|
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt Jr.
"I wish very much that
the wrong people could be
prevented entirely from breeding; and when
the evil nature of these
people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be
sterilized and feebleminded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them.
The emphasis should be laid on getting desirable people to breed."- Theodore
Roosevelt, "Twisted Eugenics," The Works of Theodore
Roosevelt
As a former great chief at Washington I was admitted to the sacred
room, or one-roomed house, the kiva, in which the chosen snake priests had for
a fortnight been getting ready for the sacred dance.
Very few white men
have been thus admitted, and never unless it is known that they will treat with
courtesy and respect what the Indians
revere.
Entrance to the house, which was sunk in the rock, was
through a hole in the roof, down a ladder across whose top hung a cord from
which fluttered three eagle plumes and dangled three small animal skins. Below
was a room perhaps fifteen feet by twenty-five.
One end of it, perhaps
a third of its length, was raised a foot above the rest, and the ladder led
down to this raised part. Against the rear wall of this raised part or dais lay
thirty odd rattlesnakes, most of them in a twined heap in one
corner, but a dozen by
themselves scattered along the wall.
There was also a pot containing
several striped ribbon-snakes, too lively to be left at large. Eight or ten
priests, some old, some
young, sat on the floor in the lower and larger two-thirds of the room, and
greeted me with grave courtesy; they spread
a blanket on the edge of the
dais, and I sat down, with my back to the
snakes and about eight feet from
them; a little behind and to one side of me sat a priest with a category of fan
or brush made of two or three wing-plumes of an eagle, who kept quiet guard
over his serpent wards.
At
the farther end of the room was the altar; the crude image of a
coyote was painted on the floor, and on the four sides of this coyote picture
were paintings of snakes; on three
sides it was hemmed in by lightning sticks, or
thunder sticks, standing
upright in little clay cups, and on the fourth side by eagle plumes held
similarly erect.
Some of the priests were smoking for pleasure and they
were working at parts of the ceremonial dress. One had a cast rattlesnake skin
which he was chewing, to limber it up, just as Sioux squaws used to chew
buckskin. Another was fixing a leather apron with pendent thongs; he stood up
and tried it on. All were scantily clad, in breech-clouts or short kilts or
loin flaps; their naked, copper-red bodies, lithe and sinewy, shone, and each
had been splashed in two or three places with a blotch or streak of white
paint.
One spoke English and
translated freely; I was
careful not to betray too much curiosity or
touch on any matter which they might
be reluctant to discuss. The snakes behind me
never rattled or showed any signs of anger;
the translator volunteered the remark that they were peaceable because they had
been given medicine-whatever that might mean, supposing the statement to be
true according to the sense in which the words are accepted by plains men. But
several of them were active in the sluggish rattlesnake fashion.
One
glided sinuously toward me; when he was a yard away, I pointed him out to the
watcher with the eagle feathers; the watcher quietly extended the feathers and
stroked and pushed the snake's
head back, until it finally turned and crawled back to the wall. Half a dozen
times different snakes thus
crawled out toward me and were turned back, without their ever displaying a
symptom of irritation. One snake got past the watcher and moved slowly past me
about six inches away, whereupon the priest on my left leaned across me and
checked its advance by throwing pinches of
dust in its face until the
watcher turned round with his feather sceptre.
Every move was made
without hurry and with quiet unconcern; neither
snake nor man, at any time, showed
a trace of worry or anger; all, human
beings and reptiles, were in an atmosphere of quiet peacefulness. When I rose
to say good-by, I thanked my hosts for their courtesy;
they were pleased, and two or three shook hands with me.
On the
afternoon of the following
day the antelope priests-the men of the antelope clan - held their dance. The
snake priests took part. It was held in the middle of Walpi village, round a
big, rugged column of rock, a dozen feet high, which juts out of the smooth
surface. The antelope-dancers
came in first, clad in kilts, with fox skins behind; otherwise naked, painted
with white splashes and streaks, and their hair washed with the juice of the
yucca root. Their leader's kilt was white; he wore a garland and anklets of
cottonwood leaves, and sprinkled water from a sacred vessel to the four corners
of heaven.
Another leader carried the sacred bow and a bull-roarer, and
they moved to its loud moaning sound. The
snake priestess' were similarly
clad, but their kirtles were of leather; eagle plumes were in their long hair,
and under their knees they carried rattles made of tortoise-shell. In two lines
they danced opposite each other,
keeping time to the rhythm of their monotonous chanting.
The idea that our natural
resources were inexhaustible still exists.
Even though there is as
yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition.
The relation of the conservation of
natural resources to the problems of American welfare and
American efficiency had not
yet dawned on the public consciousness.
The reclamation of arid
public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; and
our magnificent river system, with its superb possibilities for public
usefulness, was dealt with by the American government not as a unit, but as
a disconnected series of
pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect on the
reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there-a theory which, I regret
to say, still obtains.
The idea that the president is
the steward of the public welfare was first formulated and given practical
effect in the Forest Service by its law officer, George Woodruff.
The
laws were often insufficient, and it became well-nigh impossible to get them amended in
the public interest when once the representatives of privilege in
Congress grasped the fact that I would sign no amendment that contained
anything not in the public interest.
It was necessary to use what law
was already in existence, and then further to supplement it by presidential
action.
The practice of examining every claim to
public land before passing it
into private ownership offers a good example of the policy in question.
This practice, which has since become general, was first applied in the
American Forests.
Enormous areas of valuable public timberland were
thereby saved from fraudulent
acquisition; more than
250,000 acres were thus saved in a single case.
Even more important was
the taking of steps to preserve from destruction beautiful and wonderful wild
creatures whose existence was threatened by greed and wantonness.
During the seven
and a half years closing on March 4, 1909, more was accomplished for the
protection of wild life in America
than during all the previous years, excepting only the creation of the
Yellowstone National Park.
The record includes the creation of five
National Parks-Crater Lake, Oregon; Wind Cave, South Dakota; Platt, Oklahoma;
Sully Hill, North Dakota, and Mesa Verde, Colorado; four big animal refuges in
Oklahoma, Arizona, Montana, and Washington; fifty-one bird reservations; and
the enactment of laws for the protection of wild life in Alaska, the
District of Columbia, and on National bird reserves.
"I speak of Africa and
golden joys";
the joy of wandering through lonely
lands;
the joy of hunting the mighty and terrible lords of the
wilderness.
In
the greatest of the Earth's hunting grounds there are mountain peaks
whose snows are dazzling under the equatorial sun;
lakes like seas;
skies that burn above
deserts;
mighty rivers
rushing out of the heart of the continent;
forests of gorgeous
beauty, death broods in the dark
and silent depths.
These things can be told.
No
words that can speak the hidden
spirit of the wilderness,
that can reveal
its mystery,
its melancholy and
its charm.
The
large tropic moons, and
the splendor of the new
stars.
Where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and
sunset
in the wide spaces of the Earth, unworn of man,
and
changed only by the slow change of
the ages through time
everlasting.
Theodore Roosevelt, African Game
Trails
These
measures may be briefly enumerated as follows:
The enactment of the
first game laws for the Territory of Alaska in 1902 and 1908, resulting in the
regulation of the
export of heads and trophies of big animals and putting an end to the slaughter
of deer for hides along the southern coast of the Territory.
1902 Appropriation
for the preservation of buffalo and the establishment in the Yellowstone
National Park.
1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine states that the US will intervene as a last resort to ensure that
other nations in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their
obligations to international
creditors, and did not violate the rights of the US or invite "foreign
aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American
nations."
1905
Gifford Pinchot appointed 1st
Chief of the Forest Service.
Gifford Pinchot establishes the modern
definition of conservation as
a “wise use”
approach to public land.
Roosevelt cuts all relations with
Korea, turns the American
legation in Seoul over to the Japanese
military, deletes the word "Korea" from the
State Department
Record of Foreign Relations and places it under the heading of "Japan."
During the forty year occupation Koreans are forbidden to speak their
language.
This is in exchange for Japanese acceptance of the continuing
US occupation of the Philippines.
Wichita Game
Preserves set aside, the first of the National animal preserves.
1906 Grand Canyon Game Preserve of
Arizona comprising 1,492,928 acres established.
National
Monuments Act passes to preserve a number of objects of scientific
interest, and be wildlife refuges, for all time include:
Muir Woods,
Pinnacles National Monument in California, and the Mount Olympus National
Monument, Washington, which also form important refuges for
animals.
1907
12,000 acres of Wichita Game Preserves are enclosed with a woven wire
fence for the reception of the herd of fifteen buffalo donated by the New
York Zoological Society.
The
passage of the Act of May 23, 1908, providing for the establishment of the
National Bison Range in Montana.
This range comprises about
18,000 acres of land formerly in the Flathead Indian Reservation, on
which is now established a herd of eighty buffalo, a nucleus of which was
donated to America by the American Bison Society.
The issue of
the Order protecting birds on the Niobrara Military Reservation,
Nebraska, in 1908, making this entire reservation in effect a bird reservation.
The establishment by Executive Order between
March 14, 1903, and March 4, 1909, of fifty-one National Bird
Reservations distributed in seventeen States and Territories from Puerto
Rico to Hawaii and Alaska.
The creation of these reservations at once
placed America in the front rank in
the world work of bird protection.
Among these reservations are the
celebrated Pelican Island rookery in Indian River, Florida;
the
Mosquito Inlet Reservation, Florida, the northernmost home of the
manatee;
the extensive marshes bordering Klamath and Malhuer Lakes in
Oregon, formerly the scene of slaughter of ducks for market and ruthless
destruction of plume birds for the millinery trade;
the Tortugas Key,
Florida, where, in connection with the
Carnegie Institute,
experiments have been
made on the homing instinct of
birds;
and the great bird colonies on Laysan and sister islets in
Hawaii, some of the greatest colonies of sea birds on Earth.
 |
|
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new
perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based
on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme
leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on coöperation. Coöperation
does not occur at the point of a gun.
American social mores and values
have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international
cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to
deceive the populace in general through corporate media by pressing emotional
buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior
corporate media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction
of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to
the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction
and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been
directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that
further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
All
views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the
capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular
thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be
true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which
may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully.
Opinion and thoughts have been
adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to, re-edited and
re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been throughout time but has
been done so in the spirit of the original writer with the intent of making his
or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to the reader in the present
time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, human rights, political,
economic, democratic, scientific, and
social justice
issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted
material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes. For more
information see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|