Have a great Columbus Day !!

Good thing ole Christopher discovered this under utilized Land of Milk and Honey. What a great life we've had and I thank God every day I was born here.

My wife is Choctaw Indan. Ya can't tell it by her looks, she's blond. But she's on the tribal rolls.

We get a monthly newspaper from the Tribe, that lately has had a column by the Tribe's historian that reviews Choctaw history by decade. Around 1880 to 1890, the Choctaw sold rights to white coal mining companies to mine for coal in southeastern Oklahoma, around thte town of McAlester. The Tribe took a royalty cut of profits. And they issued permits to whites who worked in the mines, to live on tribal land.

This historian credits the coal mining with beginning white settlement which eventually led to them losing their lands. Ya know, the old story about the white man breaking all the treaties and stealing their land from them.

Well, I read this and the first question that comes to my mind, is why did not the Choctaw mine the coal ? Why did they have to hire a white man's company to do the job ?

Also, the white workers in the coal mines were immigrants to the USA, mostly from Italy. To this day, there's a strong Italian community in the town of McAlester. For as long as I can remember, there's been a great Italian restaurant in McAlester called Pete's Place. Its the best in the state, worth the trip there.

So what happened, we had white immigrants, who left Italy and traveled across the Atlantic, went through legal immigration at Ellis Island, then traveled to southeast Oklahoma to work in a coal mine.

As opposed to Choctaw who were living right on top of the coal mine and did nothing with it. And now historians want to blame these white men for stealing and mistreating the Choctaw. Why could not the Choctaw work in the mines ? If they did, maybe there would not have been white settlement.

But ya can't say these things today. Historians are just a bunch of bleeding hearts who present a soft view that's kind to the Choctaw tribe. Or they're scared to death of being called racist because they spoke truth and reality.

Not that our Federal govt did not make mistakes with the indigenous people. I don't understand why the tribes had to be moved from mostly southeast USA to Indan Territory in the middle 1800's. I'm still exploring that.

 

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