Episode 4 of Season 6 of Outlander spent considerable time among the Cherokee. Conflicts with this powerful people were a serious matter in the 18th Century Carolina backcountry; in 1760, the Cherokee took the British outpost named Fort Loudoun in what is now Tennessee. Maintaining the deerskin trade and keeping the Cherokee “on side” would become a British Imperial imperative.
This following is a delightful account of a Cherokee embassy to London.
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Confronted on Thursday with an egregious example of the valorization of (purported) victimhood and the weaponization of (perceived) grievance, I turned — as I do in such circumstances — to ancient verities. And I mean “ancient” literally. Beowulf is a beautiful thing, and Michael Wood’s passionate exploration of the foundation stone of English literature was just the horn of intellectual mead I needed.
Art by Jon Hodgson.
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The exploration of Scottish folklore continues.
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The Europeans are making interesting rifles. The Explorer Carbon and The Explorer Wood.
The Sako 100 will allow caliber changes to be made using the torque wrench supplied with the rifle. The rifle will be offered in a variety of calibers including 243 Win, 308 Win, 6.5 CM, 6,5×55 SE, 270 Win, 30-06 Sprg, 8x57IS, 9.3×62, 28 Nosler, 300 Win Mag, 7 mm Rem Mag, 375 H&H and 6.5 PRC.
Matthew says
On my mother’s side, there’s a family story that we are part Cherokee. I’m pretty sure it is apocryphal, but I have an uncle who is trying to prove it because he thinks he can get money from the government. He also got military disability for a back injury that he got after he left the military. We’re not close to that uncle.
I read Beowulf in Spanish class when I was supposed to be listening to the teacher. Never learned Spanish that good, but I don’t regret it. It is an extraordinary story. Have you read J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf? The one where he argues that it is a genuinely good story and not just a historical curiosity? It is worth reading.
JimC says
Oh, yes. More than once.
John M Roberts says
Heh. I got a back injury in the Army but since they said I couldn’t prove it was service-related I wasn’t due any disability payment. Apparently jumping out of airplanes wasn’t a likely cause of back injury. But it was the late ’60s and even the Army hated soldiers back then. My back plagues me to this day.
Matthew says
I’m not sure when my uncle started getting his disability payment.
I think there might be a lesson here about the problems of bureaucracy.
Jeffrey Sams says
I read Beowulf many years ago as a security officer, pacing a well-lit spot on the property I was guarding. The night watch could always contain mystery and intrigue, and a bit of poetic romance no matter the dirty, grimy, soul-sucking place you were assigned to.
David Wrolson says
It just dawned on me that I may have never mentioned the “Kensington Runestone” here at FP..
Local folklore here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone
Joe says
Another absolutely fascinating cultural interaction I was not aware of. I had to go back and rewatch the part about their translator being accidentally drowned in a river by his wife to make sure I had it straight. History truly can be stranger than fiction.
JimC says
And it’s recounted in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Rick+Schwertfeger says
I’ll take a SAKIO Explorer Wood, thank you.
Paul McNamee says
Julian Glover for the win. Wow. Thanks for that!
JimC says
Ain’t that grand?
lane batot says
I especially enjoyed the “Liath Wolf” segment on the last wolves of Scotland–so appropo after I had just recently finished a book by the Scottish naturalist/author Jim Crumley(“The Last Wolf”)!
My favorite story is the one about the hunter McQueen–WHAT a cheeky fellow that! The efforts made by the Scots to protect their buried dead from the wolves contrasts completely from the philosophy of the Mongol nomads, who purposefully used to leave their dead out in the open, hoping they would be devoured by wolves, as it was believed the soul of the dead could not reach Tenger(God), unless the body had been so disposed of(which I read in the book “Wolf Totem”, which went into some detail about this belief–they had a scene in the movie by the same name depicting such a ‘burial”, but did not explain the philosophy behind it, alas…..) Maybe I have a bit of Mongol blood in my ancestry(they say, thanks to old Ghengis Khan, a very large percentage of the human population does!), as if I had my druthers, I’d much rather get et by wolves as my “burial”, than stuck 6 foot under the cold, cold ground, to molder away, and only feed a bunch of worms…..
JimC says
As Stephen Vincent Benet wrote in The Ballad of William Sycamore:
Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,
Like the seed of the prairie-thistle;
It has washed my bones with honey and oil
And picked them clean as a whistle.
And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring,
And my sons, like the wild-geese flying;
And I lie and hear the meadow-lark sing
And have much content in my dying.
Go play with the towns you have built of blocks,
The towns where you would have bound me!
I sleep in my earth like a tired fox
And my buffalo have found me.
lane batot says
MARVELOUS!