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| Learning To Hate by � iwalkwiththewolf you ask why I hate the white man... I spit upon him and curse the foul footprints he has left in my world...I pray to the Great Spirit for the thunderbolts from the skies to strike him down and let me laugh as the stench of his burning flesh reaches my nostrils my earliest memories are of the beauty of this earth, this sky, those stars...childhood was a perfect place to be...I was safe and loved and had not even an idea of fear or worry...my friends and I ran in the meadows, learned the ways of the songbirds, chased the squirrels and, now and then, a raccoon who joined us for lunch...we climbed the trees of the forests and learned to listen to the voice of the wind...we were at one with each other and with our land...our mothers baked warm bread and soothed away our small hurts...our fathers watched and laughed as we played the learning games of children... I was in a paradise that was shattered by the white man the memory of my first experience with the white man was as if the very devils of the dark, let loose in our small village, had come forth to damn our souls...on horseback, armed with what I would learn were called "guns," ugly deathmasks of hate and greed on their faces, they were alien and fearsome even before they started their raid...they began to circle our village slowly, the sound of the horses' hooves a dull, deadly omen of the terror to come... that one, the one whose hair was the color of autumn corn, gave a signal and they began their acts of carnage...the guns erupted with a deafening sound and my people began to fall around me...my first smell of gunpowder...my first sight of lifeblood, flowing out of my father and my uncles and my grandfather...flames leaped from the roof of first one building, then another...all our aunts and mothers and sisters, herded into a small group, huddling against each other for strength, tried futilely to shield their children from the invaders...some of them dismounted and roughly grabbed my mother's beautiful black hair, then threw her to the ground and bound her with a strong rope...I watched her face, the misery and fear in her eyes too dreadful for a small child... I knew my world had ended desperate to be near my mother, I ran after her and tried to throw my small body against one of her captors...I had just reached my fourth year...I was a harmless child...but the ugliness of these white men was untouched by my pleas...the lifeless eyes of our dead men watched silently as I was kicked and whiplashed...then the one with the corn- colored hair drew the others to a standstill...he rode his great horse toward me and goaded that gentle creature into the madness of attacking me...the first hoof caught me across the left cheek... ...What? you thought this scar was left from deadly battle against the white man? it was, my friend, it was! American Cherokee, Copyright 2002, All rights reserved |
