The Eagles are Back

I recently returned to the land of my birth, a small town along the great Wabash River. Home of the Miami's, friends of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee warrier who relentlessly fought against General William Henry Harrison until he (Harrison) fradulently purchased millions of acres of land, including most of Tecumseh's homeland, from the Iroquois and soundly defeated the Indians in the infamous Battle of Tippicanoe. The Iroquois managed to convince the British that all other Indian tribes were subserviant to them and sold land to the highest bidder without remorse and probably with some degree of smugness. Land they had never seen, land they didn't even know existed until the British came to them and offered to purchase it.

I wonder what they got for payment. Some beads? Some rancid pork? A few blankets laced with smallpox perhaps?

Anyway, this land onced teamed with bald and golden eagles, buffalo, bear, wolves, elk, beaver, the streams and rivers flowed clear and clean with abundant fish, a land that easily sustained the native population with plenty to go around for all.

Recently the bald eagles have returned. When my brother told me this, I immediately wanted to know where they were. He drove me along the Wabash and we saw, roosting along the river in the giant sycamores, bald eagles. We watched them fishing and preening and just sitting there, so beautiful and majestic.

My heart soared and I was actually brought to tears. I thought about Tecumseh and how hard he fought to maintain some semblance of normalcy for his beloved people as he watched, helpless, his land become overrun with outsiders who had no regard for the natural resources nor respect for the people already living there. I felt that he might have felt joy at seeing the eagles return to his old haunts along the mighty Wabash river. I tried to imagine what this land must have looked like covered with ancient hardwood forests and clear, clean rivers. I stood there and gazed into the polluted, brown water of the once great river. I hoped that the eagles could withstand the toxins they were ingesting by eating the fish they were so deftly catching.

I felt remorse for the way my ancesters allowed greed to control them and convinced themselves that the native inhabitants were less than human.

There is still a small population of Miami Indians living in this area. One of my roommates, a childhood friend of mine, is one of those Indians. He has taken me to places that I never knew existed, to land that still belongs to the Miamis, land that has not been cleared for agricultural uses, land that has stands of trees that are hundreds of years old. Land that must look somewhat like it used to in the days of Tecumseh. Land where the bald eagles have again come to nest and call their home.