Day 26, June 15, Foss Oklahoma

Another hump day.  Excalibur crossed the mighty Mississippi and like a loaded conestoga wagon in a land rush, bounced all the way into Oklahoma.  Tonight I find myself back in Camelot, parked near the infamous Washita River, officially in cowboy and Indian country.

Originally I had planned to stop in Arkansas along the way west from Memphis.  I’ve always wanted to fish for big trout in the White River or one of its tributaries, but I was discouraged by reports of high water.  Sure enough, most of the way across Arkansas I saw muddy rivers filled to their banks, and flooded fields.  Not until I passed Fort Smith did I start to see reasonably dry-looking country.

When you travel as broadly and as fast as I’ve been doing since I left PA May 20, you can’t help but notice that America is not only a glorious nation, with amber waves of grain and all that, but it also has a dark past that we’ve buried in our collective subconscious.  On one hand there are the glories of the pioneers and industrialists who conquered vast lands and created a great civilization, and heroes like Lewis and Clark and the founding fathers of our democracy.  On the other hand, there are the tragic legacies of slavery and Indian genocide.  This morning the signs reminding me of slavery were left in my rear view mirror when I passed the exit for the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  This evening the signs of the genocide surround me.

The first thing I noticed upon entering Oklahoma was a sign that said “Welcome to the Cherokee Nation.”  I assume the sign, and many like it along my route celebrating various other tribes, are meant as an honor to the Indians.  But it’s sad and ironic that in order for the Cherokee to be honored in Oklahoma, they had to be rounded up in their traditional lands in the southeast U.S. and herded like cattle to this place, where they were forced to settle on lands that were subsequently taken away and given to migrating whites, and where they helped to displace other native Americans who had lived here for thousands of years.  Their route was called “The Trail of Tears,” and closely paralleled the route I drove today.  I had air conditioning and music and a V-8 engine.  They had disease and injury and starvation and death.

Now, as I said, I’m camped along the Washita River.  Everyone knows of George Custer, who led his troops into a massacre near the Little Big Horn River in Montana and, for a time, was considered a martyr as well as a fool.  It’s much less commonly known that a significant portion of Custer’s fame originated at the Washita River about 50 miles upstream from where I now sit writing this.  There, at the crack of dawn one fine day in 1868, a drum and fife band played lofty music while Custer’s men calmly charged down on an encampment of about 250 dozing Cheyenne, including women and children, and brutally slaughtered a great many of them.   Eventually the Son of the Morning Star got his just desserts, but the Indian victory at Little Big Horn was much too little, much too late.  The Indians lost almost everything and everyone before the genocide concluded.

If you’ve never seen the movie “Little Big Man,” you should definitely check it out.  The movie stars Dustin Hoffman as Jack Crabbe, aka Little Big Man, in a picaresque adventure that Forrest Gump would have envied.  The movie is worth watching for many reasons – it’s both hilarious and poignant - but I call your attention on this occasion to a scene in the movie when the “battle” at the Washita River is reenacted.  The scene is made intensely personal by the presence of several of the lead characters.  If it doesn’t make you weep for the fate of the Indians, you are a heartless coward, I don’t mind saying.

Let me be clear.  I’m not a sentimental dreamer and I’m not ridden with guilt about the actions of my ancestors. Combat and conquest have been tools of the entire human race throughout history, as pathetic as that is.  It’s PC to refer to the Indians as “Native Americans,” but they have only been in the Americas for a little over 10,000 years.  That’s a pretty long time, to be sure.  Nevertheless, they were immigrants just like the Europeans, and while they apparently didn’t have to brutalize other humans to gain dominance over two continents, they did wipe out the better part of the megafauna that pre-existed them here.  Subsequently, most tribes were almost continuously in conflict with one or more other tribes right up to and even after the European invasion.  There’s nothing romantic about the Aztecs cutting the beating hearts from their enemies chests as a sacrifice to their gods, is there?  The Indians weren’t saints any more than the Europeans were saints.  It just so happens that the Europeans who came to America were the most recent conquerors, and so they get to write the history books now.  We can’t turn back time, but we shouldn’t forget the injustices that were committed.  Maybe by remembering we will someday learn not to repeat our offenses.  For example, we would do well as American citizens to study the history of Afghanistan and realize that, even as I write this, we are actively repeating the mistakes of empires from Alexander to the British and the Russians.  History is chock full of valuable lessons if we would simply pay heed to them.

And you thought you were reading a fly fishing travel blog!  If that’s what you thought, I’ll try not to keep disappointing you.  The reason I’m driving so much the past week is that I’m trying to get to where I believe the fly fishing will be good again.  Unlike most of the other western mountain states and much of the rest of the country, New Mexico has been relatively dry this spring, and I’m hoping that the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are showcasing some clear streams and stonefly hatches.  I expect to be there by tomorrow evening and I’ll let you know soon.