Catastrophic Change and the Seeds of Renewal
Change can be brutal In 2011, my husband and I watched a series on Netflix called “Into the West.” We enjoyed it, but it was depressing. It covered the expansion of white people from the east to the west throughout the nineteenth century, focusing on the conflict between the whites and Native Americans as the inexorable tsunami of wagons crossed the plains. It told about Indian wars, broken treaties, the near extinction of the buffalo, stolen lands... For the whites, the 1800’s were an exciting time of prosperity and gain. Inventions made life easier, the railroad brought the coasts together, while gold mines, industry, banking made some people millionaires. Huge cattle ranches and drives were the stuff of legend. Literature, politics, education, entertainment, journalism--there was nothing withheld from the irrepressible, enterprising whites of eighteenth-century America. For the Indian tribes, it was a time, with a few notable exceptions, of humiliation and loss. They fought brav...