Peter, I read this and then sat staring into the middle distance muttering, “Oh my God,” because there is real muscle in this piece.
It feels simple at first, but it is not simple. That’s what I love about it. The voice is plain, direct, and unshowy, but underneath it you’re carrying enormous material: love, lineage, land, war, free existence, payroll life, borders, interweaves, Tecumseh, grief, and the moment a son’s story separates from his father’s.
And that sentence:
“Before my son there had to be a mother. And for that there had to be love.”
Good lord, Peter.
That is the line that cracked the whole thing open for me. Because suddenly the story is not only about conflict, land, or history. It’s about the fact that every political world is also a human world. Before the warrior, before the border, before the loss, before the westward walking, there is love. There is a mother. There is a joining of lives.
That gives the whole piece its ache.
I also think “payroll warriors” is one of those phrases that seems simple until it starts rearranging the furniture in your head. It is doing an extraordinary amount of work without sounding like it is doing work at all.
"The Way of War,' as explained by John Grenier, perfected against the Indigeneous communites by the Colonial Payroll warriors , adopted by the Nazis, and proliferated in Gaza, and elsewhere throughout the world.
good one, Peter, and gives clear example of the difference have to explain to people when they defensively say, trying to level the historical field... there's always been wars and the Indians too, a human thing.... Obviously "scorched Earth policy" is not Native.
Peter, I read this and then sat staring into the middle distance muttering, “Oh my God,” because there is real muscle in this piece.
It feels simple at first, but it is not simple. That’s what I love about it. The voice is plain, direct, and unshowy, but underneath it you’re carrying enormous material: love, lineage, land, war, free existence, payroll life, borders, interweaves, Tecumseh, grief, and the moment a son’s story separates from his father’s.
And that sentence:
“Before my son there had to be a mother. And for that there had to be love.”
Good lord, Peter.
That is the line that cracked the whole thing open for me. Because suddenly the story is not only about conflict, land, or history. It’s about the fact that every political world is also a human world. Before the warrior, before the border, before the loss, before the westward walking, there is love. There is a mother. There is a joining of lives.
That gives the whole piece its ache.
I also think “payroll warriors” is one of those phrases that seems simple until it starts rearranging the furniture in your head. It is doing an extraordinary amount of work without sounding like it is doing work at all.
This is fierce and tender writing.
🙏🏻🙏🏻💕 i am so very grateful for your being in the world with me
I feel precisely the same, Peter! You’re one of the good ones.
Thanks
"The Way of War,' as explained by John Grenier, perfected against the Indigeneous communites by the Colonial Payroll warriors , adopted by the Nazis, and proliferated in Gaza, and elsewhere throughout the world.
Is this a true story of ur life? It’s so sad 😭 and I’m sorry
it's a true story... lots of true stories... but not of my life...
good one, Peter, and gives clear example of the difference have to explain to people when they defensively say, trying to level the historical field... there's always been wars and the Indians too, a human thing.... Obviously "scorched Earth policy" is not Native.