[firewalk]

bttt

[Agnes Heep]

For an excellent, firsthand account of the Mandans and other tribes, read George Catlin's Letters and Notes on the North American Indians. Catlin greatly admired the Indians and lamented their slow decline as the result of encroaching white civilization, but he was no PC sentimentalist (as if such a thing could have existed in the nineteenth century) and wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade. His book is entertaining and highly instructive. Anyone who reads it will emerge from the experience with a far better regard for the North American Indians than he could obtain by listening to our modern activists.

[Experiment 6-2-6]

"Non-native people [have been] telling what happened," she said. "That needs to be corrected. We don't want tourists wandering aimlessly across sacred sites, indigenous grasses and other places that are important to us -- and without understanding any of it."

During my national tour of '95, I had the opportunity to drive through South Dakota and visited the "monument" at Wounded Knee.

The amazing thing about Wounded Knee is that it was bad enough the first time there was a "battle" there. Not much has changed since. Fortunately for the indigenous grasses, there ain't that many tourists who show up there.