They wrote it all down as the progress of man.
#014
Earlier this evening, I parked in South Charleston and waited to pick up our food. My wife, home sick and in bed, called in our order and while I waited, I stepped into the Dollar General for some Gatorade (orange and yellow at her request).
As I was walking, I realized how close to the Criel Mound I was and then how close it was to the Dollar General - about 125 feet. I walked to my truck, put the Gatorade inside and got my camera to make a picture just before the bottom fell out of the sky.
A Native American burial mound, long since dug up, raided, and robbed, now sits 125 feet from a Dollar General. Think about that.
When I was a kid in Mingo County, we often drove by a Native American burial mound situated along US 52 just north of Nolan. In the early 1990’s, it was deemed necessary by the Division of Highways that the mound be removed for the completion of Corridor G, also know as the Robert C. Byrd Highway.
The “Cotiga Mound”, which is an amalgamation of “coal, timber, gas,” was actually a National Register of Historic Places site, but that wouldn’t get in the way of Senator Byrd. GAI Consultants excavated the mound and the remains of between 7 and 18 Native Americans were reinterred at an undisclosed location in West Virginia.
How do you photograph something that’s no longer there? I’ve wrestled with this question for years. What’s more is there isn’t even a state historical marker at the site. Every day hundreds of people drive by this section of road oblivious to its history - to our history.
A highway system. A Dollar General. Progress.
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the official statement of the West Virginia Committee on Native American Archaeological and Burial Policies from January 1991:
Your idea is to bring more people and more commerce to West Virginia by connecting this state's people to other people from far away with long trails of unbroken stone. You have also come to seek knowledge of the Old Ones by looking at their material remains. Some of us believe that, as more stone covers the sacred ground, dividing the earth and sky, smothering the green living things, grabbing the sun and burning our feet, we will be driven into our square houses and square office buildings...not just for eight hours but for all time because the forces of Nature have turned against us.
I’m reading Home Economics by Wendell Berry.
I’m listening to a lot of Don Williams right now.
I watched and highly recommend Common Ground.
I preordered Raymond Thompson Jr.’s book It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel.
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Roger
I continue to find genuine shame in the fact that nature, history, and tradition continue to get shoved aside or destroyed even, for the almighty dollar -- which ain't worth too much these days.
On another note, can you imagine what kind of tune ol' John Prine could lay down with that excerpt from the Committee on Native American Archaeological and Burial Policies? That surely would be a "goodern."
The quote from the Native American committee reminded me in an odd way of the work of Robert Putnam. Have you read Bowling Alone? This week, I watched the documentary Join or Die about Putnam’s work and about the costs to us individually and to our democracy of our increasing isolation from community. I’d like to think the natural world could/should be part of that community.