The Early Years

<< The Oysterband performing "The World Turned Upside Down."

(That's some good stuff right there, and it seemed relevant to our book, The World Turned Upside Down. Lyrics are here if you'd like to sing along.)

While reading The World Turned Upside Down a few passages stuck out for me. The first one was about an Indian named Mittark. He was supposedly "the first Christian Indian at Gay Head on the west end of the island of Martha's Vineyard." Mittark felt that conversion to the Christian way of life was the way too go. I'm sure constantly defending your lifestyle against the English and just embracing their way of life like they wanted the Indians to do was much easier. There is also the desire to have promises fulfilled. Mittark "looked forward to the Christian promise of an escape from the troubles of the world. 'Here I'm in pain, there [in Heaven] I shall be freed from all Pain, and enjoy the rest that never endeth'" (43-4). But with his choice came separation from his Indian brothers.

Mittark reminded me of Seymour (from the film The Business of Fancydancing), for by accepting the Christian faith as his own, he "endured painful separation from his people" (43). The film didn't say that Seymour was a Christian, but he did accept another part of the way the white men do things. He received a white man's education at a university. Because of that, his friends on the reservation didn't trust him anymore, thinking that he sold them out to be more like the white man. Seymour was a very lonely man, and from the dying words that Mittark uttered, he was a lonely man too.

For an Indian to refute the beliefs of his fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and cousins, is no light act. It must seem to this Indian's family like he is turning his back on them and embracing the enemy. The Indian's family looses their faith in their cousin, but is adopting another culture as black and white as that for the one taking on other beliefs? 

We saw the struggles that Seymour went through. One side, his friends on the Rez, pulling at him to come back, and the other side, his partner, wanting him to accept that he is Seymour's tribe now. How hard that must be for an Indian to adopt two cultures. (One of which has been beaten into the dirt by the other for so long.)

The other quote from the book that stuck out to me was from page 21.

Many Indian peoples had, and continue to have, stories of creation and migration that explain how they came to be living in their homelands. Often shrouded in the mists of time, myth, and memory, these legends my strike us as too vague and fanciful to be useful as historical documents, but they convey the peoples' sense of their past and give us a glimpse into the many experiences that shaped American history before Europeans entered the picture.

The piece in red is what floored me. After reading the trickster tales and understanding them to not only traditional and entertaining but based in belief, I don't understand why these legends can't be used. Yeah, they're fun tails, but because they are told in metaphors and not in the way of how the English record history they can't be used? There is belief in them. Some could argue that the creation story in the Bible is too fanciful.  Any man in is right mind should never put his faith into a supreme being that lives in a realm called Heaven in which no human has ever returned to tell what they do up there all day. Do angels in Heaven sing all day or do they play Parcheesi on golden tables with Chex Mix set in the center? Heaven has never been scientifically proven, but people believe in God because they have faith. Faith is something we all need to get through this life on Earth. I know I have to have faith in my God and myself to make it up I-26 everyday. To take these people's beliefs and dismiss them because they are not of like English mind, is arrogant, and the "but" on then end of that sentence only saves a little bit of grace.

I went in search of a little enlightenment on the subject of American Indian beliefs, and I came across a book. Teaching Spirits by Joseph Epes Brown delves into the "religious" lives of Indians in hopes that others can better understand. And I found this link that might help one come to terms that trickster tales do have a religious base.

1. First, at the time of European contact, all but the simplest indigenous cultures in North America had developed coherent religious systems that included cosmologies—creation myths, transmitted orally from one generation to the next, which purported to explain how those societies had come into being.
2. Second, most native peoples worshiped an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator or “Master Spirit” (a being that assumed a variety of forms and both genders). They also venerated or placated a host of lesser supernatural entities, including an evil god who dealt out disaster, suffering, and death.
3. Third and finally, the members of most tribes believed in the immortality of the human soul and an afterlife, the main feature of which was the abundance of every good thing that made earthly life secure and pleasant.

So, not only are they fanciful, but one might put his faith into them.

Book review by The Dirt Brothers
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