Post Goes Pagan: Odin Retires, Puzzled

[Doug Millison]

M&D's Visto points pretty much straight to this sort of thing, doesn't it?
Reason battling Mystery? And the heretofore devaluing of that native
American past. Reminds me of a poignant passage in Francis Parkman's France
and England in North America, from the section "LaSalle and the Great West"
(p. 835, Library of America edition), where he speaks, writing in 1869, of
an area near Utica, Illinois:

"The neighborhood abounds in Indian relics. The village graveyard appears
to have been on a rising ground, near the river, immdiately in front of the
town of Utica. This is the only part of the river bottom, from this point
to the Mississippi, not liable to inundation in the spring floods. It now
forms part of a farm occupied by a tenant of Mr. James Clark. Both Mr.
Clark and his tenant informed me that every year great quantities of human
bones and teeth were turned up here by the plough. Many implements of stone
are also found, together with beads and other ornaments of Indian and
European fabric."

Reminds me also of a cartoon (photographs with captions, actually) I saw in
Mad magazine when I was a kid, a box of Kleenex talking to a handkerchief,
aghast:  "You mean, over and over and over again?"

Oh dem bones...

At 10:53 AM 9/11/97, Kim L. Serkes wrote:
>[...]let us note that both
>the pagan loonies and the home-grown loonies had duelling "services" over
>these bones. Those unfortunate, small-minded scientists, trapped by their
>linear Western logic, expressed "concern" that organic material from these
>ceremonies (cedar boughs, etc.) might contaminate the bones. Pish and tush.
>As one of the Native Americans said when asked whether it might not be
>interesting to know about people who lived 9,000 years ago, "No. We already
>know our history."

D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com