The Indian went walkin’ ‘round and sat upon the hill to watch the sun go down / But he couldn’t find his people, he got up and walked away / And he sat beside the fire, and gave out a sigh / We’re all forgotten now / Where is my tomahawk? / My days are gone / Where is my tent? / Where is my planting ground? / Where is my land? / This reservation’s wrong / Who’s this white man? – written by John Michael Talbot and Terry Nolan Talbot, recorded by Mason Proffit.
The honest answer to the provocative question “Where are Indians from?” is “not from India.” Of course, I’m referring to the India near the Indian Ocean, and I’m referring to people whose roots go back to, or before, the 15th Century.
The area that we call India today consists of several hundred different historical kingdoms lumped into the name Bharat. I can argue in favor of the name Sindhu, which got corrupted into the name Indus. The fact is, Bharat was the unofficial united states of India. Or Hindustan, another faux name. If each individual kingdom that composed India were separate today, there would be some 600 more tables at the United Nations.
There’s a lot more I can say about all this, but the point is, India wasn’t commonly or exclusively called India until the British decided it should be. That was way back in the 17th Century, or about a century or so after Christopher Columbus’s death. So, when he talked about Indians, who was he talking about? Continue reading “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #074: God Bless VespucciLand!”
