Blog #5

There is a prevailing theme amongst the text of both William Apess and Lydia Sigourney, I feel that the theme centers around civil rights, and more specifically the civil rights of the American Indian and those rights in relation to the contradictory nature of Christianities biblical teachings during that time in American history.
I actually respected the various points that William Apess was able to present in the text when he describes biblical teachings in relation to the way the American Indian was treated during that time period. He says, "If black or red skins or any other skin of color is disgraceful in to God, it appears that he has disgraced himself a great deal - for he has made fifteen colored people to to one white and placed them here upon this earth." [Apess 642]. This quotation captures this time period almost perfectly. Why the conquest? Why were these so called Christians slaughtering and massacring and treating the American Indian (amongst other colored races) sub-human? Apess says everything that could be the makings of a great civil rights speech given by Robert or John Kennedy or Martin Luther King. My only thought is to why I have never heard of this man until this point in my entire education. What a smart man, unfortunately he was preaching to the choir, what we know now is that white Americans didn't want to hear this, his people were persecuted until the almost bitter end of their existence, to the furthest recesses of American culture, a persecution climaxing at the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier of more recent American history.
Lydia Sigourney captures the American Indian in her poem Indian Names in a positive radiance. She tells of a Indian culture that has been and forever will be embedded in the land. She says "Your mountains build their monument, through ye destroy their dust" [38-40], I think that last line is absolutly critical in connecting the theme of both the readings. She is saying to God that his mountains are a monument for the lost culture of the American Indian but through your teachings you have destroyed the culture by conquest and in some aspects dominionism.