tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post5552492600581439969..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Squaring the Circle: Intrusion, Dispossession, Supercession at "Burning Indian Mound"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-57784980048622289212013-07-12T04:42:05.888-07:002013-07-12T04:42:05.888-07:00Same location, two hundred years on.
Once they...<a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/wiliam-strode-rivers-clouded-glory-on.html" rel="nofollow">Same location, two hundred years on</a>.<br /><br />Once they'd overrun Paradise they'd naturally have to pave it -- and then pollute it.<br /><br />But alas, America never had its Milton. <br /><br />Odd when you stop and think of it, really, a country "founded" by Puritans, always invoking old Puritan dreads.<br /><br />Who could have made a bid to be the American Milton, I wonder? Surely not Lowell, though he'd have the closest kit -- but of course Milton was not whacko -- Berryman, if not drunk? But then, Milton had not only with his writings taken a critical role in but was a student of history. American poets aren't meant to be that, are they?TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-5111858771496599302013-07-12T03:04:22.352-07:002013-07-12T03:04:22.352-07:00In the early spring of 1774 Boone set out to visit...In the early spring of 1774 Boone set out to visit the grave of his oldest son, James, who along with another young white man had been brutally slain in a retaliatory raid by a group of Indians (Delaware, Shawnee, Cherokee) while trekking with a supply party. Others in the party had died in a first Indian attack. Later a formidable Cherokee warrior named Big Jim, whom Boone had encountered more than once in the woods, had methodically torn the nails from the two boys' hands and feet, so that before being killed they had begged for death rather than mercy. In this period massacres were common on both sides of the settler/Indian territorial confrontation. Discouraged by the news of the atrocities, some of Boone's company of settlers pulled up stake and retreated across the Appalachians to North Carolina, whence they had come. Daniel and Rebecca and the rest of the family had stayed on.<br /><br />On his trip through the woods to the massacre site, Boone was met by a group of white hunters. Taken aback by his appearance, they initially took him to be an Indian. One of them later recalled him, "dressed in deerskin colored black, his hair plaited and clubbed up", after the Indian fashion.<br /><br />In some ways an instrument of history, in other ways its agent, in the end perhaps Boone was more its victim than anything else. A witness to the genocide that wrote the story of America in the blood of the previous inhabitants of the continent. But not always a willing participant in the process of European expansion into the "New World". And finally a regretful, bitter, rueful rememberer of a tale of conquest and dispossession in which he had played a part he probably never fully understood.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70612799765446354482013-07-12T03:02:34.870-07:002013-07-12T03:02:34.870-07:00I hear you, all.
And hey, Kevin, who here is not...I hear you, all. <br /><br />And hey, Kevin, who here is not getting old?<br /><br />About that Catlin painting -- Smithsonian file notes:<br /><br />"George Catlin recorded that when Pah-te-cóo-saw came to sit for his portrait, he had decorated his face 'in a very curious manner with black and red paint.' The warrior has slightly European features and appears to be wearing a European shirt and coat. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 49, 1841; reprint 1973.)"<br /><br />This period was transitional, before the victory was complete.<br /><br />The Shawnees were serious adversaries. No games, only serious. They had organizers. They served as a kind of pan-Indian force, incorporating the adversarial pride of the other tribes who were being pushed West, as they had been.<br /><br />Their great leader of the time Tecumseh. Was a bit too much to handle, in that transitional time. A rabble rouser, potential. He died early, of a white-eyes dirty trick.<br /><br />Boone's time however, a generation earlier, was a time when for the Shawnees all did not yet seem lost.<br /><br />Boone the legend, Boone the man. Two different stories.<br /><br />The former an unlettered frontiersman in a coonskin lid, savvy to unmapped trails, wise to ways of back woods, guiding first bands of white-eyes settlers across mountains into Ohio Valley, building reputation as the bravest Indian fighter of his day, repelling a Shawnee raid upon Boonesborough, the first white settlement in "Kentucke", but refusing permanent settlement himself; when another white family put down roots seventy miles from their home, telling his wife Rebecca, "Old woman, we must move, they are crowding us"; and ending up alone and unhappy on the last frontier in Missouri. <br /><br />The other Boone nobody's fool, abhorring fur headgear, preferring a broad-brimmed hat, literate indeed and carrying a copy of Gulliver's Travels for reading by firelight on his long hunting junkets, working as an an advance scout for the premier land speculator of the time, Richard Henderson, leading settlers into Kentucky to buy up sections of Henderson's enormous land tracts at enormous profit to his employer, but little gain to himself; In defense of his own interests, then conspiring with the Shawnees against the white settlers; becoming the adoptive son of Shawnee chief Blackfish, taking a Shawnee name (Sheltowee = Big Turtle), siding during the Revolution with the British, after the war being charged with treason by the Americans; fleeing bitterly to Femme Osage to end his days. <br /><br />Surrounded by a world of violence, cruelty and bloody hostilities, Boone remained his own man -- a family man at that -- and an exception among the white men of that time and place in never becoming a hater of Indians. It is doubtful any white man of his time knew them so well, really. What he was not able to learn about and love in Nature on his own he was taught by them. He may have felt at least half Indian himself. As an old man he acknowledged with some reluctance that over the years he had been forced to take the lives of three Indians -- adding that "I am sorry to say that I ever killed any, for they have always been kinder to me than the whites."TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-19159964820051757992013-07-11T18:42:04.927-07:002013-07-11T18:42:04.927-07:00All day long I've been thinking about the term...All day long I've been thinking about the term "Semicivilized" applied in the descriptions of images of some of the remarkable human beings in your post, Tom. I interpret the term to mean that they still were somewhat civilized despite having taken on some of the attributes (the clothing, for example) of the barbarian conquerers of Ohio, Kentucky and the rest of the now devastated continent.<br /><br />I am also still contemplating the adoption into the tribe of the prisoner Daniel Boone as a contrast to sending him to the equivalent of Gitmo.<br /><br />I remain struck by the information that Boone continued to hunt with Shawnee friends on occasion, in later life, after the fighting, the adoption into the tribe, the whole history (like some boys game played by big boys with real guns and knives). I don't recall whether I found the information about hunting with old opponents, now friends, on your wide ranging post or in some searching I did to find out more. I doubt that the Native Americans ever thought of it as a game, or ever foresaw such hideous, powerful, two-faced, fork-tongued adversaries. Daniel Boone evidently sensed that he was defiling something sacred but did not have the strength of character or consciousness to just desert his compatriots, and really, who would? Edward Snowden?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15235344408979987198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49595620541314456592013-07-11T16:27:44.052-07:002013-07-11T16:27:44.052-07:00For what it's worth, I grew up right in the mi...For what it's worth, I grew up right in the middle of Ohio Country. There was an even an old (very old) Indian mound not far from my house.<br /><br />And now that I'm getting so old, I'm astonished at how long its been since I've given any of it a thought, until just now.-K-https://www.blogger.com/profile/03289562368002376807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35795417698025754422013-07-11T07:53:54.627-07:002013-07-11T07:53:54.627-07:00re native Americans and one poet’s take i’d rec...re native Americans and one poet’s take i’d recommend the following which aired earlier in the year<br />http://billmoyers.com/2013/04/11/live-chat-with-sherman-alexie/<br /><br />i like his poem about Mt Rushmore that most “permanent” memorial to white culture Read here:<br />http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/2009/10/from-vilify-part-i.html<br />Dalriadahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12004167335881293080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89345202909447446802013-07-11T03:33:59.001-07:002013-07-11T03:33:59.001-07:00And by the by, let's not forget the local arti...And by the by, let's not forget <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/failed-artist.html" rel="nofollow">the local artists</a>...TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-41784043221783430382013-07-11T03:09:06.288-07:002013-07-11T03:09:06.288-07:00By the by, has anyone but me been wondering how Bu...By the by, has anyone but me been wondering how Burning Indian Mound got its name??<br /><br />And speaking of comparative cultural anthropology and burial sites, as we were (well, as I was), it's perhaps interesting to note the curious proximity of Burning Indian Mound to the Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery.<br /><br />To paraphrase the hoary old saying about Rome, in this area, all Hitler Roads appear to lead to both Burning Indian Mound and the Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery.<br /><br />On <a href="http://ohio.hometownlocator.com/maps/feature-map,ftc,1,fid,1080581,n,burning%20indian%20mound.cfm" rel="nofollow">this site map</a>, Burning Indian Mound is indicated by the red marker. The grey box located 1/4 mi. to the southeast (where Hitler Road #1 meets Hitler Road # 2) indicates the Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery.<br /><br />Just saying.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-66399861672496399962013-07-11T01:12:01.541-07:002013-07-11T01:12:01.541-07:00"The Adena also carved small stone tablets, u..."The Adena also carved small stone tablets, usually 4 or 5 inches by 3 or 4 inches by .5 inches thick. On one or both flat sides were gracefully composed stylized zoomorphs or curvilinear geometric designs in deep relief. Paint has been found on some Adena tablets, leading archaeologists to propose that these stone tablets were probably used to stamp designs on cloth or animal hides, or onto their own bodies. Its possible they were used to outline designs for tattooing.<br /><br />"The Adena ground stone tools and axes. Somewhat rougher slab-like stones with chipped edges were probably used as hoes. Bone and antler were used in small tools but even more prominently in ornamental objects such as beads, combs, and worked animal-jaw gorgets or paraphernalia. Spoons, beads and other implements were made from the marine conch. A few copper axes have been found, but otherwise the metal was hammered into ornamental forms, such as bracelets, rings, beads, and reel-shaped pendants."<br /><br />Each mound site seems to have served a particular local community. How did these people live, judging again by the archaeological evidence?<br /><br />"The large and elaborate mound sites served a nearby scattering of people. The population was dispersed in small settlements of one to two structures. A typical house was built in a circle form from 15 to 45 feet in diameter. The walls were made of paired posts tilted outward, joined to other wood to form a cone shaped roof. The roof was then covered with bark and the walls may have been bark and/or wickerwork."<br /><br />"Their subsistence was acquired through foraging and the cultivation of native plants."<br /><br />Their diet appears to have been free of trans-fats, chemical additives & c. They hunted deer, elk, black bear, woodchuck, beaver, porcupine, turkey, trumpeter swan, ruffed grouse. They gathered several edible seed grasses and nuts. They cultivated pumpkin, squash, sunflower, and goosefoot.<br /><br />They don't seem to have been particularly adept in the arts of war, however. In any case, no martial paraphernalia has turned up. Whether or not they liked to beat people up is hard to tell for sure, but they left no records of their wars, victorious or otherwise. The lack of such evidence really shouldn't be so surprising. That's the thing about non-aggressive cultures. They tend to disappear.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-2299301241863911362013-07-11T01:10:01.344-07:002013-07-11T01:10:01.344-07:00As to the Adena mound-builders, who were they, and...As to the Adena mound-builders, who were they, and what exactly did they preserve in their mounds (apart, of course, from the corpses of the ancestors)?<br /><br />Some clues from site digs.<br /><br />"These mounds were built using hundreds of thousands of baskets full of specially selected and graded earth. According to archaeological investigations, Adena mounds were usually built as part of burial ritual, in which the earth of the mound was piled immediately atop a burned mortuary building. These mortuary buildings were intended to keep and maintain the dead until their final burial was performed. Before the construction of the mounds, some utilitarian and grave goods would be placed on the floor of the structure, which was burned with the goods and honored dead within. The mound would then be constructed, and often a new mortuary structure would be placed atop the new mound. After a series of repetitions, mound/mortuary/mound/mortuary, a quite prominent earthwork would remain. In the later Adena period, circular ridges of unknown function were sometimes constructed around the burial mounds. Adena mounds stood in isolation from domestic living areas."<br /><br />Any enquiry into contemporary cultural practises involving burial will exhume some bizarre information. For example, the surprisingly common (I've looked into this, phaw!) recent custom of people insisting on, and succeeding in, being buried with their cell phones. Wouldn't want to miss an important call... but let us not digress,<br /><br />The Adena didn't have cell phones. What then did they have, judging by the burial mound evidence? Well, art, for one thing. Food, for another. Tools, for a third.<br /><br />"Art motifs that became important to many later Native Americans began with the Adena. Motifs such as the weeping eye and cross and circle design became mainstays in many succeeding cultures. Many pieces of art seemed to revolve around shamanic practices, and the transformation of humans into animals—particularly birds, wolves, bears and deer—and back to human form. This may indicate a belief that the practice imparted the animals' qualities to the wearer or holder of the objects. Deer antlers, both real and constructed of copper, wolf, deer and mountain lion jawbones, and many other objects were fashioned into costumes, necklaces and other forms of regalia by the Adena. Distinctive tubular smoking pipes, with either flattened or blocked-end mouthpieces, suggest the offering of smoke to the spirits. The objective of pipe smoking may have been altered states of consciousness, achieved through the use of the hallucinogenic plant Nicotiana rustica. All told, Adena was a manifestation of a broad regional increase in the number and kind of artifacts devoted to spiritual needs.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-66391767379880075022013-07-11T01:08:42.994-07:002013-07-11T01:08:42.994-07:00Wooden Boy (Duncan), my dear friend and careful re...Wooden Boy (Duncan), my dear friend and careful reader, the contradiction does indeed reveal a bit of the complication of the character.<br /><br />"The man who can write, 'All things were still' and talk of those seventeen scalps with no trace of discomfort is very hard to nail."<br /><br />Always difficult to nail a man who who keeps moving.<br /><br />Unknown (Harris), my dear friend and careful reader, you have hit upon the hidden bonus death's head moth hibernating inside the crackerjack box.<br /><br />This post was originally three times its present size. Construction of the original post was a near-death experience. In fact, it may have been an actual death experience. Since that work, I've felt more dead than alive. So like, where's my mound, please? <br /><br />In any case, the original post delved at some length into burial practises, comparing what is known from archaeological research of the contents of Adena culture burial mounds and what may be seen of contemporary burial sites in the Circleville area.<br /><br />Starting with the latter: the burial business in the Circleville area is and for a very long time has been monopolized by the Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery, so that particular site became an obvious focal point of study.<br /><br /><a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&q=hitler-ludwig+cemetery,+circleville,+ohio&fb=1&gl=us&hq=hitler-ludwig+cemetery,&hnear=0x88477783eaeafdab:0xbc6d10ec145d89b7,Circleville,+OH&cid=0,0,14276506234422554906&ei=uVneUa3PMOaXiAK33oDYAg&ved=0CIMBEPwSMAM" rel="nofollow">Map showing location of Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery, near the junction of Hitler Road#1 and Hitler Road#2, Circleville, Ohio</a><br /><br />A virtual tour with some interesting photos: <a href="http://www.graveaddiction.com/hitler.html" rel="nofollow">Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery, Circleville, Ohio</a><br /><br />Photos of particular interest: large memorial; child's gravestone; entrance; sleeping children statues; storage.<br /><br />The neighborhood is dotted with the remnants of many cultures: Adena; Hopewell; Fort Ancient; and so on down to <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/george-seferis-white-eyes.html" rel="nofollow">White Eyes</a>.<br /><br />The Hitler industry, as I have said, has dominated the death industry in Circleville throughout the White Eyes Period.<br /><br />It's been asked by some, why not give the cemetery a slightly less... er macabre, would that be the word... name? <br /><br />Darn good question. Seems a certain heavy-hitting local business family has had a stake in preserving the name.<br /><br />But mind, the cemetery is not the only place in town that bears that moniker. There is, for example, a slough.<br /><br /><a href="http://hipcodes.com/43113/Hitler_Pond" rel="nofollow">Map showing Hitler Pond, Circleville, Ohio</a><br /><br />Birds and plants, of course, don't give a hoot (shriek?) whether a slough or a pond is named after Hitler, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha or George Washington.<br /><br /><a href="http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2008/07/hitler-pond.html" rel="nofollow">Hitler Pond at Ohio Birds and Biodiversity</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89389809208319461622013-07-10T14:53:15.152-07:002013-07-10T14:53:15.152-07:00A provocative and inspired work -- Beautiful, sad...A provocative and inspired work -- Beautiful, sad -- nights well spent – squaring the circle backwards into the history of the roots of the mall (Hitler Road #2?) and true savagery. Thanks Tom<br /><br />HarrisUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15235344408979987198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47400078366335825322013-07-10T11:47:38.800-07:002013-07-10T11:47:38.800-07:00The burial mound is beautiful.The burial mound is beautiful.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74004772038983992742013-07-10T11:47:01.188-07:002013-07-10T11:47:01.188-07:00"a war of intrusion". He is an honest ad..."a war of intrusion". He is an honest adventurer and that's a rare thing.<br /><br />The man who can write, "All things were still" and talk of those seventeen scalps with no trace of discomfort is very hard to nail. Not lovable but fascinating.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36201267970979081802013-07-10T09:08:07.734-07:002013-07-10T09:08:07.734-07:00An earlier expedition:
The Late Life of Mr. Boone...An earlier expedition:<br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/late-life-of-mr-boone.html" rel="nofollow">The Late Life of Mr. Boone</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-27489741160558130852013-07-10T09:00:46.728-07:002013-07-10T09:00:46.728-07:00Steve,
Boone is an interesting figure. No single ...Steve,<br /><br />Boone is an interesting figure. No single individual did more to assist the expulsion of the Shawnee peoples from the Ohio Valley -- whence they'd already been pushed from the coastal colonies as the waves of settlers poured in, following the restless frontiersman with their property-owning claims and real-estate deals. Boone himself was a terrible businessman and lost his shirt more than once. And as the settlers came down the river, he was continually feeling crowded and moving on to the West himself -- eventually ending up in the Osage, standing at the dock in his eighties as Lewis and Clark took off up the Missouri toward Oregon. The thing he loved best were his "long hunts", and on those he employed skills he had learnt from the Shawnees. In the choice of words here -- perhaps helped along a bit by the chroniclers -- we see the candour that makes his late reminiscences of the origins of the settler-Indian conflict surprisingly credible. Words like "intrusion", in the passage from the memoir in Filson's book, and "dispossess", in the edition of Audobon's journals -- the implication of an acknowledgment, perhaps tacit, of trespass.<br /><br />In the struggle that had gone on in the West as a continuation of the Revolution, and would continue for the twenty years it took for the tribes to finally be subdued, he played a considerable part, but when he speaks of it in old age there is something almost wistful, a melancholy. Still he was no sentimentalist, and too honest not to admit that in the American invasion of Indian country there had never been any great innocence on the part of the invaders, in their dealings with the "Savages".TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-19368554663374513472013-07-10T07:29:14.266-07:002013-07-10T07:29:14.266-07:00Tom,
"We Virginians had for some time been w...Tom,<br /><br />"We Virginians had for some time been waging a war of intrusion upon them, and I, amongst the rest, rambled through the woods in pursuit of their race, as I now would follow the tracks of [a] ravenous animal." <br /><br />. . .not the Daniel Boone one grew up reading tales of -- a major research project here, for which all thanks.<br /><br />7.10<br /><br />light coming into fog against invisible<br />ridge, song sparrow calling from branch<br />in foreground, wave sounding in channel<br /><br /> explaining that depended on<br /> “that,” view observed<br /><br /> becomes it, what we come to<br /> know, fact of what is<br /><br />grey white fog against invisible ridge,<br />white line of wave breaking in channel<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-39909999250211297642013-07-10T07:02:11.820-07:002013-07-10T07:02:11.820-07:00See:
Circleville, Summer 1938See: <br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/ben-shahn-circleville-ohio-summer-1938.html" rel="nofollow">Circleville, Summer 1938</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com