By Stephen Smoot
Celebrities should not speak of issues outside of what they know. Not that they should be legally prevented from speaking their mind, but the nature of their work, and sometimes their lifestyles for good or ill, prevent them from fully understanding the subjects on which they choose to speak.
Popular recording artist Billie Eilish, one of the few pretty good musicians of this decade, decided during a recent awards show to opine. She shared that she thought that one cannot close the borders on “stolen land.” Then, of course, it was promptly revealed that she has called law enforcement numerous times to remove unwanted individuals from the property she owns, including lands and a mansion. Borders for me, but not for three.
One of the most fraudulent and stupid pieces of mythology created by the Left centers on their “stolen land” issue. Basically, the theory is that if a Caucasian people ever conquered land from a non Caucasian people, then the land is “stolen.” If non Caucasians conquered from Caucasians, that’s “justice.” Advocates would not put it so directly, but essentially that’s what it is.
Was West Virginia “stolen land” as the Left insists all of the Americas are? Yes, but not in the way they want the world to understand.
The Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, and Cayuga nations of upper New York State, according to their own histories, warred viciously against each other for an unknown length of time. At a certain point, either in 1349 or 1478, these five nations combined. As their own oral histories tell (and oral historical traditions often are more accurate than written) the warring peoples had met for a conference to iron out differences.
An outsider figure named Deganawida used the onset of a total solar eclipse (hence the specific years mentioned) to force the nations to join and build an empire rather than war with each other. He threatened that if they did not join right then and there, he would not allow the sun to return. Convinced, the Five Nations created the Iroquois League.
From their base in and around the Adirondacks (a difficult realm in which to live and thrive during the frigid Little Ice Age that lasted from the 1300s into the 17 and 1800s) they sortied forth, conquering the land of all around them. Iroquois warriors, already battle hardened over centuries of fighting each other, easily annihilated or drove away other Indian groups from lands they desired.
In the South, the Cherokee also expanded their territory. According to James Mooney’s written histories of their oral traditions, they practiced genocide on Indian groups that would not get out of their way.
The two most powerful imperial forces in Eastern North America until well into European colonization eyed central Appalachia as their next lands to seize. For centuries, two distinct “Mound Builder” civilizations dominated the Ohio and Kanawha valleys, their sway extending eastward into the mountains. For a number of reasons, most not known, this civilization disintegrated.
Those left in the wake eventually received an offer they could not refuse from both the Five Nations of the Iroquois League and the Cherokee Nation. Leave or die. It’s not known which the inhabitants chose, but the region was mostly denuded of Indian settlement when Europeans filtered into the area.
In 1763, after the close of the Seven Years War or French and Indian War, whichever name is preferred, the British Empire placed a boundary on the high ridge of the Appalachians. West of which its subjects could not settle. The Five Nations and the Kingdom of Prussia were Britain’s most vital allies in the global conflict and the British Crown’s solution to prevent problems between their people and Indian nations lay in drawing that line.
Five years later, however, the line was seen as untenable between the Potomac, Ohio, and Tennessee valleys. Britain went to its allies the Iroquois and also the somewhat less friendly Cherokee and purchased almost all of the future state of West Virginia, half of Kentucky, and a third of Tennessee in the Treaties of Fort Stanwix and Hard Labour. The Shawnee Nation and its neighbors protested, but they had submitted to participating in the Iroquois Covenant Chain empire. These same nations were the most aggressive in raiding frontier settlements for the chief purpose of stealing iron tools and also the settlers’ children.
If West Virginia is “stolen land” then the land was stolen from countless small disorganized villages by the American Indian imperial powers east of the Mississippi, a people whose coherence is as lost to history as the Lombards. The British Empire bought the land properly from its owners, who happened to be some of Britain’s only true “friends” on earth at the time.
This fact should not inspire any other thought than the utter absurdity of “stolen land” ideology and mythology. Those who use it, including people who do know better, is that there is no way to extend the philosophy to its obvious end.
Consider the case of Poland. At one point, a combined kingdom of Poland and Lithuania extended nearly to Moscow. It was among the largest states in Europe until its government veered into absurd dysfunction and its neighbors spent a century lopping away bits and pieces until by 1800 there was no more independent Poland. The Treaty of Versailles restored the nation, but the verdict of World War II shifted the entire nation eastward into what had traditionally been German lands for over a millennia. The Poles themselves suffered greatly where Russia seized its lands, less so under Prussian and Austrian rule.
Okay stolen land folks, riddle me how you find “justice” for Poland? Which boundary was just, the ones in the 1600s, 1700s, 1920s, or now? And, assuming one could restore some past border configuration, what does one do with the people living there now?
All of this comes from the misuse and abuse of the discipline of history. History is meant as a tool to develop understanding of the past and the present while using its lessons as a guide for the future. As a story, it edifies and creates the kinds of discussions that bring people together. When used as a weapon, such as by the Left, it does nothing but divide, mostly by creating half-baked narratives that have neither sense nor purpose outside of their politics. It mostly encourages people to find enemies to force into the rhetorical and social stocks until they indulge in classic Marxist-Leninist “self-criticism,” humiliating themselves to escape the slanders of the mob.
Worst of all, it encourages the wrong use of Ockham’s Razor on history. In the humanities, the simplest explanation is almost never the case.
The former northern region of Mexico outside of Texas came into the United States after a war in which Mexico fired the first shot, then lost badly. The United States Civil War was not caused by slavery but a complex set of issues that included a basic Constitutional disagreement over state versus federal power.. World War I was not the sole fault of Germany, no matter what the Treaty of Versailles claims.
One could go on and on debunking the neat and tidy handfuls of words used to explain massively complex problems and evolutions of history, but there’s just as much point in that as in advancing silly “stolen land” narratives.
And the Right cannot congratulate itself, because it is not immune to this. Within the Right side of American politics in the last few years, most likely duped by social media algorithms cooked up by Chinese intelligence, comes rapidly growing bigotry against Jewish people and Roman Catholics.
Few narratives outstrip the absurdity that these ancient and beautiful expressions of religious faith are secret cabals of evil control with centuries-old plans of world subjugation, but more than a few on the right and elsewhere have fallen for ideas just as foolish as “stolen land.” The difference is that one fosters bigotry against faith, the other fosters it against civilization itself.
Neither has a place in adult rational discourse and those who speak in such terms need not ever be taken seriously.
