Years back, Darlene and I were riding our motorcycles across the Northwest, and we’d see signs of Indians – Chippewa Forest, Sioux Pass, Apache Junction, Pueblo Road, and so on. However, we didn’t see many Indians. Then we’d find some, located in small communities, in trailer parks and scattered in houses on barren land areas, places we gave them that didn’t have much value or real beauty.

But after all, they were uneducated, undomesticated savages, right? It was only after we watched a PBS series on TV called “How the West was Lost” did we realize that Indians are real people.

I think all tribes believed in a higher spiritual being, they married, they hunted, fished, raised families, had moral code and ethics. They didn’t even believe in lying. Their order was much like “white folks”.

Sure, they had wars, mostly over territory and against the “bad” ones who were renegades, like the Taliban and drug cartels are to us now. There were some tribes who robbed, kidnapped and raped, but most were very civilized.

I remember reading a true story in history, about how the white people wanted the Indians to become Christians, because that’s what we believed in at that time. (Kind of like us pushing democracy down the throat of every other country these days) Anyway, a minister cut up some potatoes and gave half to the local Indian tribe. The whites and Indians planted them all in the same area at a ceremony. The minister blessed “his” potatoes and told the Indians to bless their potatoes by their god.

Well, the Indians’ potatoes failed to sprout, but the white folks’ potatoes grew well –because the white minister cheated by giving the Indians potato pieces without any eyes in them. The white man assured them it was because our God was better and had more power than the Indian god.

Yes, we (the good guys) cheated the Indians – the same people who really did not mind the white man in the beginning. They liked us and enjoyed seeing us come to their land. They loved trading with us and learning our ways. Later they woke up, but it was too late. (They should have had better immigration laws.)

In my view, Indians are really human people. Always have been. They have feelings and they experience the same emotions as everyone else. They are not all welfare recipients or drunks, and most have jobs and want to work.

Just read these quotations from Chief Seattle, written years ago, and see if this sounds like a savage person:

“The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.”

“Mankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” “The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood, which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely strands in it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves.”

Tom “Road” Blair

Website: www.tomroadblair.com