BLACK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX PETROGLYPHS

principles, laws, education, or civil government, which might serve to bring them back to the ancient manners (European culture). Translation: Culture diminishes because of trade and the uniting of many national backgrounds. Is it any wonder the savages who live without principles, law, education or government would benefit. It is only common sense that we change the culture of the Indians to be more European.

 

Customs are still more easily destroyed. A new way of living introduces new customs, and those which have been forsaken are very soon forgotten. What shall I say of the absolute want (need) of such things (customs) as are most necessary to Life? And of which, the necessity of doing without, causes their names and use to perish together. Translation: Customs are easier to change than traditions. Forcing the Indians to change from a customary nomadic to sedentary lifestyle will force them to forget their history and eventually their traditions. History includes kinship and inheritance of property rights. Therefore, Indian history has legal implications affecting land claims and property rights. Legally, Indian “history” must be eradicated in order to avoid future land claims that may cover thousands of square miles. If those claims are based upon repetitive, nomadic, migration and habitation on a periodic timetable for the cyclical rate of environmental change, which may have been recorded, in image form, to include hundreds or thousands of years the results could be catastrophic to a new nation.

 

Lastly, nothing has undergone more sudden, frequent, or more surprising revolutions than Religion. When once men have abandoned the only true one (“Christianity”), they soon lose it out of their sight, and find themselves entangled and bewildered in such a labyrinth of incoherent errors, inconsistency and contradiction being the natural inheritance of falsehood, that there remains not the smallest thread to lead us back to the truth, we have seen a very sensible example of this in the last Age. Translation: “The following proves this point.”

 

The Buccaneers of St. Domingo, who were Christians, but who had no commerce (trade or communication) except themselves, in less than thirty years, and through the sole want (need) of religious worship, instruction, and an authority capable of retaining them in their duty (church/clergymen), had come to such a pass (state), as to have lost all marks (resemblance) of Christianity, except Baptism alone. Had these subsisted (continued) only to the third generation, their grandchildren would have been as void of Christianity as the inhabitants of Tara Australia, or New-Guinea. The phrases “in less than thirty years” and “only to the third generation” suggest a comprehensive study and analysis of the identified population prior to an interpretation of the data, which is contrary to the Victorian theories used by social anthropologists as asserted by most cultural anthropologists.