{This week for What Pegman Saw we are in the Black Hills, South Dakota, USA. Many moons ago I visited there, when I lived in Minnesota. But this story is mostly about the rich heritage of Indigenous culture in the Midwest, and how little we tend to respect what has gone before the current dominant culture.
Fort Snelling is in St Paul, MN. I remember visiting it as a child when soldiers dressed in period costume would parade up and down.
General George Armstrong Custer fought at the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana and died after attacking Indigenous tribes including Lakota Sioux gathering for a tribal meeting. This is called popularly “Custer’s Last Stand.” Custer is a very controversial (as in, unpopular) figure today.
The Mason-Dixon (Line) is the imaginary line between northern and southern states in the US civil war
We were taught that Minnehaha (from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “The Song of Hiawatha” )meant “laughing water.” A falls and a creek are named after her in Minneapolis, MN and Hiawatha is also often mentioned in site names.
But as in Florida, there are a great many indigenous place names of more authentic and less fictional provenance, that have nonetheless stuck, and remain in use today. }
Ninth grade Civics.
South of the Mason-Dixon, they were teaching Americanism vs Communism.
Up North, we studied teepees vs wigwams, Chippewa vs Sioux.
Hiawatha and Minnehaha populated our streams and forests. Falls and parks and creeks had wise, laughing, names.
Not forts or generals. Snelling was not a laughing name. Nor Custer, neither. Not nearly as fun to say.
It was okay to play cowboys and Indians then But no one ever wanted to be a cowboy.
Everyone wanted to wear those soft moccasins, for running silently, so that your enemy would never suspect you were there.
Moccasins only worked on dirt paths, though. Not sidewalks. Concrete would be the ruination of them.
Now, years later, tall buildings abut sacred waters and rocky streams giggle through gentrified neighborhoods.
Toboggans slip forgetfully past burial mounds and white children laugh in their snowpants and stomping boots.
Not noticing that ghosts are everywhere.
A history 101 for sure. So singsong, so telling, so seamlessly stitched together. Stunning, Andrea.
Singsong seems a fitting way to lament the loss (or decimation) of cultures, who still told tales rather than writing them down. I imagine sound and rhyme filled the toolkit of minstrels everywhere.
Glad you enjoyed my patchwork quilt.
Captures the history so beautifully. I love where you took this.
Thanks Karen!
This has such an atmosphere, mournful at a time and land lost beneath concrete and modernisation. Such lovely writing, Andrea
Thank you so much Lynn.
This reads like a true memory. Might I ask, Is it?
Generally yes. I did grow up in this area, during a time when local indigenous tribes were viewed as quaint relics of the past, rather than as proud, wronged, and still suffering nations.
Makes me think of the Irish, with their Little Folk, Brownies, and the Shee.
We were not kind then, and rarely are now, to indigenous people. I’m glad we both took the same route with our stories, in different ways. Well done! Beautifully written.
Yes. A national disgrace. Among many. ?
I enjoyed your thoughtful and insightful piece. I was in high school at the time of Wounded Knee, which made a huge impression on me. I do wonder about the ghosts of the Abenaki in my part of the country, particularly in southern NH where I live, as every time I drive anywhere lately, another swath of forest has been decimated for a car wash, storage facility, or strip mall.
What is it with carwashes? Have people forgotten how to wash a car?
Whenever I see another stand of trees cut down, so that we will all have yet another place to spend our money, I think I hear the trees screaming.
Dear Andrea,
I loved the water giggling through gentrified neighborhoods. Beautifully written and evocative piece.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Thanks Rochelle.
This was so good, Andrea. I love how you wove it together.
Thank you Dale.