Battle Mountain, Oregon, a monument near Pendleton

Battle Mountain, Oregon, a monument near Pendleton

Coincidentally, I came to this Oregon History monument
(http://web.oregon.com/history/hm/images/battlemountain.jpg),
when, on July 8, 1878, the Bannock War was fought, and Indians (Bannocks, Piutes and Snakes), lead by Egan, lost, to General Oliver Howard's troops, and Egan's scalp was delivered to his camp a few days later. They were fighting against white encroachment. It was the last significant battle/significant uprising of Native peoples in the Pacific NW. Egan, a Piute, was leading a wide sweep out of Idaho into the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. After this, Egan's followers scattered.

I remember these Indians, in memoriam, and the tragic loss of their lands & lifestyle here.

O, all of us seem in such loss and tragedy seem like such common chimpanzees, where white folks had technologies that Indians didn't. How to learn peace vis-a-vis Bonobos, especially? Humans can learn, sometimes. A reading of our human primateness v-a-v violence and harming, might lead to different approaches to its mitigation, than heretofore explored in focusing on peacefulness & nonharming.


I left from The Dalles this morning after a good visit with my cousins.

This day is beautiful.


... called both Ritter Hot Springs both Lehman Hot Springs from Pendleton. Ritter said they were open from Saturday in the evening until Thursday and Lehman just cut off. I drove out and out into the very beautiful eastern Oregon hills, much open land with grasses and also with many little areas of forests. After backtracking a couple of times, comparing maps, I finally came to Ritter, which had an open sign in front. I'm camping nearby and will see in the morning if I can soak. This land around here is so lightly populated, and very beautiful. Flowers are in full bloom, and its warm. The land I drove through is similar to my Uncle & Aunt Ted & Mary Brown's land. I'm on my way to visit them tomorrow. ... Some happiness along the way, especially viewing the landscape, but relatively little bliss. I'm attuned to the socioculture of eastern Oregon, where among folks of settler stock, there's a tenaciousness / stubbornness, which can be hardness, as well as fairly traditional gender roles. I'm curious about how to 'Ferdinand the Bull' (peacefully navigate my way, even in beauty & possibly with bliss) my way through such environments, - there are many similarities of temperament to this around the world, but perhaps less so in India.

The Rainbow Gathering seems distant, although I only left the Gifford Pinchot National Forest yesterday in the morning.

Time to write a little more about that, here.















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/07/battle-mountain-oregon-monument-near.html - July 8, 2011)