DWM-Dead White Men

Mention Shakespeare here in North Minnesota and people ask where you’re going fishing. Eagle View, the property on which we are vacationing, is the great outdoors where bald eagle, horsefly, loon and lake have precedence over the Dead White Men of history. This trip started on the tri-county border of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, which Frontiers-DWM made sure was DRM or Dead Red Men country.

The trail to the deep north of the USA (for Canadians thats: Us, eh?) proceeded out of American DWM territory via Detroit/Windsor along the northern shore of Lake Erie to the shores of Lake Ontario: the former domain of British DWM. The French DWM settled along the St Lawrence River to the north in Quebec and traded with the DRM of Upper new York State.

After a weeks respite in Port Credit it was off again following the shores of Lake Huron to Sault Ste Marie (formerly the domain of French DWM) back to Upper Michigan. On the way passing through Ojibway, Mississauga, and Huron tribal lands. The Yoopers of Upper Michigan are seperated from Lake Michigan and closer to Lake Superior.

Wisconsin finally arrived and traversing the edge of Lake Superior at Duluth, we entered Minnesota and our final destination in Grand Rapids, which happens to be where Judy Garland was born. The museum and tribute to her life and the Land of Oz is based in the Old Schoolhouse with its own yellow brick road.

Holidays mean reading whatever relates to where i am and this trip I discovered Allan Eckert’s non-fiction narrative histories of the clash between European DWM and Native American DRM like Pontiac and Tecumseh. As usual trying to link all this to Sh I found this book by C.U.P. which i will try to purchase at the upcoming BSA conference. I also came across this article online on Race and Culture in Elizabethan England.

Life is always in the details and there are a couple of events Eckert describes in his book Frontiersman that brought me to link the following passage from Henry VI pt 3 on a field of battle. It seems the frontiersmen and the Native Indians both used to take prisoners and adopt them into their respective societies. Years would pass and during some raid or war blood relative would kill blood relative on a field of battle. Survival of the fittest is made a mockery of when the same genetic stock kills off its own genetic stock.