Blankets(M&D spoiler)

[Dennis Jones]

        ++ M&D spolier  p307++
   






Re deliberate and organised smallpox infection of native Americans. Exactly 
how well known and documented is this shameful incident in America's 
(Britain's?) history? I seem to have known about it for ever but when I 
stopped to think where I first came across it, the only "source" I managed 
to come up with  was an old Buffy Saint Marie Indian lament, "My Country, 
'Tis of thy People you're Dying". I remember it well  as one of the most 
moving I've ever listened to, every word  sung  charged with a powerful 
mixture of sadness, anger and contempt. So I dusted it off and it sounds as 
good as ever.
No mincer of words, she recounts to a child how a "nation of leeches" 
perpetrated their "genocide basic", and specifically:

"Hear how the bargain was made for the West,
With her shivering children in zero degrees:
Blankets for land, so the treaties atest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected 
>From smallpox diseased dying soldiers that day,
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it better this way,
Yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have been paled...

Hands on our hearts we salute you your 'victory',
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocricy,
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen 
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory,
They were never no more than carrion crow,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story...

Sorry I only have this on an old compilation tape so have no idea of record 
label,date etc. but you really have to hear it to appreciate the passion of 
its delivery.

                                        d.j.