I Prithee, Sirrah! Dost Thou Think Squanto Be A Bit Delusional?

Steve seems to be feeling better, as we have fallen back in the old routine of fighting over the computer. Every time I get up to, say, go to the bathroom or get another cup of coffee, I lose my seat at the computer for what seems like hours, and as a result I have no choice but to make his life so miserable that he has to get away from me, abdicating his position in front of the glass teat.*

Sometimes I hold my pee forever, trying to get something finished because I know if I get up, I'm screwed. The accumulation of so many hours of a forced full bladder leads to a level of annoyance I'm unable to fully articulate.

He did it to me again this morning, forcing me to make Christopher some scrambled eggs and read a few chapters in this horrible new book I got from a publicist that I don't want to read, and then engage in a territorial squabble with him until he wanted to leave, which eventually happened and so here I am.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I still haven't gone grocery shopping yet, and probably won't get a chance until later this week. I do have the turkey, though, which has been slowly thawing out in the fridge since Saturday. Every year I'm afraid I won't be able to get everything done by Thursday, and we'll have to celebrate Thanksgiving over the weekend instead. This year we may come the closest to that actually happening that we ever have. The kids are still little, but I think Alex may be too old for me to lie to him and tell him it's Thursday when it's actually Saturday.

And speaking of Alex, he's currently being indoctrinated with Thanksgiving mythology at school. I've been trying to come up with a way to gently counteract the steaming piles of bullshit that's laid on kids about white people's actual encounters with Native Americans that doesn't upset him or cause him to get into trouble at school. I also considered letting the whole thing slide, and may actually have done it had I not gone through his backpack looking for homework and found a two-page play he and his Social Studies class participated in. It's called "A Native American Welcome," by Sandra Widener. It looks like roles were assigned, and the students sat around at their desks and read their parts aloud, which is something I remember doing myself in elementary school. If I recall correctly, it's a lot of fun if you're playing, say, Pocahontas or John Smith, but lousy if you're cast as Third Pilgrim on the Left and have to sit through the entire play before you get to your one line, which is something like, "Hark!" Which is not only just one word, but it's a stupid, meaningless word that is completely useless for anything beneficial, such as learning how to say "cocksucker" in American Sign Language. You could steal the show if the word were something like "Shit!" or "Balls!" but "Hark!" sucks. "Hark!" is just in there so you can't go to sleep at your desk and are forced to listen to the other kids have a good time reading.

Anyway, Alex didn't have to be Third Pilgrim on the Left. Instead, he was an Indian, Squanto. Instead of "Hark!" he instead got to say completely batshit, crazy things.



Here's a few of Alex's lines:

"I know the English. They will not hurt us. Men who attack never bring families. If we don't help them, they will have trouble getting through the next rough winter when food is scarce."

"Yes, they are different from us. But they are good people."

Another Indian says, "Other settlers have hurt Indians," to which Squanto replies, "Not these people."

Alex caught me cackling over his script and demanded to know what I was laughing at.

"What say you, Squanto?" I asked.

"I said, 'Why are you laughing?'" Squanto repeated.


And here I had to decide. Do I say, "Oh, nothing?" or do I tell him the truth? And if I choose to tell him the truth, how do I do it?

I settled on telling him that the lessons about Thanksgiving are more mythology than truth, that what he learns is closer to what we would like Thanksgiving to have been rather than what actually was, that what actually happened is something I'm happy to talk to him about when he is a little older, but the truth for now is that while the Indians actually did teach the settlers how to work the land to prevent starvation, the settlers did not exactly treat the Native Americans with respect and kindness, and that lack of respect was more common than what he's learning in school. But he's only eight, and this is something I'll teach him about when he's older. I can't talk to him about the Trail of Tears, about countless broken treaties, about the wholesale slaughter of an entire race of human beings at the hands of our ancestors.

Last January I gave him a tiny talk about slavery when they were studying about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I left out almost all of the realities of slavery and Jim Crow, and about how the effects of slavery still impacts African Americans even today. I told him that white people kidnapped black people and forced them to come to America and work with no pay for the rest of their lives, and he was so horrified by just that little bit that he started to cry. I don't know about your kids, but mine are very into the Good Guy/Bad Guy dichotomy, and the reality that they could actually be the Bad Guy is literally unbearable to them. So I cut my lecture short, just like I did my lecture about the realities of white people's relationship to Native Americans. And we haven't even touched on his German heritage yet!

A few years ago I read an essay by a conservative columnist, whose name I won't mention because I can't remember who it was. I remember the article was about her irritation that her son's school was celebrating either African-American history month, or they were studying about Dr. King, or they'd just given a lecture on diversity, something like that. Up until that point, she wrote, her son had no idea about racial issues, or that there was any difference between black children and white. And now she had to explain it all away, so thanks a lot, school.

I understand her reluctance to get into it with her young son. I don't want to get into it with mine, either. Is there ever an appropriate age to learn that your ancestors kidnapped and enslaved a race of people, beat them, raped them, murdered them en masse? That after slavery was forcibly ended, Jim Crow laws sprung up to disenfranchise and brutalize African-Americans? Is anyone ever ready to view dozens of postcards of lynching victims , sold and traded among white people as humorous entertainment? About the fire hoses and the dogs? About the forced integration in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the white adults surrounded a tiny five year old girl and screamed death threats and racial epithets as she stepped onto school grounds? Is he ready to learn about James Byrd today, or the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida during the 2000 elections? Or the government's lack of response to the screams of the dying after Hurricane Katrina, or the callous remarks of our own Marie Antoinette, Barbara Bush? Marie Antoinette never actually said that the poor can "eat cake," But Mrs. Bush, everyone's beloved grandma, really did say the poor were "really better off" in the Superdome or fleeing to Houston, leaving the bodies of their grandparents, children, siblings, and mothers behind to be eaten by dogs. What of that?

And what about the Holocaust? Or the fact that the man who ordered the Trail of Tears is on the twenty dollar bill? What about Matthew Shepherd? Or Iraq? Why do I have to explain that gays and lesbians are denied the right to marry in most of the United States? When should I tell him about the border fence between the United States and Mexico, or the computer game where Mexicans are murdered as they try to cross the border?

I don't want to tell him about any of that stuff, either, and the crazy thing is, I don't have to! Our school books will mostly back me up! It's African-American parents, Mexican parents, gay and lesbian parents, and Native American parents that have to do all the heavy lifting. Again. Still.

Slavery is the bloody cornerstone of African-American culture, and there is no understanding your African-American classmates without it, and without understanding, there can be no real friendship. And without friendship, there can be no chance at being an agent of change, or of really committing to the principles upon which our country was founded, principles of liberty and justice for all. And as far as Native Americans are concerned, what possible answer is there to the question, "Where are they now?"

Nobody wants to upset their children. Nobody wants to burden them or hold them responsible for historical crimes. But the history of my ancestors is a burden, and it is irresponsible to ignore it or to spin Manifest Destiny as a benefit for the general good. Maybe not in second grade, where complex situations must be boiled down to the simplest terms, but maybe also more truth than just one line in a two-page play, "Other settlers have hurt Indians." Who are those "other settlers?" Well, that's us, too.

And after all this stream-of-consciousness hand-wringing, I finally figured out what to say to my kids as the first step on the road to genuine American history. The Indians did help the pilgrims survive their first winter in America. And although most settlers responded to this kindness greed, exploitation, and fear, some of those pilgrims were grateful. It is that gratitude that we hold up as an ideal today, and our hope that, in the future, our first instincts as Americans will not be the urge toward power and greed, but will instead be respect, friendship, and trust.


By the way, I did a little research on Squanto later on, and found that Squanto was, well, kind of a power hungry asshole himself, sort of a Native American Iago.

[Squanto] befriended the Pilgrims, and taught them how to manure their corn, where to catch fish and eels, and acted as their interpreter and guide. Without Squanto's help, the Pilgrims would probably have had severe famine over the next year, and would have lived in constant fear of their Indian neighbors--Indians who were actually quite peaceful, but who had been rightfully angered by the cruel treatment they received from many English ship captains like Thomas Hunt.

Squanto did not help the Pilgrims solely because he was a nice and caring individual. By late 1621 he was using his position with the Pilgrims for his own gain--threatening many Indians that if they did not do as he told them, he would have the Pilgrims "release the plague" against them. As with all humans, "power corrupts". When Massasoit learned that Squanto was abusing his position to steal power, he demanded Squanto be turned over to him to be executed. The Pilgrims were required to turn Squanto over, according to the peace treaty they had signed with one another. But the Pilgrims felt they needed Squanto's services, so they stalled.


It's too bad Alex didn't know the truth about Squanto. It gives all those lines a whole new meaning, doesn't it? Instead of playing it straight, he could have played it eeeeevil.

Indian 1: The ways of the White man are strange.

Squanto: They really need help! Help them, or I'll have them infect you with small pox.

Indian 2: What??

Squanto: You heard me. And I want those beads you gave your wife at the last harvest festival, too. Don't make me hurt you.

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*Glass Teat.