For 2022, I am starting a new post for this because old posts when reposted do not get emailed, and there are lots of new readers who haven’t seen the old.
In what is now a tradition, we present for Thanksgiving the death prayer of Old Lodge Skins, which comes at the close of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger (who himself died in 2014).
Then he commenced to pray to the Everywhere Spirit in the same stentorian voice, never sniveling but bold and free.
“Thank you for making me a Human Being! Thank you for helping me become a warrior! Thank you for all my victories and for all my defeats. Thank you for my vision, and for the blindness in which I saw further.
“I have killed many men and loved many women and eaten much meat. I have also been hungry, and I thank you for that and for the added sweetness that food has when you receive it after such a time.
“You make all things and direct them in their ways, O Grandfather, and now you have decided that the Human Beings will soon have to walk a new road. Thank you for letting us win once before that happened. Even if my people must eventually pass from the face of the earth, they will live on in whatever men are fierce and strong. So that when women see a man who is proud and brave and vengeful, even if he has a white face, they will cry: ‘That is a Human Being!’…”
I stood there in awe and Old Lodge Skins started to sing, and when the cloud arrived overhead, the rain started to patter across his uplifted face, mixing with the tears of joy there.
It might have been ten minutes or an hour, and when it stopped and the sun’s setting rays cut through, he give his final thanks and last request.
“Take care of my son here,” he says, “and see that he does not go crazy.”
He laid down then on the damp rocks and died right away. I descended to the treeline, fetched back some poles, and built him a scaffold. Wrapped him in the red blanket and laid him thereon. Then after a while I started down the mountain in the fading light.
Eschew the movie made from the book, which shares only the title and the names of a few characters from the book, a book which is the moral and historical opposite of the politically correct film. It makes me weep to think of the liberties the director took, which if he had done to a woman would have landed him a thirty-year sentence.
The book itself contains no anachronisms, which itself is a matter of great celebration. Nowhere in Berger’s masterpiece does any character look to the future and say something sickeningly asinine like, “Some day we won’t let racial differences influence us.” The movie is saturated in syrup like that, as well as being stridently anti-white.
Also highly recommended (as historical orientation) is the classic The Fighting Cheyennes by George Bird Grinnell, who was born in 1849 and who wrote the book in 1915 (it’s still in print). It is a non-patronizing, non-romantic look at the battles the Cheyenne fought, in, as much as was possible, their own words.
Or try Comanches: The History of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach, a brutal, utterly realistic examination of the Plain’s fiercest and most horrible warriors. The descriptions of how the Comanche, especially its women, delighted in vivisectionist torture are frank and amazing.
Berger wrote Little Big Man at a time (1964) when white boys still wanted to run off and be Indians. Nearly twenty years later, the TV show Grizzly Adams fulfilled the same escapist function. What little boys want to be now they had best keep quiet about or out come the pills (or awards).
Old Lodge Skins was Little Big Man’s adoptive grandfather. The scene takes place shortly after the Battle of Little Big Horn, which the Cheyenne called the Battle at the Greasy Grass. This being the Current Year, I have to remind the reader this is when General Custer and his small army was wiped out by the Indians, the last real victory Indians were to have in the Plains wars.
There is much in Old Lodge Skin’s prayer that still works. Men, remember to offer it or one like it as Thanksgiving today.
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“POSTED IN ‘FUN'”
Thank you, Matt.
And when the woman sees the warrior, they become Being.
Bless you all, John
Where do little boys these days want to run off to? What makes their dreams?
Little Big Man is a great book. It was almost liked Forest Gump. Remember, Crabbe was a dead shot, and his avocation was hunting Comanches.
Incidentally, eschew the movie of the same name, which shares only the title and the names of a few characters from the book
I suppose you would say the same thing about this movie.
Happy Thanksgiving.
DAV: From what I’ve seen, most movies don’t do justice to the book they were based on (if there was one, of course). Movies have 2 hours to cover the subject matter. Rarely does it work out well. Nothing against movies or books—they’re just very different genres.
Grateful to have found that another fan of this great book also thought of it on Thanksgiving and took the time to share. Peace.
Someone else with the same name?
John R T Moore
Thanks, Briggs.
From Central America, Thanks for North American ‘can do,’ and gratitude.
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Briggs —
My friend, be cautious in what you do and advocate. Do not build high places nor encourage others to do the same.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the food.
“â€?”
Sheri, are you writing in Word? I merely ask…
Those strange symbols led me into hot water this time last year.
They appear on comments going way back and usually where there’s an apostrophe. Cut and paste them into google at your peril! You will be sent to a strange page with dirty talk and another where there are faux curses all the way down set to terrify but really only give rise to the obvious creepy disturbance. Nothing funny or clever about it but it’s what ‘little boys like to do’ when they’re at a loose end.
‘Stack overflow in in wordpress’, apparently, today, that’s not what it said last year!
Don’t cut and paste them, if you can see them. As I just did again, (wanted to see if all was quiet on the western front, which it is.)
It’s a trap of some kind. There must be an easy way to strip out the symbols where they occur with a little programme if one could be bothered.
JH, Luis Dias, Bernie, Joy, YOs and now Sheri have these next to their comments. Those are the ones I remember.
Wonder why?
Matt,
Neither ‘Moneyball’ author Michael Lewis, nor ‘irrational agent’ psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, nor HBD blogger Steve Sailer, nor any of Steve Sailer’s readers, know anything about statistics.
Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful that you have posted this without the usual, mundane, routine, redundant P – value and statistic slant. It’s about time.
And today I’m thankful, so very deeply thankful, that my father, having fought in WWII to rid the world of fascism, didn’t live to see the day America elected a Nazi-wannabe president.
Dav,
Do you still feel that Kavanaugh was a great boost for the Republican, with 8 millions less votes.
8 millions less votes
LOL! You are claiming to know how many votes (during the mid-terms?) Republicans would have received if someone else had been confirmed to the Supreme Court? You know the outcome of things that have not happened? How? By channeling the late, great Hari Seldon?
Sylly Goose! I doubt it. The tale is told that Seldon was a psychohistorian. You are just a psycho.
OTOH, Goose instead of Turkey for Thanksgiving? Yeah, OK.
@Joy — this is why I recommend text editors for composing posts, rather than word processors. In Windows, I advocate either Notepad ++ or straight up Notepad. In Linux, one is (of course) spoiled for choice, with Kate, KWrite, Leafpad, Mousepad, Featherpad, Pluma, Joe, gedit, geany, TEA, and on and on. Several of those are also available for Mac; you can add TextMate.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/happy-thanksgiving.jpg
(Image pilfered from CTH.)
Happy Columbus Day to all your Canadian readers.
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” It makes me weep to think of the liberties the director took…”
Like casting Dustin Hoffman as a western pioneer. Looked up the the anti-white director. Yup. Every single time.
Still, one of my favorite lines from the movie is Old Lodge Skins saying, “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. That is the way of things.”
Made me laugh. “There is a Human Being!” I’ll see if I can say that today, and see what they do!!!!
Christmas/Birthday presents for my boys have been ordered. Thank you for the great idea!!!
Black Robe: great movie
black elk speaks Book
Both give great idea of what First Nations were really like.
Byron- I am so glad someone gave Black Robe a mention! Both the film ( directed by an Aussie), and the book ( written by an Irishman) are stoic, unadorned, and honest. The book is far more harrowing than the film, probably unfilmable in the current climate, would give the average pc-prog the screaming Heebie Jeebies. Interesting take on the Catholic Church particularly the Jesuit missionaries which at least tries to be fair and not go off wildly judging the past like our contemporary “journalists”.
Briggs- Each year I say I must read Little Big Man. Maybe I will this year.
Another unvarnished storytelling of early America is The Winning of America series by Allan Eckhert. I’m only in the first (The Frontiersman) of the six books in the series. The author is known for his use of historic narrative in his novels. So far his retelling rings true to me. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
As a very wee lad I was taken by a relative to visit Anaheim, California, U.S.A. to experience the wonders of the newly opened Disneyland Amusement Park. While there I rode on the Lewis & Clark Riverboat Ride from which you could fire realistic sounding frontier muskets down upon the Indians in native costume and warpaint running along the wooded shoreline below. Desiring myself to become an Indian Brave – once full stature permitted – I refused to open fire on my spirit brothers. My kindly relative was perplexed by this reticence ~ thinking perhaps that I must have been too frightened or shy to participate like the many other red-blooded American boys aboard. By consequence – I was taken instead for a less stressful experience on the Alice In Wonderland Spinning Teacup Ride. After being tightly secured to my seat, and following several abrupt alternating directional teacup spins, I threw up substantial volumes of blue and red cotton candy and half-digested rock candy onto my unfortunate chaperones’ argyle socks and dress shoes. Happy Thanksgiving to All
Today they’d put trigger warnings on all those there books!
Then again, experts have now turned against trigger warnings for being too triggering…
https://moonbattery.com/term-trigger-warning-canceled-might-trigger-snowflakes/
Proud, brave and vengeful men today are missing the bravery…
Happy Thanksgiving. I have since read this book at least twice since you posted this years ago. Every time, it’s been fantastic.
Maybe I am dead inside, but I don’t understand why people read fiction and then point to it as a source of logic or truth? It didn’t happen. Nothing like that happened.
If you want to understand the thanks the pioneers evoked on this holiday, don’t eat for 24 hours. Gratitude will be forthcoming.
First People had a real code they lived by. Now they whine like the losers they made themselves into. If not for the casinos, they would be nothing but welfare addicts. Go to Pine Ridge some time if you want to see what decades of self-loathing did to the First People. Now, it will never be different for them or anyone else as we give up all humanity and become eternal whiners. So it’s time to be thankful that humans are now getting exactly what they want–endless victimhood in a lousy life they can blame on someone else. It’s all sad, but just a return to what people always were in the past. Whether Europeans or Spanish or no one had bothered the First People, they would have become the whiners humans are. Hate is what humans have lived most of their time here on Earth. Be thankful there’s something beyond earth if one choses to follow that path. That is the real Thanksgiving.
Russell: Because Fiction and Poetry are Truth. They are more real than ‘it didn’t happen’. They tell us about who we are, who who should try to be. What is good, and what is not.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Old Lodge Skin’s death prayer never grows old but is tasty as turkey and gravy. Thanks for posting this again and for all you do here, Briggs. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and thanks for your interesting comments and good company. Cheers!
I hope everyone remembers to check and test all their guests and family befire letting them into your residential abode. The US media recommends trying to turn this procedure into a fun party game!
– Serve some snacks and test in the garage before entering.
– Hire a bouncer for those who become unruly.
– Remember to keep children masked and in a separate room away from the adults and remind them to eat in great haste in preparation for the Exodus.
– But take your sweet time initiating your relatives into the teachings of Brandon and remind them of their genocidal racist sins. We should not forget about what is important when the children ask why this day is unlike any other day.
Have a Happy Squanto Time!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/media-tells-americans-perform-covid-tests-check-vaccine-status-thanksgiving-dinner-guests
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