This was a really good piece, sir. Particularly about your point about land claims not mattering as much when both sides have lost innocent loved ones.
How did you go back and "[try] to imagine how it felt to be a settler on the frontier, and how it felt to be a Creek or Cherokee encountering the settlers." I've tried to do that with the plains Native Americans and the settlers in Texas, but I'm not successful. S. C. Gwynne said something to me that is meaningful: something like ~neither side understood the culture of the other side~ [or respected it].
We know, sort of, how to get into the heads of the settlers because of all the writings. As far as I know, by 1813 there were no formal writings amongst the Creeks or Cherokee at that time (I could be wrong. It was all oral tradition.
It's a really hard problem. One reason I chose to write about Geronimo in The Last Campaign is that he was one of the very few Indians to write (dictate) a memoir. Black Elk, the Lakota medicine man, was another, which is why he shows up in many histories.
Baton Rouge (Red Stick) was named earlier and for different red sticks. But the theme might have persisted and given rise to the name for the Creek militants.
This was a really good piece, sir. Particularly about your point about land claims not mattering as much when both sides have lost innocent loved ones.
How did you go back and "[try] to imagine how it felt to be a settler on the frontier, and how it felt to be a Creek or Cherokee encountering the settlers." I've tried to do that with the plains Native Americans and the settlers in Texas, but I'm not successful. S. C. Gwynne said something to me that is meaningful: something like ~neither side understood the culture of the other side~ [or respected it].
We know, sort of, how to get into the heads of the settlers because of all the writings. As far as I know, by 1813 there were no formal writings amongst the Creeks or Cherokee at that time (I could be wrong. It was all oral tradition.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE!
Ed Bradford
Pflugerville TX
It's a really hard problem. One reason I chose to write about Geronimo in The Last Campaign is that he was one of the very few Indians to write (dictate) a memoir. Black Elk, the Lakota medicine man, was another, which is why he shows up in many histories.
Were these the Red Sticks that ultimately gave Baton Rouge, Louisiana, its' name?
The more you know about the Indigenous sides of American history, the more potent the comparison with the Israel-Palestine conflict becomes.
Baton Rouge (Red Stick) was named earlier and for different red sticks. But the theme might have persisted and given rise to the name for the Creek militants.