred beliefs. Winchester notes that the Wampanoag tribe held a belief about land that resembled other early beliefs about land.  For the Jews, the Book of Leviticus proclaims that all land belonged to YHWH and that humanity was but a stranger on the land and had no right to possess it.  The Babylonians and the imperial Chinese had similar notions.

Nonetheless, the fact is that American hunger for more and more land was justified by religious beliefs. The whole idea of a Manifest Destiny is a religious justification for the push West.  The colonial land grab spread for a hundred years before King George III (who Winchester describes a “kindly farmer king”) called a halt.  He issued and edict that no more land west of the Appalachians could be bought or seized by the colonialists.  This, the Proclamation Line, was ignored but also resented and added to the grievances that sparked the revolution.  George Washington, the young land surveyor, hated the Proclamation and after the end of the French and Indian war claimed 32,000 acres of the land of the native Americans that was west of the King’s line.

And so the land grab proceeded west.  West for land for farms, for gold, and land for cattle.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed to Homestead Act allowing people to move west and acquire 160 acres by merely registering their claim.  Any citizen could claim land including freed slaves.  But native Americans were not citizens until the passage of the Snyder Act in 1924.  Earlier President Jefferson encouraged Indians to move west of the Mississippi with an offer of free land.  Then the vile President Jackson encouraged and mostly forced Indians to move to Indian Territory which became Oklahoma, later an area of massive land grabs by Whites.  

In the early days of the colonial settlements, lndian land was often settled by negotiation.  However, the native population had an entirely different view of what was meant by ownership of land. On Martha’s Vineyard in the 17^th century, the Wampanoag tribe agreed to some occupation by Massachusetts Bay colonists with some tribal leaders resisting.  A fascinating novel by Geraldine Brooks tell the story of   Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag Indian born in the 1646 on Martha’s Vineyard.  In Caleb’s Crossing, Brooks portrayed the relationship between the tribe and the colonialist as relatively peaceful with some of the native population wary and resentful of their White neighbors who view their land as a possession, restricting access to others, modifying it in their Christian efforts to develop, farm, and bring down a heavenly reward for improving God’s gift.  But Caleb sees the power of their Christian God and takes on the study of the Bible, as well as Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  In 1661, he is admitted to Harvard residing in the college’s Indian School which was funded by an English society devoted to converting the heathen “salvages” in the New World.  I do wonder if today’s students struggling to get into Harvard would be successful if their examination was not the SAT but a rigorous testing in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.  And then face four years of classes conducted entirely in Latin.  Another Wampanoag proves to be the top student in his graduating class but dies in a shipwreck just before graduation.  Caleb does graduate in 1665, the first Native American to do so.  He dies just months afterward from another colonial import, smallpox.

Smallpox was brought to North America in the early 1600’s and swept westward among the native tribes crossing the Mississippi River killing tens of thousands. On toward the Rockies it swept for more than a century decimating and nearly extinguishing some tribes. There are 6 to 8 million Native Americans today.  There were an estimated 60 million when the “Catholic Queen” Isabella I sent off Christopher Columbus.  The reduction in population reduces the power and influence of the indigenous tribes, but their land claims based on sacred values may overcome white resistance. Or not.

A reminder from Adriel: this ain’t an academic paper so I don’t document, cite, or follow the MLA stylesheet. So here is something from one of my favorite philosophers:

Bertrand Russell once said, “An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”

By mid-morning I had arrived at the county courthouse in response to an “urgent” request by County Judge R. In Kentucky, the county Judge-Executive is the chief elected official and chair of the “Fiscal Court” which serves as the county’s ruling management and legislative body. I’m happy to say that the Judge-Executive has no judicial powers, and has had none for the last 40 or 50 years. Nonetheless, these county administrators yield considerable political power.
When I checked in at his office, Judge R was occupied in fixing a traffic ticket for a loyal constituent. I walked across the hall to the restroom to drain my radiator. Inside I was there were no stalls, but rather, I was presented with two commodes quite in the open, one occupied. There sat a pleasant fellow reading the county bird cage liner. Noticing my hesitation, the reader waved me on in with a hearty welcome. I am not at all shy, but I credit myself as remarkably brave in accomplishing my task with the appearance of poise and equanimity.
Relieved of my discomfort, I met with the judge. He apologized for keeping me waiting while he helped out an old friend who always reminded the winner of an election that he had voted for him and so did all his cousins, regardless of the truth. A fine old feller, the judge said, but half drunk half the time. Judge R took me to lunch at a diner near the river and after sharing a plate of fried vegetables (I declined the chicken), he set me on my task. This involved getting signatures on some document, I forget what it was, from two parties. It required driving to two separate towns in another two counties at some distance.

As the sun was setting I crossed the river bridge and headed back to the courthouse. The old building was open and His Honor was on the phone making another deposit to the favor bank. He thanked me profusely for bringing the executed documents and apologized for keeping me so late.

I told him it wasn’t a problem. In that job I often worked well into the night but it did concern me a good deal that in that county a disagreement was generally settled by gunfire. The local County Attorney got pissed at his son-in-law a few months prior and put two slugs in the young boy. An employee of mine was on the grand jury for that one but it failed to indict: she told me that after all, the boy lived. Another employee of mine had done his own shooting I discovered. Ten years before he shot the Postmaster dead on the steps of the Post Office. Told me the fellow was foolin’ with his wife and anyway, he drew first.

I said I was glad to help but I was eager to cross the river to home before it was fully dark. But why? Well, hell Judge, this whole county is armed to the teeth and ready to fire. I can see in my memory clearly the judge and I were standing in the dimly light hall as he locked up. He said you know, you’re so right, that’s why I always carry Lil’ Alice here. Out of his coat pocket he pulled a small pearl handled pistol and waved it high to I could see. Well, that was a comfort.