A Conundrum Wrapped Up in an Enigma
There is no great way to discuss this topic than to say it makes no Common Sense. I cannot force my mind to coalesce around the concept that from 1770 – 1792 that the greatest thinkers ever gathered in one place at one time and created together two of the three most important documents in human history were at the same time racist, maniacal, genocidal, thieving, deplorable, fiends.
On one hand extolling to the highest reaches the virtues of humanity and liberty only to debauch their soaring rhetoric with degradation of racism toward “Indians” and “Negros” declaring them to be lesser than human. Their literary prose defiled by their wanton genocide of the Indians and the degradation of slavery of the Negros. Their claims bestowed by the God of Nature only to steal, kill, and destroy the God given property of the Indians and Negros. While deploring the actions of a King toward his Colonists, treating the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent in the exact same manner. While espousing the purist utopian ideals for this Union, they themselves degraded their own moral authority through acts of depravity and debauchery and murder and genocide. To portray themselves as the most lofty thinkers since Jesus some 2,000 years prior, they proved themselves to be nothing more than Satan prancing around in powdered wigs.
How can one claim dignity and honor while at the same time committing genocide and ethnic cleansing? How can one claim godly principles of conduct for all mankind while at the same time lying, cheating, stealing, and breaking solemn treaties? How can one claim to be doing the works of God all the while committing acts towards that God which that God calls vile?
Today I weep when I read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” all the while reading about the lust and greed perpetrated by the authors of the Declaration of Independence. While Thomas Jefferson wrote one of the greatest documents of all time, he and his counterparts were stealing the lands of the Indians and the labor of the slaves they owned. Today I mourn when I read, “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” while at the same time I can quote from Presidential Papers, Annals of Congress, War Department Records, State Department Papers and Colonial Records, how these same men actively and openly plotted to never uphold treaties, take and steal the lands of the Indians, and emphatically commit genocide to take that which they desired from the Indians.
According to the British Archives, when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he openly called out the Chickamauga when he wrote, “merciless, Indian savages” because they were in open rebellion against the Colonies at that time attempting to protect their lands. While Thomas Jefferson was penning his diatribe to the King of England about his actions and behaviors toward his colonists, the colonists were ascribing to even worse behavior and treatment to the aboriginal land holders of this continent.
We must now return to the Conundrum (mystery) wrapped up in an Enigma (paradox). It is impossible to grant leniency or recompense for their ultimate betrayal of their egalitarian prose. Their betrayal of that which they proclaimed before the world and the God of Nature was never altered by their better angels. Their better angels were sacrificed upon the alter of wealth, power, and greed never to be heard from again.
(C) This document was produced at the request of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on July 18, 2019, to document the History, Anthropology, Culture, Religion, and Archaeology of The Chickamauga Nation.