By P.A. Geddie
Walking through the fields and trees alongside the Neches River in the southeast corner of Van Zandt County you can almost hear the battle cries, the gunshots, the horses’ hoofs pounding on the grass and dirt, sloshing through the river, and women and children running for safety that never came. The thought of the blood shed that day, July 16, 1839, is overwhelming. As one said when she visited the area, “You can feel the sadness.”
Towards the end of the Battle of the Neches between 13 bands of American Indians and the Texas Military they say 83-year-old Cherokee Chief Bowles road back and forth behind his men rallying them to fight to the death for their right to live with their own beliefs and customs.
By now most of us are educated to the fact that Europeans began coming to North America in 1492 and for the next few hundred years millions of Native Americans were killed by some of them in one-sided wars, intentional starvation, forced marches and executions. The population of Native Americans in North America was reduced from more than four million in the 18th century to less than 600,000 in the early 20th century.
Native American sociologist Russell Thornton says in Sociology in a Changing World, “In the centuries after Columbus, Indians suffered a demographic collapse. Numbers declined sharply; entire tribes, often quickly, were ‘wiped from the face of the earth.’ This is certainly true of the American Indians on the land that was to become the United States of America. For them the arrival of the Europeans marked the beginning of a long holocaust, although it came not in ovens as it did for the Jews. The fires that consumed North American Indians were the fevers brought on by newly encountered diseases, the flashes of settlers’ and soldiers’ guns, the ravages of “firewater,” the flames of villages and fields burned by the scorched-earth policy of vengeful Euro-Americans. The effects of this holocaust of North American Indians, like that of the Jews, was millions of deaths. Many American Indian people became extinct.”
As we sit in Van Zandt County today and see the vastly unpopulated fields of land and opportunity it is baffling why our Spanish, European and Native American ancestors could not find ample space, food and shelter for their individual villages. Why did the different cultures feel the need to have dominance over the other?
That kind of superiority still goes on today. The battles aren’t fought on horseback anymore but Americans are still fighting each other over cultural differences.
Culture is what makes humans unique in the animal kingdom. Human social structures, from the simplest family to the most complex corporation, depend on culture for their existence. Culture is all the modes of thought, behavior, and production that are handed down from one generation to the next by means of communicative interaction—through speech, gestures, writing, building and all other communication among humans.
Sociologists say that until we study other cultures it is extremely difficult to view our own with detachment and objectivity. Unless we can see ourselves as others see us, we take for granted that our cultural traits are natural and proper and that traits that differ from ours are unnatural and somehow wrong.
The ability to think in cross-cultural terms allows people to avoid the common tendency to disparage other cultures simply because they are different.
Most people live out their lives in a single culture and may go so far as to consider that culture superior to any other. To get along well with other cultures people must be able to suspend judgment about them and recognize that all cultures develop their own ways of dealing with the specific demands of their environment. This kind of understanding does not come automatically through the experience of living among members of other cultures. It is an acquired skill.
There are limits to accepting other cultures. We must evaluate the moral implications of a culture’s norms and values and condemn them when we see they produce cruelty and suffering.
The suffering of the Native Americans as well as the innocent families who experienced their wrath is part of our history—it cannot be erased. Some bad things happened.
Some good things happened too. In every culture there were people who accepted other cultures, who learned from each other and wanted to live together in peace on this earth.
Chief Bowles himself must have had conflicting feelings about the differences between Native Americans and the Europeans. After all, he was half Scotch-Irish. Europeon blood flowed as heavily in his blood as that of his Indian ancestors. Did he ever feel the need to hear the Scottish bagpipes or an Irish blessing?
Whether his European blood lines called to him or not, it is clear Chief Bowles chose the Indian way of life for his own, a right any human being deserves.
Many others today also choose the Indian way. Those who are full-blooded Native American, those who may only have a great-great-grandmother who was Native American and even those without a pinch of Indian blood are fighting today to keep the traditions and values of the Native Americans alive. They present year-round powwows, art shows, and festivals all across the country. Their values are reflected in their dances, songs, art, crafts and ceremonies. They hold tight to their sacred items such as ceremonial pipes, sage, cedar, sweetgrass, rattles, tobacco ties and drums. These items may be traded but never sold. Commercialism is a dirty word.
The traditions and values of other cultures like the Scottish, Irish, Germans, Mexicans, and Africans, are also being preserved today in America in much the same way—festivals, dance, music, art, jewelry, and even historical villages, buildings and costumes of those who only call themselves Americans.
Today the numbers of people—no matter the color of their skin, no matter how much Indian, Spanish, African or European blood runs through their veins—who are warriors for peace among all cultures are growing.
Whether our ancestors descend from Chief Bowles, or the men who killed him, or a combination of both, or any other culture, we the people of today cannot change what has been done. What we can do is work towards a future that condemns cruelty and honors goodness, no matter how we differ in displaying it.
Every day we each stand at a threshold between past and future. Every day we have the choice to stay enthralled in hatred, revenge and retribution or learn from past mistakes and move on. Every day we have the choice to impose a “superior” way of life on others or honor another’s right to their own traditions and values.
Resource: Sociology in a Changing World. Second Edition, by William Kornblum.