No Innocent Settlers, pt. 1: an ancestral story, or this is where I am from

my great-great-great grandpa, John

​This is my great-great-great grandpa, John. As a 6-yr-old he emigrated from Scotland by ship.

As a 9-yr-old, he migrated by wagon w/ his family thru the lands of Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Omaha, Pâri (Pawnee), Cheyenne, Sicangu, Oglala, Arapaho, Eastern Shoshone, Apsaalooké (Crow), Bah-Kho-Je (Ioway), & Shonshone-Bannock, on the so-called “Mormon Pioneer Trail.”

As a 12-yr-old he was baptized in Nuwu waters & grew up in “the old fort” designed to protect his family from the Peoples whose homes/lands they were stealing. 

As a 15-yr-old, he & his father, as part of the Iron County Mormon Militia, likely dressed in red-face & participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. 

As a young man he was “a hardy frontiersman & Indian fighter.” He lived in an adobe house, worked on the railroad, & helped build the St. George & Manti temples, & the Deseret fort. 

Mostly, he was a “farmer & stockraiser,” contributing directly to the theft of arigable Indigenous lands & waters, & the desertification of Nuwu lands thru the introduction of invasive European cattle & grasses. 

He actively made it harder for Indigenous ppl to feed themselves so that he could feed his own in the ways he’d imported from Europe. “He was a leading citizen.”

As a 24-yr-old he “acted as a captain [of the Iron County Militia of the Nauvoo Legion] & rendered efficient aid in the Black Hawk war,” 

During this crusade, the Church fought to steal land. The Shoshone-Bannock, Timanogos, Shoshone, Goshute, Diné & Nuwu fought to save their people, lands, & lifeways. 

This militarized predation slowed as Gov. Brigham Young declared it “cheaper to feed the Indians than fight them”––shifting to a policy of assimilation rather than elimination. 

I say all this to illustrate: there is no innocent settler. As none of us are innocent today. He did not choose to emigrate to these lands, but he chose to be a settler. He did not choose to have one of his first homes in this land be a fort, but he chose to be captain in a genocidal war. 
​
I often wonder what my ancestors think of the work I do. Do they regret the ways they chose to live & believe? Are they w/ me as I work to unsettle what they settled?