INVASION OF THE IMMIGRANTS

You are no doubt aware of the plight of untold numbers of refugees who have fled Syria and other war-torn Middle Eastern countries. It’s a crisis which cries out for (and can only be solved by) a massive humanitarian response by multiple countries. Some nations, such as Canada and Germany, have opened their borders (with, one assumes, appropriate security screening) to many of these immigrant families; the reaction of other countries and sultanates, including the U.S. and Donald Trump, has ranged from hello to hostile or hell no (biblically speaking).

Now consider another flood of immigrants 200-300 years ago, and imagine what it would have been like for Europeans immigrating to the new world if Native Americans in those days had proven as intractable and well-armed as some of the countries from which the Europeans came. Or, try putting yourself in the place of those long-ago Native Americans:

The whole world is coming,
A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe.
The father says so, the father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming….
–Sioux ghost song

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery —
if you are a welcomed immigrant….
or the surest form of getting flattened —
if you were a Native American.
–mistermuse

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The four-leggeds and the winged ones stirred and moaned and no one slept that night. Our [Kiowa] wise men said it was a bad sign…that the falling stars [meteor showers, winter 1833-34 ] were like the white men falling by the thousands upon our land…coming at first a few at a time, but now coming in great streams, pouring from the east upon the lands promised to us for all time.*
*(“The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians: their lands and property shall never be taken from them.” — U.S. Congress, 1789)

“That those tribes cannot exist near our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor a desire for improvement. Established in the midst of our superior race, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.” –U.S. President Andrew Jackson, December 3, 1833

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Ancient history? Yes — if you think that time conveniently acquits past sins. Those Native Americans were of course human, not saints (tribes warred against each other long before the white man came, for example). But who didn’t keep their word? Who believed The only good Indian is a dead Indian?** And what is the statute of limitations on arrogance?

**General Phillip Sheridan, January, 1869