[Edited]
Sometimes I’ve thought I needed a separate place to air some thoughts which might not seem to interest most of the readers of this blog. But no, you get the whole package right here.
Anyway the boys have been listening to some old Eddie Arnold music that Frank sent us which includes a song about Little Big Horn. This led to a little encyclopedia reading on Crazy Horse and George Armstrong Custer. When someone read the part in the article where Custer and his command were wiped out, I voiced a calm "three cheers," eliciting wondering and confused stares from all my cowboys. I asked one of them if the government was allowed to come to our door and tell us we had to move away to a place they had chosen to make room for others to live where we lived. I have to say the boy wasn’t too sure, so I figured it was time to quit the encyclopedia, and open the Bible, if I was ever going to explain to the boys why I would ever root for the Indians against the Cowboys.
I read them the story of greedy King Ahab, wicked Jezebel and righteous Naboth and Elijah. Jezebel was an early and unashamed advocate of the might makes right doctrine. And the story is good to show that not only kings, but nobles and elders can be not just wrong, but wickedly wrong. We talked about Naboth’s love for his land, which had been a family possession for generations, and how those with the ability have always been tempted to dispossess others unrighteously. (There is such a thing as righteous dispossession, but that’s not for this post.) I explained that the people we are a part of are very much susceptible to temptations to covetousness and greed, which are a big part of our history.
I then asked who was more likely to be on the right side of a fight: 1) A man fighting in his own country, or 2) A man who traveled a thousand miles to the fight? This seemed easier to get ahold of and I think it’s clear that the army that travels farthest to the war has the greater burden of proof. It’s not that they couldn’t be waging a just war, but they have to prove beyond doubt that they have not only the right but the duty to be there.
I think I need to have these conversations if we are going to continue to live in this country, where shipping young men (and women!) off to distant battlefields has been as much or more a part of our history than that of the Roman Empire, at least so far in our brief history. If we see another major terrorist attack, you can be sure that our government will waste no time in providing for conscription. Better to think things through now.
Of course this is not to say that the Sioux and Cheyenne were superior in every way. I do not believe the myth of peaceful natives living in harmony before the arrival of white people. Neither do I believe in the nonsense of manifest destiny and the unquestioned righteousness of the United States. The unrighteousness of Ahab is a separate issue from the righteousness of Naboth. Had Naboth spent each night drunk on the fruit of his vineyard, Ahab would have been just as wrong. We like to point at the aboriginal people of our country, making much of their primitive and pagan ways, but this is only an attempt to divert attention from our own faults, for which we will be held to a higher standard.
All in all I find the story of the Little Big Horn to be a rare but satisfying defeat of a force bent on government approved thievery. Crazy Horse, notwithstanding the normal native mystical bunk, was an unusual Sioux warrior, quiet and not given to boasting of his accomplishments, in contrast to Custer, a mouthy braggart. I find my sympathies more with those who were fighting on soil they and their fathers had known for generations, than those who were fighting for colonial, imperial aspirations.
On second thought this does not seem so far from the heart of this blog which is, after all, opposed to transience. The need to recognize your home and do your best to stay there applies to armies as well as families.
