8 The Prophecy

A lot of soul searching went into giving my camp and my army a name. To call it the Indian Army would not be inclusive and welcoming when faced with the prospect of the coming of the European settlers. The British King or French King could come, if I were to have an inclusive army that was supported by all people for the same ideal we could all worship then there would not be an colonizers. Plus the word "Indian" was given by the early navigators who due to their ignorance thought they had discovered India then with the qualifying word "American" added to it later on. I would not allow the historically incorrectness, "American Indian," forever stamped on my face.

To call it the Red Army? It sounds so communists and so radical hence would not be inclusive either. The North American Continent was so vast and everyone who'd come here come with a dream of owning a plot of land and building one's own family. I wanted everyone to have this right not to take it away. Then call it the White Army or Blue Army, they sounded like losers. Don't they always lose in military exercises I've read about? The colored army names also connotes no ideals behind them except the Red Army. To get my people out of the Stone Age, bypass the feudalist society, and even bypass the capitalist society, I'd need something almost magical...like a mandate from Heaven. But playing God is dangerous and insane. I couldn't even get admission to the Gate of Heaven. Only God knows what is inside of it. Having traveled through the dimensions and saw the rigid hierarchy that holds it together it would simply be too powerful for anyone to temper with it. A true gentleman respects the gods but keep them at bay. It was tempting but I had to keep telling myself so as not to get involved. In the end I decided not to reinvent the wheel and called my camp "Union City," my army the Union Army and my people the Indian Nation.

"Chief, are we Indians?" Kitchi asked. Kitchi is a tall young man in his late teens. He was part of the group with Aylen and Oota that found me so has been with me from the beginning. Kitchi has been my fan and student. He is now the commander of my first company.

"Yes! From the eastern shore to the western shore of this continent all the people who have made this land their ancestral home for the past ten thousand years are Indians." I told Kitchi along with my men and women. The indoctrination might as well start here and today.

"In ten to twenty years of time strangers from other continents will come. They are of black and white skin. Some will come as friends and others our forever enemy. They shall also bring animals with them, animals you have never seen, horses, cows, chickens, goats and sheep. They shall bring with them great sicknesses beyond your imagination. Many of our people will die and many of the tribes on this land will be forced to relocate, far from their homeland. In fact, this has already happened with the Aztecs many many days of travel down south of us."

I paused so to let the prophecy to sink in with them. In front of me are dislocated people from their various tribes, simple people who only wanted the right to survive. So they deserve to know the truth, the fate that was to befalling them.

"For our very own survival, for the protection and prosperity of this land, we have together founded this Indian Nation today." It was time to present the flag.

The union flag took me a long time to construct. With no clothes or silk in sight I had to settle for leather to be turned inside out and double sewed together. Due to my poor sewing skills the flag would only have one star, encircled and centered in gold, over three even bands of white, red and blue. The coloring portions were the most difficult part. Between experimenting with native dyes and the start and circle substituted with matching gold color of fur and feather I finally had it made. If survived, God knows how much it would fetch at the Sotheby's.

"The Star represents the Great Spirit, the Mitche Manitou, our God of creation, history and eternity. It is encircled by the Great Cycle of life and nature, from life to death to rebirth. With the Great Spirit guiding us and protecting us, we shall build our Indian Nation into a nation of inclusion, an inclusion of people of all colors who are needy and dream of a better life, an inclusion of ideas and ideals that can make us all equal in the eye of the Great Spirit and can advance us and make us stronger across the seas and the continents." I was myself getting excited as the many faces in front of me turned into the expression of worship.

Pointing to the center red color band of the flag, I continued and reminded of my people, "we are and shall remain the foundation of this nation. We shall have to be motivated, we shall have to sacrifice, with our sweats and sometime with our blood."

From the captured Iroquoian prisoners I learned that the Iroquoian League was set up more than a hundred years ago, so that would make my present day at least somewhere after 1550. With Jamestown Settlement taking place in 1606 I knew the English would be coming ashore soon Southeast from me in Virginia. The French would not be far behind. In fact they were probably already exploring the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence River up north. They set up their permanent settlement in Quebec in 1608. Unlike the Spanish who came with guns or swords in one hand and Bible in another and saw the Indians as nothing but savages, the English and French came in initially as traders. It's only strange to see how history evolved in that the conquered territories ended up being one of inclusion whereas the trading territories one of segregation, exclusion and extinction.

When exposed to the same set of epidemics with the same brutal colonial forces applied and same slaves brought in from Africa, the resulting differences after four hundred years of development would point directly to the differences in the governing philosophies of the colonizers, one of inclusion and the other exclusion. But with the early colonizers coming from the same set of European cultures and beliefs, why would the former Spanish Empire countries, take Mexico and the Philippines for example, would ended up as countries of integration? Whereas the former British Empire countries, for example, its former colonies in Africa, Asia, North America and Central America, they became countries of disintegration in stead. But Britain in history was a colony itself, first by the Celtics, then the Romans, then the Vikings and the Norsemen before the integrated Anglo-Saxon formed. It could not have been the religion, both colonizers believed the same, Christianity. One cannot say one colonizer was a better Christian than the other. It couldn't have been racism either because the word or concept wasn't even invented four hundred years ago. And the British did not practice a culture of extinction with other countries its colonized.

To blame it on capitalism and the industrial revolution would be equally difficult. Capitalism was the engine behind the industrial revolution. The revolution's thirst for manpower caused slavery to be abolished in both Mexico and the United States some forty years apart. So when manpower was needed and slaves were brought in from Africa or brought from the South to the North, why then would the Indians be driven away in North America instead of being utilized and integrated? Looking inward, with the same people colonized by two forces of the same or similar kind, one can not say that the independent spirit of one colonized was higher than the other. So that is not the answer either. The correct answer then can only be one, that is, the promotion of individual land ownership by the colonizing forces in North America. It was indeed the reason to kill and to die for.

With this answer in hand, the young Indian Nation set out on a path to change its fate and history itself.