Hello from deep south Mississippi

I wanted to go to the Choctaw Indian Fair, held in Philadelphia Mississippi every July. But it's too darn hot. I bought some lightweight cotton shirts and some shorts and filled up the car with gas etc. Went outside and wilted. We're in the grip of a record breaking heat wave, the worst in a century. Oh well. Maybe next year.

"Our" Choctaw Indians were forest people and mound builders. They had no stone to build monuments like the Maya or Inca--they used what they had--soil--to build these amazing memorials. It saddens me to see the ancestors of the mound builders at the Fair doing dances borrowed from the Hopi and western Indians, which have no relativity to them.

In prehistory they had their own arts and pottery patterns and dances and rituals, but so much was lost when white settlers tried their damndest to wipe them off the face of the Earth. So so much lost. My ancestral blood weeps for what was lost--yet prideful of the stubborn spirit that kept those remnants of a lost civilization alive.

susil

Comments:

comment by redimpala on July 4, 2009 9:12 AM ()

Hi red; They deserve every single thing they can get--I hope they all get rich off the get casinos and everything else--Go For It!! Yea!!

reply by susil on July 5, 2009 11:57 AM ()

Furthermore, there are Calusa Indian mounds nearby, but they are nothing to look at. Oh, look, a mound -- hoop-de-doo. The Randall Research Center takes care of the grounds where the mounds still exist. They are, I believe, made of shells but are overgrown with grass. As I said, not exactly a night on the town.

comment by tealstar on July 3, 2009 7:23 PM ()

No one gives a toot about preservation of anything Indian. In Mississippi, some of the mounds are very large, but instead of preserving them, farmers plow over and around them--except the ones so big they'd fall off.

reply by susil on July 5, 2009 12:08 PM ()

I'm sorry you missed out. We have a road here called "Burnt Store Road" -- it was a trading post and a Seminole Indian named Billy Bowlegs and his merry band burned it down. We have an "Old Burnt Store Road" that is probably the one where this happened and Ed and I have driven it -- it ends at a patch of woods -- I wish there had been a marker placed where the store used to be. Anyway, I love the name.

comment by tealstar on July 3, 2009 7:20 PM ()

Hi teal; "Billy Bowlegs Road" would've been even more colorful.
Good for him and his merry band.

reply by susil on July 5, 2009 12:03 PM ()

Being the home of the Seminole Indians we are always having festivals of one kind or another.

I miss 'Memphis carnival' and the Memphis Fair--you know Memphis--the capitol of Mississippi--okay, I'm ducking so you missed with whatever you threw at me!

comment by greatmartin on July 3, 2009 6:56 PM ()

Memphis Mississippi--has a nice ring to it! Maybe we oughta annex Memphis!

reply by susil on July 5, 2009 12:12 PM ()

Well. Next weekend is the Bascom Fire Department Festival over at Meadowbrook Park. All the beer you can drink at 2 bucks a paper cup. Then, the weekend after is the big Bucyrus Bratwurst festival (they make Johnsonville brats there) and I'm taking a date. I go alone to the Fire Department thing, which is in my home village, so that I won't embarrass myself to a date. Hot times in the summer here! No indians, though, except in Cleveland stadium and who cares about losers?

comment by jondude on July 3, 2009 2:34 PM ()

Dear hot daddy; sounds like hot times and big fun; enjoy! (Love those Johnsonville brats!)
Our little town committee has a summer festival--I implore them to have a fall festival too, when it cools off below say, 80 degrees.But they say it's too much trouble--all the planning and preparation and cleanup etc.
I just can't stand the heat anymore, so don't go to these festivities.

reply by susil on July 5, 2009 12:26 PM ()