Amish are Chautauqua County, NY Indians

Two Books Read at the Same Time

Review of Two Books Read at the Same Time

 This Tender Land  and  2006 the Chautauqua Rising

  By George W. Clever-----24 August 2020   

Rain returned in force in North Carolina on Monday, I chose to do some reading in the two books. Both are very interesting and holding my attention. Here is the first lesson I learned from 2006 the Chautauqua Rising. The Amish in Chautauqua County are ‘Indians. They speak a different language, avoid assimilation into the main society, dress in unusual clothing, are corrupted to the pleasure of main society watching they use generators to run sawmills, refuse government handouts, educate their own children, passively fight government interference and government laws. It is a long list of similarities to Native Americans. They are also seen as unfavorable people by most of the people in Chautauqua County with the exception of what they can offer main street in construction and service cheaper than the yellow pages.

No land based American Indians live in Chautauqua County New York. Oh, there are a few Indians who live there, but no tribes. The Amish have replaced them buying farms no longer profitable to main stream techno-farmers. Here is a list of similarities between the two cultures, Amish and American Indian.

  1. Both groups dress in a manner unlike the main society of the county.
  2. Both groups have a religious practice unlike the main society of the county.
  3. Both groups live off the land.
  4. Both groups pay state and federal taxes on income, school taxes and purchases to appease the power brokers creating a false sense of piece for Indians and Amish.
  5. Both groups have cultural differences unlike the main society.
  6. Both groups are clan based.
  7. Both groups value their elderly.
  8. Both groups believe in educating their own children and are under attack for doing so.
  9. Both groups have been the object of oppression and racism.
  10. Both groups have been ridiculed when seduced by the main society.
  11. Both groups have private gatherings.
  12. Both groups are neutered by the power of the local, state and federal government

This is my second lesson today from this book. The reason this book was banned from the Chautauqua Institute bookstore was the same all books are banned elsewhere. Reading the truth is not acceptable when it puts the readership and or bookseller in a bad light.  The Chautauqua Institute is a rich enclave in a sea of county poverty. It has moved far from the moral original purposes of spiritual and learning enlightenment. Now it is a secure left environment for those who do not want to face the social destruction the policies demorats have inflicted on rural New York State. Drugs, are rampant in Jamestown and other parts of the county. Illegal immigrants and those who prefer social welfare to working find free money, SNAP Food Stamps, paid housing, education and medical benefits from a state that cannot meet its budgets taxing everything with gusto. Schools are controlled by federal and state mandates overriding local control. Core Curriculum is a fraud forced on schools. It is neither based on the learning behaviors of children, nor correct historic and mathematical content. The curriculum is not based on what local communities believe is appropriate for their children.   

The word Rising in the title of 2006 the Chautauqua Rising is an interesting word for the novel. Writers of history has long used ‘rising’ as a descriptor of failed rebellions of people when the desired outcomes were clearly not possible. As examples, the Irish ‘risings’ against the British, the American Indian ‘risings’ when they would leave a reservation concentration camp, and the Warsaw ‘rising’ of the Jewish people in Poland against the Nazis. Unlike those historic ‘risings’, everything works out for the Chautauqua 17 and John Freeman. We all like happy endings.

If this book is a ‘right conservative’ piece of novel writing, I think those who reject it do not wish to look into its mirror. Two of the left’s huggy squeeze minority groups are the Amish and the Indians, both of which are well represented in this novel, and yet victims of the political left. Jack Cashill’s book is more than a novel. Perhaps this is a truism for all novels coming from the imagination of authors. All writing comes from the processing for the author’s experiences, education, and values with some wonderful looks from the past, present, and future. His ‘novel’ motivates the reader to examine freedoms lost in the past generations since the American Revolution. Many Americans will not take the time to examine what they have lost as they are swept away with ‘bread and circuses’ seeking safety at all costs. Perhaps Cashill’s writing, like George Orwell’s book 1984,is presenting his vision of the point in the future when Americans will once again seek the freedoms taken from them by the Central Crown.     

Now on to This Tender Land. My first lesson is Native peoples, today and in the past, when faced with life threatening choices have only bad choices from which to choose for their survival. The Red Sleeves boy was killed by the asylum groundskeeper DiMarco who revealed his killing as he tries to kill Odie. Odie, nearly falling to his death pushed by DiMarco, is saved by a small ledge. Odie chose to kill the child beater at the edge of the cliff by pulling the strap hung from DiMmarco’s belt. This was the same strap used to beat the children. Not a good choice making him a murder, but again perhaps Odie’s only choice from bad choices.

Another Monday and I have finished both books. The 2006 book was finished at 0300 in the morning after another sleepless Sunday night. As the novel ended, it would seem our expectations of family, security and justice are often not what we imagined on the road of life. Odie’s Aunt turns out to be a bordello madam and his mother. Author William Kent Krueger tied up all the loose ends in This Tender Land to make a happier life for most of the main characters in his story. But not for all. As in life there are always hills and valleys for everyone.

Indian schools existed. Their mantra was ‘Kill the Indian. Save the Child.’ Those places, of pain and criminal abuse to young children taken from their parents, never got better. They only came to an end when no longer useful to the people of power who left Indian children to grow up as damaged adults. My sadness is these same Native adults often identifying in a positive way with the places that abused them. That is the way of abused wives and children, maybe of all people. The same mantra can be found in the CDA (Children’s Defense Act) in Kruegers’s book. And so I begin to wonder why my time is being flooded with books and movies seeming to be of non-Indian content until the first page, or beginning of the movie? I am a tired old warrior.

Latest comments

14.04 | 15:16

George,
Idealism killed by shot of fact.
Clark

14.04 | 14:51

George,
This is a fascinating article.
Clark

03.06 | 00:41

Hello Frank,
Unfortunately, the turtle head has to come off and the insides discarded. I tried having ants eat it but they ate the shell as well. Sharp knife.

02.06 | 21:22

my turtle just died and I want to create a rattle.
How do I prepare him to do this.