By Blue Turtle
Yesterday the nation celebrated a day they call Thanksgiving, but which to mind is called Appreciation day. Frankly it was a terribly lonely day for me. For it was a day filled with past memories of days gone by. I took a drive with my Son to look at the lands once owned by my Grandparents, which once amounted to five hundred acres, but now are reduced to about ten three to five acre plots upon which my second and third cousins now live. Looking upon those retched plots brought an ache to my heart. For I still remember them as they were.
Those five hundred acres were awarded to my Great-great grandfather for meritorious service to his country by a grateful government back in 1848. So it says according to one of my cousins who took the time to look up such things. This in itself was unusual for he was Lenape. He had fought in the Mexican war as a scout for General S.W. Kearny and Colonel Sterling Price, whose name was more or less bestowed upon him. Stone Wolf Price, or S.W. Price.
Both Kearny and Price indorsed this grant of land.
Those five hundred acres were still intact back when I was a child growing up there, but have since been whittled away. Three hundred acres having been declared wetlands and taken over by the state, which now has a public hunting ground situated there. The other two hundred spread out between relatives during the years, some to be sold.
I think the most heart wrenching sight were those lands taken over by the state. For where once stood wonderful hardwood forest of Oak, Hickory and Maple trees, it had all been deforested and replanted with evergreens. The beautiful streams that once ran through it, upon whose banks once still possessed the rings of stones of ancient fire hearths, now nothing more than refuse dumps. It felt as if my very soul had been violated along with that land, for therein laid my most precious memories.
I guess this is the most terrible thing about getting old, the helpless feeling of seeing changes and not being able to do anything about them. Seeing relatives whose blood has become so diluted that they do not hold sacred those basic principals that once made them Lenape, or true people.
In my mind I once again walk beside my Great Grandfather, as he sprinkles tobacco upon those now defiled graves of the unknown that lay along those streams, and I once again finger those broken pot shards that lay about old camp sites, burying them with reverence, tears and silent prayers. Now my heart weeps with the memories of my ancestor’s forgotten sacrifices so trodden into the mire of times passage.
When I spoke to my oldest cousin about these things, he could only shrug his shoulders and say, “Hey, what can we do? Times change!” And he wonders why I weep.
Must people change to keep up with time?
