The Law of the Land

Why did the participants in the Boston Tea Party dress themselves as Indians?

The answer to this question has been hidden away by the history books, and what does remain has been heisted by for-profit shamans and twisted into wispy nothings for gatherings of utopians waiting for the return of the Star People from outerspace to reappear in Area 51 to save them from their stupidity.

There is a great law of the land, which we call the U.S. Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and before these, the Declaration of Independence. And before these documents was The Great Law of Peace of the Longhouse People. It is this constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy that unleashed the spirit of freedom and independence amongst the colonists, and this is why those of the Boston Tea Party chose to identify with their Iroquois brethren. This is the law of the land, not of a mystical Star People, but given by a man named Tekanawita and his follower Hiawatha.

From the 1740's on, the Iroquois had encouraged the colonists to unite into a confederacy like their own and declare independence from Britain.

Finally, in 1776, the Continental Congress planned to meet in Philadelphia. The Continental Congress sent an invitation, signed by John Hancock, to the Iroquois leaders, requesting that they would be present at the Congress.

In June of 1776 there were 21 Iroquois leaders camped outside of the State House in Philadelphia. They were there as "brothers" of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They oversaw the debates, approving them, and expressed their desire to be "as one people, and have but one heart" with the colonists.

What was this Great Law of Peace that so inspired the signers of the Declaration of Independence? And why is it that when we speak of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution we speak of them as new creations, as revolutionary, or based upon new enlightenment thought, but never as laws that were written upon this land even before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock? The Great Law of Peace is irrefutable, and all that have forgotten it or ignored it have fallen into weakened and scattered states.

The Great Law of Peace was given to those that accepted it, the nations of the Iroquois, by Tekanawita who was sent by The Great Creator to save the miserable people from themselves and the blood they were spilling upon the earth. This is not a New Age history, but one that makes one question what we think we know about this earth and how God works in it.

When one knows the history of this land and of Tekanawita, it seems that we are idolizing our "Founding Fathers," giving them credit for a documents that predate them, and were originally handed down by The Great Creator and protected by the Iroquois nations. This Constitution, like the Ten Commandments was handed down by God via an intermediary and if we toss it out or break its laws we will have no peace and be separated from each other as the Iroquois eventually were.

And so, I conclude here with high hopes of proceeding on to the the amazing history of Tekanawita, perhaps The Founding Father of this nation --- and of all nations that follow shepherds and fishermen.

Socially Solitary, Free Range, and Feral

"There are two components to human nature, the social and the solitary. The solitary is definitely the more highly evolved, and humanity has surged forward through the efforts of brilliant loners and eccentrics. Their names live on forever precisely because society was unable to extinguish their brilliance or thwart their initiative" (Dmitry Orlov, "Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation," The New Emergency Conference, Dublin, 11 June 2009)

"We have a huge surplus of 'factory-farmed humans and a shortage of free-range humans'" (Dmitry Orlov, "Definancialisation")

Image: Marc Averette, Free-range feral chickens in Key West

The Bard In the Forest Primeval, Across the Plains, In the Swamps.....

"This is the forest primeval," and "Still stands the forest primeval." What an old, dark, mossy green sound these lines of Longfellow's "Evangeline" have.

Evangeline is separated from her Gabriel on what was to be her wedding day. Forced out of their homes by British troops and placed upon boats, they like so many of the Accadian diaspora are split apart from family and loved ones. Many of those that survived the journey and were allowed entry into the United States settled in the deep south, becoming what we call Cajuns.

But Evangeline devotes her life, traversing this country in search of Gabriel, always missing him, never finding him, until returning to the place she began; Philadelphia. And there, old and gray, ministering to those dying of a plague, she finally finds him.

When reading this beautiful piece of North American history it must be wondered who or what Evangeline is. She is more than a person. She, as her name indicates, is an evangelist. But even more than that, she is this country. She is the land, she is the people. I wonder if she is a prophet or only a forgotten memory.

"Thus did the long sad years glide on, and in seasons and places
Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden;-
Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek Moravian Missions,
Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army,
Now in the secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities.
Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered.
Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.
Each succeeding year stole something from her beauty,
Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow.
Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er her
forehead,
Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly horizon,
As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline," Part 2, IV)

"Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder,
Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder
Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from
her fingers,
And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning.
Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish,
That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows.
On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man.
Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples;
But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment
Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood;
So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying,
Hot and red on is lips still burned the flush of the fever,
As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals,
That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over.
Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted
Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the dark-
ness,
Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking.
Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,
Heard he the cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded
Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like,
"Gabriel! O my beloved!"........" ("Evangeline," Part 2, V)