While Rivers Flow
In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which authorized relocating Native Americans residing in eastern states to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.
Whig politician, Edward Everett lamented, "The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. . . Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away. . .And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing.”
The concept of the brotherhood of all mankind is easily understood as stated in our preamble: “all men are created equal….” - so simple that John Lennon could imagine it in song. But as evidenced by history, the construct is almost never embraced. It seems everyone wants their tribe to be more equal, to keep most of the goodies for themself. Imperialism, Manifest Destiny, Kipling’s White Man’s Burden, Lebensraum, and a myriad of other policy guises have been promoted to affirm that my Mom is better than yours.
Today many evangelistic preachers proclaim American Exceptionalism from their pulpits to “itching ears”* eager to receive a message that God blesses their endeavors that hoard the earth’s finite resources and ravage the fragile biosphere. MAGA makes sense once you believe it was God’s plan from the get-go.
Of course Jesus taught no such idea. His sublime magnum opus, The Sermon on the Mount, and Paul’s letter to the Galatians debunk the whole notion of class favoritism. We are, in fact, created equal. As Disney so aptly lyricized, “It’s a small world after all.”
The Cherokee Nation mistakenly believed that the paleface’s “self evident truths” were more than just whimsical platitude and signed on to a series of flim-flam treaties with the Great White Fathers that in1838 ended in a tragic forcible removal from their homeland in the southeastern Appalachians to reservations in Oklahoma. Nearly 8000 Cherokees died on this “Trail of Tears.”
Great White Father Andrew Jackson promised this new territory would be the Cherokees to keep for “as long as the grass shall grow and rivers flow,” which evidently meant until April 22, 1889, when Oklahoma was opened to white settlers by a proclamation of President Harrison.
* 2Timothy 4:3-4
