He never fully grasped the principle establishing private ownership of land as any more rational than private ownership of air but he loved the land with a much deeper emotion than could any proprietor. He felt himself as much a part of it as the rocks and trees, the animals and birds. His homeland was holy ground, sanctified for him as the resting place of the bones if his ancestors and the natural shrine of his religion. He conceived its waterfalls and ridges, its clouds and mists. its Helens and meadows. to be I habituated by the myriad of spirits with whom he held daily communion. It was from this rain- washed land of forests, streams and lakes, to which he was held by the traditions of his forebears and his own spiritual aspirations, that he was to be driven to the arid, treeless plains if the far west, a desolate region then universally known as the Great American Desert. - A Peoples History of the United States, Howard Zinn, pg 135-5
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 23:52:08 +0000
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