Just curious if there are any history buffs on rokslide. Anyone like Custer?
Osiyo (ᎣᏏᏲ),
I guess you could say I'm a history buff.
I was a contributing editor for California Fly Fisher magazine from 2001 to 2012. I wrote articles with titles that would lead you to believe that the subject matter was fly fishing the surf and shallow bays of the Southern California coast, but what I REALLY wrote about was history.
My first piece, titled simply "The Salton Sea," explored the history behind California's largest lake; how it came to be, what it was before it came to be, the role it plays after 100 years of coastal wetland habitat destruction, and so on. That set the tone for everything that followed. My next piece to run in CFF was "Dana Point Harbor." It answered the question of who "Dana" was and why he got a point named after him, and delved into the importance of the cattle hide trade to pre-statehood, pre independence from Mexico California. "Carpenteria Beach" explained why a beach got named "Little Carpenter" by the Portola Expedition while on the verge of starvation.
The truth of the matter is that one stretch of sandy, open-coast beach in Southern California fishes just like any other. There's nothing location-specific about catching fish on fly tackle at any of them. The same is true for the shallow coastal bays from Pt. Fermin southward, too. The real story was about THE PLACES because catching fish on fly tackle at them was and is pretty much the same.
And, it was the same deal with other magazines I wrote for. I did a stint as a contributing editor for California Game and Fish and one of the pieces I did there was on deer hunting in California's D-14 zone. That was an excuse to tell the story of the gold mining history of the San Bernardino Mountains, how the now-vanished community of Bellville lost out to San Bernardino as the county seat by one vote, the route the Butterfield Stage took to get from L.A. to Belleville, why Luna Mountain isn't called that because it looks like a lunar landscape, but was instead named for Edwardio Luna, whose 1860 cabin I came to own, and how three people lost their lives near the summit of Shay Mountain, where the wreckage of the Fokker Tri-Motor they died in remains scattered across the ground....
So. yeah, I'm a history fan.
A fan of General George Armstrong Custer I am not.
As an enrolled citizen of a Native American tribe, I'm apparently supposed to hate the guy on racial grounds, but Cherokee people have about as much in common with the Sioux as Germans have with the Italians or the French. Custer didn't do to "my people" what General Winfield Scott under orders from Andrew Jackson did, and my family didn't do the whole "Trail of Tears" thing, anyhow, but saw the writing on the wall and self-removed to Indian Territory before Gen. Scott forced Cherokee people to do so at gunpoint.
I have a low opinion of Custer because i view him as an arrogant dumb-ass who ordered mother's sons to slaughter because he wasn't altogether brilliant as a military tactician. Not being Sioux, I don't have much of a reason to have emotional capital invested in Custer's actions, but as a former field supervisor and watch commander in law enforcement, I had a vested interest in "not being that guy" as a leader of people in dangerous situations.
One of my Cherokee ancestors was a guy by the name of Riley Keys (1813-1884), who: was:
- Signer of the 1839 Act of Union: He was a signatory to the Act of Union, which united the Eastern and Western Cherokee into one government.
- Judge of the Tahlequah District: He served as a judge for the Tahlequah District.
- Chief Justice of the Cherokee Supreme Court: He was appointed to this position in 1872.
- President of the 1866 Constitution Convention: He acted as the president of the convention that reviewed and adopted amendments to the Constitution of the Cherokee Nation on November 28, 1866.
- Signer of the 1867 Delaware Agreement: He was a delegate for the Cherokee Nation in finalizing agreements with the Delaware Tribe.
The community of Keys (Go Cougars!!) is named after him and his "Old Settler" relations who took up residence in the area prior to the Trail of Tears and the removed Cherokee capital being established in nearby present-day Tahlequah.
The U.S. Civil War divided some Cherokee families, too. I have Cherokee relations in my family tree who fought on opposite sides at the Battle of Pea Ridge and lost their lives there on the same day.
He who has no interest in history is doomed to repeat it.
Denadagohvi (ᏕᎾᏓᎪᎲᎢ),
"Cherokeeguide"
