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Hope at Miami Circle
By Bill Gallagher
May 12, 1999. I went down to Miami last
night to view the Miami Circle, the recently excavated archaeological
remains of an early Native American structure at the mouth of
the Miami River. I'd seen archaeological survey pictures released
for media, but after my visit to the site, I realized that the
published photos were specially taken to disclude the skyline
of Miami proper. The Miami Circle site is right on the river bank
where the river empties into Biscayne Bay, and is bordered by
a seawall on two sides (North and East).
Generally speaking the empty lot is totally
surrounded by some rather raucous and definitely humongous modern
architecture. The excavations themselves had been Re-covered with
the original overburden, and I was observing all this with binoculars
from where I was parked at the top of the bridge which borders
the west side of the site.
At 3 AM even Miami is quiet, and I was
allowed a true birds eye view of the earthworks. Elevation is
moundlike, rising up toward the east to its maximum height, which
appears by eye to be 8 or 10 feet. Beneath the rubble covering
the site proper lay the posthole molds and other Archaeo Logical
evidence left by some sort of inhabited structure. Situation of
this historical detritus leads some to believe the site may have
posessed spiritual aspects.
This, to me, seems easy to perceive because
the Early People in America were uniquely in tune to their environment,
and most if not all of their actions and constructions were spiritually
weighed against the ramifications of their interaction with their
worlds. The Native American religion as a a basic concept, an
appreciation of the land, created various facets of humanity for
each facet of environment, and this was at once the heritage of
all men, and the blessing of the milieu. This entirety of belief
and understanding of onces place within the cosmos had become
lost somehow, in the old world. The religion of the land became
supplanted by the religion of man.
“I believe the people who work the
Earth are Gods chosen, if God has any chosen at all...”
Thomas Jefferson.
This too is easily seen when it is realized that Christianity
has always been nothing so much as the carrying-on of Romes Empire.
The Native American Tribes had this hugely bountiful and awesomely
beautiful world of America to themselves, before european intervention,
and the europeans, by the time of their arrival, had diverged
down the evolutionary path away from an Earth Religion for almost
1500 years. They had been well converted by their conqueror, Rome,
who had pretty much adopted a Southern religion, an aspect of
Judaism which was to become Christianity as we know it.
So. This continuing Empire of Rome, this
Christianity, had developed fair technology by the time of its
intervention in the American Ecology, up to and including explosives
of many types, and between their technology and their germs they
laid waste to the indigenous peoples of America. The genotypes
of many thousands of thousands of years were wasted and lost,
maybe to recur someday in the far far future, maybe not.
I put the binoculars down and looked around
the bridge whose wall I was now standing on. There was this huge
and phallic modern monument on the top of the bridge, a bunch
of intertwined bodies I think, with some archer at the top in
a very dramatic shooting pose and aiming upward. Shoot the moon,
yeah.
I found this modern sculpture banal and
lacking against the popularly perceived simplicity of the abode
below me by the river, which I know, through reading and searching,
posesses the keys for a new perception, or a true rebirth of old
perceptions, and therefore, at this time in history anyway, is
infinitely more valuable and necessary. I pictured a quick flow
of time; the next end, the toppling of that statue, then hidden
for 3000 years or so in the muck of the mouth of the Miami River,
and I thought maybe it might have its day too, eventually. Will
its ultimate finders appreciate its message? And as important,
or moreso, its message among other messages?
I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.
But we Must Hope. Because that is what we have.
Concealed Spline Publishing LLC
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Royal Oak Mi 48067
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