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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Why Thanksgiving married Football.

I was watching the History Channel today. It's been all about the settlement of America. The white man rolling over the red man. Or at least that's what everybody simplifies the whole thing down to. Of course, my good friend Scott comes from people who got here after America was settled. As did my wife. But if you go back to the beginning of this country, someone in my family was here. When the Mayflower arrived on the shores, there was a Churchill, from whom I'm descended working in the galley. At the same time in southern illinois, missouri and arkansas, there were the Osage people, from whom I am also descended. And, of course, on my mom's side, there were some filthy french and irish that were planning on sending their grandkids to Canada to trade furs and so on. This mix in my past of the conquerors and the conquered has lead me to seek out even handed retellings of the history of this land. Both sides please. Sure the whites were stealing land, but then the natives weren't all that great at sharing and the new settlers were in a predicament which caused them to need to live here. And of course a lot of nastiness, lying, naivete' and disunity were some of the reasons why it all turned out the way it did with the whites slowly giving all our stuff back to the native americans through losses at indian casinos. One of these days, possibly hundreds of years from now, this land will belong to the "house".
I also enjoy hearing of stories of how it wasn't so great for the new settlers and it wasn't so bad for the native people. A wonderful "for instance" came at the end of the story of the Blackhawk Wars. Blackhawk was a past-his-prime leader of his people (people who warred with my Osage ancestors) who fought a brave and admirable battle against the encroaching American army. (By the way, if you've ever heard that native americans didn't believe in land ownership, it's really not as noble as all that. Blackhawk said, and I'm paraphrasing, "you can't sell the land or the sky. Because we live here." Which could be interpretted as saying, "you can't move into my neighborhood because we're all red people here.")
Well, unfortunately for Blackhawk, the American Army defeated and demoralized him and his. He surrendered and became prisoner. He went and met Andrew Jackson and toured the east coast. Everyone who met him, loved and admired him as a great Indian Leader, even though he had just been responsible for the deaths of many "americans".
Later in life, he dictated his autobiography which he dedicated to the "american" general that defeated him with a warning to him not to let anyone defeat him in the same way.
Ultimately, Blackhawk is more famous and more revered these 160 years later. Point, Blackhawk. I don't even know the general's name.
But also, the end of Blackhawks life was marked by a feeling of being a once proud but now thoroughly defeated Indian leader.
But get this:
Do you know who his grandson turned out to be? (Some of you sportsbuffs will really appreciate this. I know I was blown away by this.)

Jim fucking Thorpe Man! The greatest american athlete of all time.
He broke all the track and field and football records at the time. He was more of a football player. He was the greatest sports celebrity of his day. He has never been matched by any athletes since in the way he dominated two (I think he even did a couple other sports really well too.) He was loved by America! He was Michael Jordan, Muhammed Ali, Bo Jackson all in one.

And he was called "All American".

Therein lies the marriage of the european settling of this country, the native pride and strength, Thanksgiving and football.
Eat that with your turkey!
Happy Thankgiving!