Pass The Ammo

Here’s a pretty good bit from Ole Bones over at Morning Coffee.

‘Mornin’ folks! How the hell are ya this mornin’, anyways? Coffee’s on, and is it good this
mornin’, too. Ya best grab a cup and get yerself some! Paper’ll be along after a bit, I’d reckon. I gots first dibs onna funny pages!

Well, Thanksgiving is scheduled fer this week, so I gotta go on about alla that some. Well, I said I would awhile back. I ain’t fergot. …not this time, anyways… Lots of weird things a goin’ on with alla that. I hear they don’t teach it right in school anymores. In some places, I hear it’s back to being a pagan celebration called “Harvest Day” or some such like that. They also go on about the Indians a bein’ peaceable victims, too. Makes a feller wonder, don’t it?

Well, along inna early sixteen hundreds, a buncha believers didn’t like the church of England, so they went to visit them Dutch folks in Holland fer a bit. Seems the Dutch was a little too liberal. (The more some things change, the more they stay the same, don’t they?) A few years later, they decided that wasn’t workin’ out, so they got some folks together so they could go to the New World. They landed inna place we now call America. They got here in sixteen-twenty. Once they got here, they lost half the folks in their outfit, mostly to disease and such, before the next year was out. Folks’d been here before and was tradin’ and such, but wasn’t nobody settled in fer a permanent stay. Them folks onna Mayflower came to put down roots.

Now, they wasn’t all so-called Puritans on that trip, but I figger most of ‘em had a healthy respect fer God and religion. They’d a all been a prayin’ over the meal. Thankin’ God that they was still alive, and that they had full bellies. Thing is, they wasn’t no “Official” version of Thanksgiving fer quite awhile there. Later on, after another couple hard years, some other feller made it official for the first time. …Means somebody wrote it all down is
what it means.

June 20, 1676

“The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed…”

So it began. Even from the start, there was folks a prayin’ and a thankin’ God.

Now, some of you folks go on all about the “poor Indian.” Wasn’t nuthin’ poor about ‘em. That’s to deny ‘em their proper heritage, and their proper place in history. Wasn’t much peaceful about most all of ‘em in any case. They was always a fightin’ over things back and forth with one another to begin with. They was always a killin’ each other over land, fishin’, huntin’ grounds, and what not, too. They even fought over trade routes. Things were bein’ traded coast to coast, and from Canada to Central America and farther. Most all of it without horses, too!

When they got the chance, though…they’d wipe each other out. They was massacreein’ each other long before white folks was ever around! Some places, they even built forts and permanent defensive positions, and stuff like that. I ain’t talkin’ just about them “cliff cities” either. Even the Pueblos wasn’t all there was to that. Well, fer one example, most folks think that what we call the Sioux Indians are from the Dakotas. They ain’t. They came here from back east a few hundred miles. Seems another tribe run ‘em off from around Minnesota. Where they started before that, I don’t rightly remember off hand. …When they came into the Dakotas, they run someone else off, too.

The Indians were divided into multitudinous ‘tribes’, even within their separate ’races’…and they were often at war with each other. In most cases, to walk into the lands that any of ‘em claimed was to forgo your life, whether you was white, Indian, or other. Ask the Chinese when they tried to settle the Northwest several hundred years ago. …All that’s left is a few of the anchors from their ships…and a couple of buttons. Ask them Vikings what happened a couple hundred years later inna Northeast. Many another man was lost forever, tortured, killed, captured, enslaved, by the noble and peaceable American Indian…never to be heard of again. This was happenin’ long before there was such a thing as a cowboy, or even pioneers. Spanish, French, Portuguese, English…all kinds a folks…simply disappeared.

The original folks that got their start, in what we now call Plymouth in Massachusetts, them Puritans and such, were a tough people. They were also united under one belief. A belief in God. The God of the Bible. They were united under one thing more. The freedom to worship God in the manner that they chose. Their religion was not one of weakness and of fear. Their religion would eventually bring lastin’ peace and prosperity to this land; a land torn by constant war for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

…a day of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving before God. The God of the Bible.

Our God, who is also known as The Lord God of Hosts. A mighty warrior is our God. Our Provider. An ever-present help in times of trouble.

We should never forget that.

Myself, I thank Him every night before I go to sleep. I even thanked Him when me and the Ol’ Lady was stuck on that mountain inna blizzard last week. After I visited with Him like that, I wrapped up in my coat and blanket…and I went to sleep. The Ol’ Lady still can’t figger that one out… She said I was snorin’ too…

Oh yeah. Plymouth Rock ain’t alla that anymore. Seems later on, mostly inna eighteen hundreds, tourists used to go by and chip pieces offa it to take home with ‘em. There’s tons and tons of Plymouth Rock scattered …somewhere… all over the country, I reckon…in bits and pieces, that is. That was a dang big rock to start with, too!

That Mayflower Compact? Why…it was the basis for what would later become The Constitution of the United States of America.

Well, I reckon that ain’t all I wanted ta say just the way I wanted ta say it, but it’ll do fer visitin’ over coffee inna mornin’. It’s a new day, folks! We’ve got another opportunity to get ‘er all sorted out. We’ve got another chance to get ‘er right. Make sure ya take advantage of it. Warm up yer cup and get yer head wrapped around yer day ‘fore ya head out.

Warren “Bones” Bonesteel
Sgt USMC 1976-1983
Author and E-zine columnist
“Morning Coffee”