Independance gained, Liberty Lost.  

Posted by The Ordinary
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Hey folks! Happy Independence day! Two-hundred and forty-three years ago, 13 small colonies became one nation. A war for Independence in sued, and the world's largest super power, Great Britain, was defeated by the small continental army. Unlike most blog posts on important days, this one is goin to be short N sweet. No long oratories on great men, or perilous adventures. I just want to leave you with one thought today: The day the colonies gained a country, a Civilization lost its Nation. What is this Civilization? Native America. Imagine this, One day a group of strangers show up on your shores. You welcome them to your land and help them get established. Soon, more and more of these men are settling in the land. After a while they declare Independence from wherever they came from, and say that your home is THEIR country! The nerve! Next more strangers appear, and start shooting people! Then before you can say "Chickasaw" everybody is having a war over YOUR land! Is it a mouse between two cats to be fought over? Anyways, time goes on and the original settlers win. They call themselves "Americans", but they come from over the sea! After a time has passed, the begin pushing west, Shoving you off your land and spreading wild stories about savages scalping people, when all you
did was try to defend Your land! Pretty soon your people are disappearing, being moved to reservations, then moved again when something valuable is discovered there.

Of course you all know the rest of the story, manifest destiny, blah blah blah. But this fourth of July, when you think about the people who gained Independence, remember the ones who lost their liberty.



As always,

-R.G.

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6 comments

Elizabeth Kelley  
July 4, 2009 at 11:02 PM

Interesting way to look at it. Thanks for giving us their spin. We don't get it often enough. I think they were probably quite irritated with us before 1776. And many of them lost their liberty after that. It was mostly after Washington, when people started deciding that "As long as the grass shall grow" and "as long as the rivers flow" didn't mean a thing.
Thank God for freedom, and, at the same time, may we not strip others of theirs. (We're still doing it, you know. See NY state. Seneca are protesting like crazy.)

Anonymous  
July 4, 2009 at 11:23 PM

It's a war. This is how they work. Except usually, a lot more people die.

Elizabeth Kelley  
July 5, 2009 at 10:41 AM

Hmmm.... I'm thinking over this. Given that we weren't stripping the natives of their rights (at least not on a large scale) until later, I'm thinking that the fourth ought to be seen as Independence from the Brits. It's certainly not a bad thing to take into consideration that we robbed and cheated the natives, however. (Hopefully that made half a lick of sense...)

The Ordinary  
July 5, 2009 at 11:13 AM

That is true, but the declaration of independance started the nation that was the death of the native americans. So that document can be viewed as ourfreedom, but their death warrant

Elizabeth Kelley  
July 6, 2009 at 9:53 AM

I'm not sure. I mean, you could look at it like that, but I don't know that it was the nation as a whole which suppressed the natives. I thin it was in specific time periods, under specific leaders, when they were most violently shoved under. (I'm not native, so I'm not the end-all on this by any means. I do, however, sympathise and make sort sort of attempt to understand what was done to them.)

David  
July 6, 2009 at 4:12 PM

Robert, robert, intellectual property rights! Intellectual property can be copyrighted just as easily as a painting or work of digital art. Thou must quote and make reference to the origin of thy words....myself of course :)

but of course i did also allow for the fact that it was greatly the way presidents handled the situation from that time onwards which really decided their fate. ..andrew jackson being among the worst.

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