Ishi - The Last Yahi Indian

Winter Steel ^ | FR Post 7-24-02 | Editorial Staff

[Pistias]

if you can't withstand ease you would fall quickly before cruelty

I disagree. Sometimes the easy road is more dangerous--a moment of revelation is, I should think, more likely standing over the body of a dead squaw than sitting in a cubicle.

[another cricket]

Maybe. Personally doubt it as once people get a taste of it they learn to justify it to themselves. But even if so, at that point someone is dead. Someone else just paid a high price for your revelation.

How do you balance the scales on something like that in your own heart and soul?

a.cricket

[Pistias]

Well, if the God of Abraham is in the equation, then that high price is really not that high, if the victim's soul was in order. But yes, I know what you mean about the taste for violence. But I think a parallel could be seen in a comparison of a heroin addict and a fanatical bridge player.

Sure, the heroin addict ruins his life; but by that very fact he may come to see his own penury. If bridge can come between a person and the duty of that person to God, then the effect is the same, no? And the bridge player might be in far worse trouble, because after all, "it's just a night with the ladies from the Club," isn't it?

[another cricket]

Well, if the God of Abraham is in the equation, then that high price is really not that high, if the victim's soul was in order.

And if not? And this price is still too high. Higher for the slaying of the innocent then the guilty. Would you be able to face it? Or would you rationalize it to yourself and thereby slip deeper into the pit.

Monsters are not born but self created bit by bit.

(How on earth did we end up here?)

a.cricket

[Pistias]

And this price is still too high

If it leads to a repentance that will save the killer?

LOL, no clue how we came so far afield.

[MARTIAL MONK]

The effects of culture are subtle but omnipresent. I have been around Indians all of my life and it is difficult to discern the familiar. I have farmed with Cherokee, drank with Souix, hunted with Apache and ridden with Navajo. Most are, at best, an ungainly fit in cubicleland. Put them in the back country, though, and they fit seemlessly with the ages. I am, or I was, a very good tracker. I could match them with skills but they made it seem easy. They did effortlessly what I had to work hard at. They are five generations away from the necessity but the culture that developed to foster the skills still fosters them.

I do not share your enamorment with Indian culture. The people who we now refer to as "raiders" and "warriors" were nothing more than brutes who would bash your brains out with a rock, cut your pecker off and stuff it in your mouth or torture you for hours with fire. Look what happens on FR when some moron barbecues a cat. Yet we ideolize a people who did a thousand times worse with human beings.

Still, Indian culture is distinct and at some time in the future our society may find a need for their cultural attributes. Indian kids run much freer than our suburban
kids. (This is a characteristic which draws every scumbag pedofile to reservation schools.) There is a certain charming naivete to their Huckleberry Finn upbringing but someday we may find a need for these kind of people to compensate for our cultural lapses. They can improvise and think and act independently where our kids can't. If they can find that niche then Indian culture will survive and thrive in our world. If they can't find that niche, Indian culture is a dead end street.

[texasbluebell]

Thanks for this reminder of that book...I need to go look for it now, among all the books I have kept over time...its worth a reread...

Yes, my copy is an old one one too, that I was lucky to get in some second hand book store years ago. I have it sitting out where I can often just look at the cover as I'm walking by, and it reminds me again of what a remarkable story it is. I love the old photos in it, and sometimes wonder what Ishi thought of it all.

[another cricket]

If it leads to a repentance that will save the killer?

Saving would be God's business not mine, as would the judging of the soul. I still would personally consider the price too high even if there was repentance. But I do not see repentance happening. If the person killed was a slave they would not have been considered human in the first place. So why repent? The thought would not have crossed your mind.

If they were a member of the tribe then you would not have time, most likely, to repent because you would be considered a danger to the tribe and you would be quickly removed.

Remember you are still thinking as Westerner would and not as a hunter gather would.

Careful that you don’t end up like Miniver Cheevy.

a.cricket

[Pistias]

They can improvise and think and act independently where our kids can't

Exactly. And given the choice, there's something in me that would rather be a capable savage than a civilized slave.

[Pistias]

Miniver Cheevy

?

[another cricket]

MINIVER CHEEVY

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

~Edwin Arlington Robinson

a.cricket

[Pistias]

LOL, thanks. Mourning lost virtue can be a vice too, I suppose.

[SunkenCiv]

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