HOLIDAY LESSONS AND OUR HISTORY

Next week we celebrate Thanksgiving, a great day for good food, family gatherings, boisterous children, televised football, warm fireplaces, late-afternoon naps and, inevitably, leftovers. It is the one day of the year when you have the same meal twice and don't complain.

This came about, we are told, because Native Americans conducted some agricultural extension work with Europeans who lacked a clue about feeding themselves once they exhibited the chutzpah to exchange continents.

Thanks to the Indians, pilgrim impetuosity became a virtue ... and a real nifty land grab. Though not commonly part of the Thanksgiving story telling, appreciation was shown to Native Americans by centuries of oppression.

For thousands of Americans next week, a reservation is something that may or may not be botched by an airline. For many Indians, a reservation is home.

America has a certain schizophrenia when it comes to Native Americans, and it's no wonder this remains the least-explored racial issue in this country. From childhood on, people of this nation have been bombarded with conflicting signals about Indians and their culture.

Cape Girardeau, with a 1990 census count of 73 American Indians, stands thick with Indian lore. In the 1830s, federal authorities marched the Cherokee nation right through our backyard, displacing a society from Georgia to Oklahoma along the infamous Trail of Tears. In homage, there is a state park where Winnebagos (the tribe and the vehicle, one supposes) are welcome.

Several Cape Girardeau parks are named for Indian tribes. A half-dozen or so streets in the city have some Indian connection. At Southeast Missouri State University, intercollegiate athletes are Indians or Otahkians.

In the market for a jeep? You can buy a Cherokee. Need insurance? You can invest in Mutual of Omaha. Want a weird haircut? You can get a Mohawk. Terribly wrong about something? You can eat Crow.

When I was a Boy Scout, acting and thinking like an Indian were desirable. To scouts, Indians were portrayed as resourceful and their life was retold as romantic. In Indian tradition, scouts were taught to use the land wisely, treat other living creatures with care and not be wasteful.

Besides, this was the opportunity you had in scouts to paint your face and run around in a jock strap and loin cloth.

I can remember when kids would boast of being "one-third Sioux" or "part Cheyenne," possibly thinking this supplied them an untamed image, a bit of daring. Probably, they didn't use this claim later in life when applying to an exclusive country club.

None of this squares with the view Hollywood provided, where Native Americans were usually either savages with no regard for human life or drunken buffoons.

There was no shortage of movies where Chill Wills, or someone like him, catered to a supposed Indian taste for whiskey and carbines. Inevitably, John Wayne found some way to put the noble red man in his place, a method that usually involved blood being spilled.

Nice-guy Kevin Costner finally put matters right for the Indians, at least the Sioux, with his epic "Dances With Wolves," which demonstrated a caring spirit for Native Americans and raised awareness about lust on the plains.

Today's political correctness commands a certain Anglo-Saxon guilt where Native Americans are concerned, something that triggers a determined backlash. Many people, weary of hearing that various college athletic teams break years of tradition by changing Indian-related nicknames to less offensive monikers, simply wish these native citizens would stay on the reservation and go unheard-from.

Since so many of the nation's 1.9 million American Indians live below the poverty line, maybe that's easier to think about; changing a school's nickname is easy compared to addressing the needs of the poor.

I was helping my son last weekend with a three-dimensional display to accompany a report he was doing on the Sioux. After building teepees on a styrofoam base with bamboo skewers and brown paper towels, we dug into shelves where some toys of my youth were stored.

There was a box containing a Fort Apache set, a haphazardly disassembled replica of a prairie bulwark and the plastic men who defended and attacked it. The Indians were molded into warlike positions, waving spears and tomahawks and aiming their arrows. Most of the plastic soldiers bore weapons as well, but many just bore concerned expressions, as if firearms weren't enough to do the trick.

The only Indian not armed was a man in a headdress sitting cross-legged with a pipe to his lips. Perhaps in those insensitive times, we were to assume he was taking a hit of peyote.

In countless Thanksgiving programs in countless schools, Native Americans are revealed as persons who took kindly to suffering strangers. While trying to be aware as possible about the injustices of American history, I can summon no personal guilt for what happened to the Indians.

But taking their lesson of giving shouldn't hurt any of us.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.