Today is the 5th of October and, historically, a day of some significance. President Chester Arthur was born on October 5 in 1829, and in 1892 the famed band of outlaws, the Dalton Gang, performed their last bank robbery, trying to get away with the gold from a facility in Kansas and getting pretty much wiped out in the process. On this day in 1962, the Beatles released their first single, Love Me Do, while the first James Bond film, Dr. No, was released to theatres. And Monty Python’s Flying Circus premiered on British television. It was October 5 when the Wright brothers set a sustained flight record that would hold for several years. And it was on October 5 when the last best hope for the Native American tribes of the Ohio River valley was defeated and killed by an American army under the command of General William Harrison.

Henry Ford used to say that museums were all filled with the wrong stuff. He wanted museums to be about machines and technology, so he created his own, the renowned Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. And it is true that most historical museums and books are filled with information much of which is concerned with who was fighting whom at different times in the past. But, sadly, history is full of war and battles. It is a large part of the story of mankind,

I posted some photos recently from a performance by our Piankeshaw Trails Native American school assembly in the Chicago area, and I wanted to share another one.  But this morning we also received a lovely piece of video put together by a good friend of ours following a performance at his school, so that is included here, too!

I have been reading a fascinating book lately, made even more pertinent by the passing this week of Columbus Day (did you notice? It was last Monday). 1492 - The Year The World Began -  by Felipe Fernandez Armesto details the myriad ways in which the world was changed by the voyage of Columbus and the European discovery of “the New World” It is a great book and one I highly recommend. Great stuff about all the changes the world experienced because of that voyage, many of which you might never have imagined. However, there is one area of change we all know a little about and that is the change wrought on the native population of North America by the arrival of Europeans.