- published: 09 Jul 2009
- views: 180889
The Meskwaki (sometimes spelled Mesquakie or Meskwahki) are a Native American people often known to outsiders as the Fox tribe. They have often been closely linked to the Sauk people. In their own language, the Meskwaki call themselves Meshkwahkihaki, which means "the Red-Earths." Historically their homelands were in the Great Lakes region. The tribe coalesced in the St. Lawrence River Valley in Ontario; it later moved to Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. In the 19th century, Euro-American colonization and settlement proceeded, forcing resettlement of the people south into the tall grass prairie in the American Midwest. The Meskwaki, within the designation 'Sac and Fox,' currently have reservations in Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.
The name is derived from the Meskwaki creation myth, in which their culture hero, Wisaka, created the first humans out of red clay. The name Fox originated from a French mistake of applying a clan 'fox' name to the entire tribe. Anglo-Americans, including the United States government, adopted the French term Renards (the Foxes) into English.
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up. In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state. The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.
According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people;" "a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation;" "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.
The Fox may refer to:
I wait till everyone's asleep
Then out into the night I creep
No one can see me now
Or hear me running, soundlessly
The moon's the only light I need
To search for food, young ones to feed
But as the dawn is drawing near the earth, my way's not clear
I'm trapped on the outside
Moonlight save me, moonlight save me
Moonlight save me, moonlight save me
Unearthly fear, it grips my skin
Unearthly sound, the hunt begins
I hear excited cries
But dare not look from where I'm hiding
The multi-coloured humans ride
Soon they will find me where I hide
The brown and white tormentors
Begin to howl and then I'm running
Moonlight save me
I cut across the trail I left five miles before
One chance to throw them off my scent but I'm not sure
An elder told me it had worked sometime before
My heart is beating like a drum
I make the ridge, but can't go on
I turn to face my death
But nothing comes to stop me breathing
Down in the clearing now I see
They're searching all around for me
Confusion everywhere
But I am safe up here, I've won, I've won, I've won, I've won, I've won