Point/Counterpoint: Indians vs. pilgrims
Point: We Ask You Stay for Dinner, not 400 Year!
By Indian Chief Massasoit
Spirits very angry at Pilgrims! Indians very angry at Pilgrims! I have should listen to Squanto when he say “White people move in? There go neighborhood!” Indians save starving Pilgrims, teach plant corn, shoot turkey, harvest crops and what get in return? Blankets full sick, and lousy reservations, so small, worth horse turds, even in bloated California market. And it make Massasoit so angry white man Pilgrims not make green bean casserole like Chief Massasoit ask, with crunchy onion. A thousand time, Massasoit say, “Can bring green bean casserole?” And “yes” insist William governor, but now tribe know he lie with snake tongue. You seen picture of horn o’ plenty, right? Well Indian tribe fill practically whole thing! Lousy Pilgrim bring processed cranberry sauce that dance and shake with evil when try eat, probably $1 in clearance aisle. We have to pretend eat, and spit in napkin when no one look. Plus lousy white man eat all dark meat, before Massasoit even get one piece. And dark meat Massasoit favorite. Make great sandwich out of fridge.
After dinner, there awkward silence. Me think, “Okay, when white man go home? It getting late now, past 10:30. Some Indian have work in morning.” They not get clue, so finally we frustrate and invite them stay the night. In morning I make joke say “Hey, that not my boat over there!” But they not laugh. They build strange log tepees, rape Indian princesses, eat Indian stores, and shoot warriors with thunderstick. Worse all, they not help clean dishes! They eat leftovers, unbuckle belts, and doze from tryptophan like fat slobs.
When reincarnate in next life, Massasoit remember to not invite Pilgrims to dinner again. Well, maybe if bring good wine. But no else way! We ask you stay for dinner, not 400 year!
Counterpoint: Future billions of dollars lost to your casinos settle the score
By Plymouth Governor William Bradford
We left England with naught to trade but pox-infested blankets, naught to eat but rat and worm ridden biscuits, and naught to drink but our own briny urine. Founding Plymouth was but a small victory, as half in our rank perished during the first winter alone, and we feared we would never adapt to life in this strange new country, a country that was virginal, untamed and was obviously not Asia. Ha! You ought to have bought yourself a Rand McNally sticker-fun world map before you left, Christopher Co-Dumb-bus – Twas a mere $3.99 from the Cartographers Guild, and was more then ample entertainment for the nine months asea. But lo, in our darkest colonial moments, the redskins came to us and befriended us, and twas in those kind moments that for everything they had we took those suckers.
But tis’ the White men now, I fear, who are suckers, frittering away a quantity of money so great to the Indians that, had I six abacuses, I would not be able to count it.
Why, just recently a valuable musket passed down from Bradford to Bradford was lost by my great-great-great-great-great-great-great nephew’s sister’s cousin when he staked it in an Indian Casino blackjack game to double down his eleven and lost when the dirty feather hit his sixteen to make twenty one. Confound it all, that musket twas destined to be on Antiques Road Show, not end up as some bloodthirsty redskin’s mantelpiece!
Clearly Fortuna’s wheel has spun back in the Indian peoples’ favor, so much so that I think now tis no longer prudent to speak of such trivial things as “mass-murder” and “forgotten casseroles.” Had the “lousy white men” not intervened and spread Christianity and Politicks to the whole of the satanick Indian peoples, twould probably be that you still ran around like turkeys with your heads cut off, tomahawking perfectly polite European strangers and beating on drums made from the fores of their heads.
I should like to think it fair to say that the future billions of dollars lost to your casinos have settled the score, and ask the favor that in the off chance there are any still buffalo hiding in the wilds of America that you reveal their location to the white men at once. They were rather tasty with bleu cheese sauce, you know. Couldn’t get enough of the stuff, myself.
