Arrogance of The White Man
I ran across a story a few days ago that reminded me of the amazing arrogance of my American brothers and why I have always insisted on being called a Jew rather than a “Whiteman.”
The story was told by a local historian in a small town, lets call it Swift. I heard the story from the keeper of Swift’s tiny museum. The keeper, a gruff little man, smoked a Marlboros as we talked, explaining why the town was named after the family called Swift… while all the other local towns had names based on Indian tribes.
The story teller took me to a case showing a split log and a rusty ax head. In this story, set in colonial times, a father and his twin sons were set upon by some Indians, apparently because the Indians saw the Whites as invaders. The local people killed the father, took a scalp and went off celebrating their coup. The sons ran away.
Of course for the Indians this was a big deal. They had shown who was boss. They whooped and hollered and placed the scalp on a high pole.
Not so much glory for the white men. The sons grew up. One son called Isaac became a farmer and grew corn using seeds from the natives. The other, named Will, became the local sheriff and made his nickname, The Great Avenger, by raids to drive the Indians out.
The Avenger, the younger Mr. Swift, also counted coup, eventually notching his musket 100 times. The story of six of these notches was told by the log and the axe head. One day Will Swift was chopping wood. Half a dozen Indians came across The Avenger as he was splitting a log to make rails. The Indians did not recognize Will and offered to help. They put their fingers in the crack, spreading it so the wedge could go all the way through. Instead of hitting the wedge down, the Avenger swung his ax, knocking the wedge out and locking the helpful Indians into a trap as the log closed. He then finished the job, killing the trapped Indians with his musket and adding six notches .. as he told it, six dead Indians with one blow.
Today, the Swift High School team is called the Warriors.
To read a related post about Jewish roots among American Indians, click here.
What in the world does this story have to do with “SMS family”?
Follow the Swift story, there s more to come ………
Bob seems very concerned about my family. He seems to think this post is related but there is no “SMS family” tag and the story is about native americans and white americans. Since Mr. Raymonf is African American and, as far as I know, none of the Schwartz family are descended from natives, this make me wonder all the more about our Troll’s real identity.