2. Her father sighed. “I never said either side was innocent or
guilty, just ignorant. They’ve been a part of it, we’ve been a part of it,
everybody’s been a part of it for a long time.”
Meridian’s father makes this comment in the chapter entitled “Indians
and Ecstasy.” It comes as part of a quasi-argument he is having with his
wife, Gertrude, occasioned by his decision to return the parcel of land
containing the serpent mound to the Cherokee Walter Longknife. Gertrude
believes that she and her family bear no responsibility to those who owned
and tended the land before them, while her husband views returning the
acreage as an attempt to set right a history of abuse and exploitation.
Meridian’s father gains perspective on the civil rights movement and the
treatment of blacks by looking at them in the context of past wrongs and
injustices. By referring to the hardship experienced by a different group of
people, Native Americans forced to give up their land and relocate to
reservations to the west, he attempts to look further than white/black
issues and consider broader humanitarian abuses. He argues that it is
dangerous to ignore or minimize the plight of others who have been the
victims of racial hatred. At the same time, he acknowledges the role black
settlers had in wresting control of Native American-held lands in the
Southeast.
