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The area from Ohio to Illinois is largely an unexplored wilderness. An American frontiersman takes a wife, and strikes out to make a home. At the same time the government works on a bill to give the right for citezens to possess the land. Wagons roll West through the big and frightening countryside. Suddenly the pioneers are met with resistance from the indians. Imagine that. I guess somebody forgot to ask them if it was OK to steal their land.
Still, the flood of pioneers keep coming, backed by the new government, and the struggle born on the humanity of the pioneer and indians are not without clashes.
PS: It occurs to me that the social climate of this time period totally ignored the civil rights of the indians in the land. It wasn’t an empty place, and you can’t blame the indians for the confrontations at having their homes invaded and taken away. Social climates change and evolve though, and this was a perfectly normal position of the times. We canlook back through the haze of a couple centuries and see the terrible action. What is there in today’s society that we feel is perfectly normal, that in a hundred years or more, our descendants will look back and be horrified at us? Something to think about.
