At Wounded Knee

We see what is happening in Ukraine and rightly condemn all of it but we as humans seem incapable of learning from history or experience.

Many years ago when I was farming in Africa, I bought a set of books on the history of the American Indians. Funny, as we get older how you recall things from 45 years ago. The book, written by an American Indian as told to him by his grandfather, tells how the Europeans slowly destroyed the Indian way of life and by doing that, killed off the Indians almost completely.

It tells how the once-proud Indians, scattered or reduced to remnants of their former selves. The Indian's musical names will forever be fixed on the American land but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burnt villages or lost in forests, fast disappearing from the axes of all the settlers. Already the once sweet water streams, which bore Indian names, were filled with slit and human waste. The very earth was being ravaged and squandered, it must have seemed to the Indians that the Europeans hated everything in nature. The massive forests, the birds and animals were not spared as the settlers craved their way through the land.

We are still destroying this planet, only faster as our technology has improved. We are still killing people, again much faster with modern weapons.

Getting back to the proud Indians, in 1838, many thousands of Indians were rounded up and put into camps. Illness and cold killed a quarter of them before it was decided to give them land far away from the settlers. Weak as they were, they were marched hundreds of miles, one in every three died through hunger, cold or disease. They called the march ‘Their Trail of Tears’. Years later the American government took that land away from them and that was the beginning of the end of these once proud people who lived in harmony with the land.

Progress exacts a terrible debt, which we are now beginning to pay.

Enough of the gloomy stuff, let’s move on. Susan is back in South Korea for work and Jenson is slightly confused, no Robert, no Susan, he really does miss those two and I have realised wherein his pack I am. Still, we have our walk every day and today was no exception, sunny but windy, the wind coming off the sea is always cold, even the sun seemed to have less warmth. Tomorrow looks a whole lot better, there is always tomorrow.

Spring is officially here, not sure if Mother Nature is taking any notice. After an exceptionally mild winter, there are some plants that are flowering early, hopefully, we do not have a cold snap. I joined Michael and Kate for breakfast this morning and with full sunshine and a gentle breeze, we sat outside.

All for now as I am off to Kingston Lacy with Jenson for an afternoon walk in the gardens. I took this photo of what I call the Grumpy Tree at Kingston Lacy.