1 00:00:00,333 --> 00:00:03,294 First he went to the Schuylkill, 2 00:00:03,586 --> 00:00:06,297 Then he went to the Susquehanna. 3 00:00:06,297 --> 00:00:09,300 And then their people went to the Ohio. 4 00:00:09,759 --> 00:00:13,221 Every time the whites came right after him, took their land. 5 00:00:13,555 --> 00:00:18,184 And only when the Indians finally realized there was no way out of this, 6 00:00:18,184 --> 00:00:21,187 they were going to have nothing is when they attacked. 7 00:00:21,646 --> 00:00:23,815 And that's when the Mennonites tell the story. 8 00:00:23,815 --> 00:00:25,316 When the attacks start. 9 00:00:31,281 --> 00:00:35,243 So, John Ruth, you've spent quite a number of years 10 00:00:35,243 --> 00:00:39,789 researching Anabaptist history, and you just published another book. 11 00:00:39,956 --> 00:00:42,834 Well you've published quite a few books over the years. 12 00:00:42,834 --> 00:00:46,838 There's a new one, relatively new, that came out called This Very Ground. 13 00:00:47,630 --> 00:00:51,342 And it tells a side of the Mennonite story that I have never heard before. 14 00:00:51,593 --> 00:00:54,471 And I think is maybe, you know, 15 00:00:54,471 --> 00:00:57,682 part of our story that's not not as good. 16 00:00:57,682 --> 00:01:00,685 And something that we haven't heard about that much. 17 00:01:00,852 --> 00:01:03,229 And I really want to get into that today. 18 00:01:03,229 --> 00:01:06,232 So I'm guessing it'll be a bit of a surprise to some people. 19 00:01:06,399 --> 00:01:10,111 So first off, thank you for coming on the podcast this evening. 20 00:01:10,487 --> 00:01:13,448 And why don't we start with just an overview of 21 00:01:13,573 --> 00:01:16,451 what what is the book about and what did you find in your research? 22 00:01:18,036 --> 00:01:21,039 Well, I began, 23 00:01:21,790 --> 00:01:23,750 asking the question of why 24 00:01:23,750 --> 00:01:26,753 I lived where I lived. 25 00:01:27,045 --> 00:01:30,632 In a beautiful spot along a creek named, 26 00:01:31,341 --> 00:01:34,344 a branch of the Perkiomen Creek 27 00:01:34,844 --> 00:01:37,597 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 28 00:01:37,597 --> 00:01:40,600 29 miles north of Philadelphia. 29 00:01:41,017 --> 00:01:43,728 And I realized that, 30 00:01:43,728 --> 00:01:47,148 when I was little, I like to play at being Indian. 31 00:01:47,148 --> 00:01:49,109 I had a bow and arrow, 32 00:01:49,109 --> 00:01:52,904 and I heard about the Indians, and I found that some of my friends went 33 00:01:52,904 --> 00:01:57,283 through phases where they enjoyed imagining themselves as Indians to. 34 00:01:58,535 --> 00:02:01,538 But it hit me wrong. 35 00:02:01,746 --> 00:02:04,749 I was with a conservative Mennonite bishop 36 00:02:05,083 --> 00:02:08,753 in Lancaster County when I was writing their history. 37 00:02:09,504 --> 00:02:12,132 Oh, 20 years ago, maybe, 38 00:02:12,132 --> 00:02:15,301 and he pointed to a field of corn 39 00:02:17,220 --> 00:02:20,890 where the corn stalks were so close together 40 00:02:21,391 --> 00:02:24,435 and thick that you could only harvest 41 00:02:24,435 --> 00:02:27,397 in low gear with good equipment. 42 00:02:27,397 --> 00:02:29,232 He pointed toward that field. 43 00:02:29,232 --> 00:02:32,944 And I don't know why he said this, but he said to me, look at that. 44 00:02:32,944 --> 00:02:36,865 He said, God got no glory when just the Indians were here. 45 00:02:39,450 --> 00:02:45,123 And, So God could 46 00:02:45,123 --> 00:02:49,210 wait all those thousands of years until we got here. 47 00:02:49,794 --> 00:02:52,964 And I remembered at harvest services 48 00:02:53,756 --> 00:02:56,759 a day, we would always quote that verse, 49 00:02:59,137 --> 00:03:00,763 from the Psalms 50 00:03:00,763 --> 00:03:03,933 that the Lord has given us... 51 00:03:04,434 --> 00:03:09,898 I just forget the, the the word lap, of, of, 52 00:03:11,274 --> 00:03:13,860 luxuriant, 53 00:03:13,860 --> 00:03:16,196 herbage and fields 54 00:03:16,196 --> 00:03:19,199 and, then I thought, well, 55 00:03:20,241 --> 00:03:21,409 who were those people? 56 00:03:21,409 --> 00:03:24,412 Because on the farm next to ours. 57 00:03:24,913 --> 00:03:30,418 They picked up hundreds of beautifully shaped points. 58 00:03:30,919 --> 00:03:33,379 Somebody had to get very good. 59 00:03:33,379 --> 00:03:38,593 And I had a neighbor who found 600 of those points in one field. 60 00:03:39,344 --> 00:03:41,137 like arrowheads. You're saying. 61 00:03:41,137 --> 00:03:43,014 Oh we call them arrowheads, so. 62 00:03:43,014 --> 00:03:46,017 And they were, there were, 63 00:03:48,144 --> 00:03:51,147 the tools that you could hoe and, 64 00:03:52,232 --> 00:03:53,858 the more I thought about that 65 00:03:53,858 --> 00:03:56,861 was.., And Columbus’, 66 00:03:57,612 --> 00:04:01,074 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing in the Azores came. 67 00:04:02,283 --> 00:04:03,284 I thought, 68 00:04:03,284 --> 00:04:06,537 you know, we as Mennonites lived on this land. 69 00:04:06,955 --> 00:04:10,208 We ought to say something. At 500 years. 70 00:04:10,208 --> 00:04:13,419 You shouldn't let that go past without saying anything. So, 71 00:04:14,629 --> 00:04:16,631 I thought, well, 72 00:04:16,631 --> 00:04:18,925 I wound up in Oklahoma, 73 00:04:18,925 --> 00:04:24,305 where our Indians got to eventually, and I just walk out on the street 74 00:04:24,555 --> 00:04:27,558 and ask somebody, could you give me some, 75 00:04:27,558 --> 00:04:31,562 take me to somebody that, this is about, 76 00:04:32,230 --> 00:04:35,233 I don't know, 2000 or something like the year 2000. 77 00:04:35,858 --> 00:04:36,693 What would I have been? 78 00:04:36,693 --> 00:04:38,903 70 years old already, and. 79 00:04:38,903 --> 00:04:42,365 And they led me, led me to, a couple, 80 00:04:43,866 --> 00:04:45,076 a Lenape, couple. 81 00:04:45,076 --> 00:04:48,997 The Lenapes were the, indigenous 82 00:04:48,997 --> 00:04:53,001 people who lived in Pennsylvania, new Jersey, Delaware. 83 00:04:53,793 --> 00:04:57,213 They're called Delawares, but that's an European name 84 00:04:57,505 --> 00:05:00,508 because they had a group there. 85 00:05:01,676 --> 00:05:04,887 The Delawares are the same as the Lenapes. 86 00:05:06,014 --> 00:05:08,474 Well, well, anyway, 87 00:05:08,474 --> 00:05:12,937 we brought this couple up for October 12th, 1992, 88 00:05:12,937 --> 00:05:15,732 which is the 500th anniversary. 89 00:05:15,732 --> 00:05:18,651 And, we, 90 00:05:18,651 --> 00:05:22,280 took them to several churches and had them talk about themselves. 91 00:05:22,780 --> 00:05:25,533 And, I took them to a place 92 00:05:25,533 --> 00:05:28,745 where they were still finding Jasper points. 93 00:05:29,495 --> 00:05:34,834 And, then we went to a big celebration in the National Cathedral in Washington, 94 00:05:35,168 --> 00:05:39,630 where the sound of powerful drums, they celebrate 95 00:05:40,631 --> 00:05:43,634 Columbus Day. And, 96 00:05:44,135 --> 00:05:47,347 the more I talked, well, what had happened to then 97 00:05:48,181 --> 00:05:51,184 a group of Lenapes 98 00:05:51,351 --> 00:05:56,064 took a walk on the so called, walking purchase. 99 00:05:56,064 --> 00:05:59,525 I don't know if you ever heard that term of 1737, 100 00:06:00,068 --> 00:06:03,279 when the last of our Lenape Indians gave 101 00:06:03,488 --> 00:06:06,491 gave up their land. 102 00:06:06,574 --> 00:06:08,951 So, 1737 you said. 103 00:06:08,951 --> 00:06:14,374 1737 and they were markers along the path of that walking purchase. 104 00:06:14,791 --> 00:06:18,211 And when we when we got to one of the group 105 00:06:18,211 --> 00:06:23,216 I was with of Indians or interested people became angry 106 00:06:23,758 --> 00:06:26,636 and began shaking their rattles and spitting 107 00:06:27,595 --> 00:06:29,680 and yelling. 108 00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:32,683 And I said to myself, what's that feeling coming from? 109 00:06:32,683 --> 00:06:34,769 What's that about? 110 00:06:34,769 --> 00:06:38,314 It's not over in their minds, the loss of their land. 111 00:06:39,482 --> 00:06:43,152 And, then I kept thinking and thinking and thinking. 112 00:06:44,153 --> 00:06:46,572 And it drove me then finally 113 00:06:46,572 --> 00:06:49,575 to go into Philadelphia, to the 114 00:06:50,451 --> 00:06:52,870 Historical Society of Pennsylvania 115 00:06:52,870 --> 00:06:55,706 and pull out actual documents 116 00:06:55,706 --> 00:06:58,709 and just sit there and read them now. 117 00:06:59,544 --> 00:07:01,379 I'm a late comer to this. 118 00:07:01,379 --> 00:07:03,423 Honestly, I'm not a historian. 119 00:07:03,423 --> 00:07:07,176 And there for 50 years had been a growing accumulation 120 00:07:08,094 --> 00:07:11,139 of scholarly work on indigenous people. 121 00:07:11,639 --> 00:07:14,142 We are in a peak of, 122 00:07:14,142 --> 00:07:17,395 profuse publication of scholarship 123 00:07:17,895 --> 00:07:21,107 on the indigenous people and what they actually said 124 00:07:21,482 --> 00:07:24,610 and where they actually live, and what process 125 00:07:25,862 --> 00:07:29,490 was proceeded through by which they were de 126 00:07:30,158 --> 00:07:33,161 legalized from the land that they had lived on. 127 00:07:34,078 --> 00:07:36,456 It's very from much fermenting now. 128 00:07:36,456 --> 00:07:40,126 There's all kinds of societies, all kinds of people are interested in this. 129 00:07:40,126 --> 00:07:43,504 I'm a late comer and a non-expert. 130 00:07:43,838 --> 00:07:47,175 All I ask was the land that I live on. 131 00:07:48,634 --> 00:07:49,844 What was it’s story? 132 00:07:49,844 --> 00:07:51,554 Why am I living here? 133 00:07:51,554 --> 00:07:54,807 Fishing, swimming, skating, boating, 134 00:07:55,266 --> 00:07:58,269 trapping, farming, eating. 135 00:07:58,811 --> 00:07:59,479 Born. 136 00:07:59,479 --> 00:08:04,066 My mom ate the eggs and the dandelion and the chicken. 137 00:08:04,066 --> 00:08:06,694 And I was born. Formed in her womb. 138 00:08:06,694 --> 00:08:08,196 And, I have this. 139 00:08:08,196 --> 00:08:12,492 Why don't I go to think about earlier stages? 140 00:08:12,492 --> 00:08:15,870 Why am I so preoccupied with my decade that I. 141 00:08:15,995 --> 00:08:18,873 That is a blank in my mind. 142 00:08:18,873 --> 00:08:20,082 I felt starved. 143 00:08:20,082 --> 00:08:25,004 So, anyway, I found that I was just a late comer and a just an amateur 144 00:08:25,004 --> 00:08:29,592 where professionals had been working, even at a university level for years. 145 00:08:29,926 --> 00:08:33,638 And so I drew on their scholarship, in addition 146 00:08:33,846 --> 00:08:37,892 to going down to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and reading through 147 00:08:38,100 --> 00:08:41,103 the legal records, there. 148 00:08:41,312 --> 00:08:42,813 And what I wanted to know was, 149 00:08:44,232 --> 00:08:47,235 what was it like for those people to leave? 150 00:08:47,401 --> 00:08:50,404 When did they leave? Where did they go? 151 00:08:50,696 --> 00:08:53,449 And, what was their experience? 152 00:08:53,449 --> 00:08:59,163 Now there in what we call Indian, Oklahoma was Indian Territory. 153 00:08:59,372 --> 00:09:01,916 That's where you went when you couldn't go any further. 154 00:09:01,916 --> 00:09:04,085 When you were you couldn't stay in Ohio. 155 00:09:04,085 --> 00:09:05,461 You couldn't stay in Illinois. 156 00:09:05,461 --> 00:09:07,838 You couldn't stay in Missouri, Kansas. 157 00:09:07,838 --> 00:09:09,632 You had to go Indian Territory. 158 00:09:09,632 --> 00:09:12,385 And there you were. 159 00:09:12,385 --> 00:09:15,388 Well, I made contact with them because there was a Mennonite, 160 00:09:15,930 --> 00:09:18,933 a minister who was also a, 161 00:09:19,308 --> 00:09:21,435 a Navajo, not Navajo. 162 00:09:21,435 --> 00:09:24,355 I forget Cheyenne, Lawrence Hart. 163 00:09:24,355 --> 00:09:28,276 And he had a big to do in the year 2006. 164 00:09:28,985 --> 00:09:31,696 In which he, invited people 165 00:09:31,696 --> 00:09:34,699 to listen to their story, 166 00:09:34,699 --> 00:09:37,994 where our General Custer, 167 00:09:38,869 --> 00:09:41,872 who came from Mennonite background, where I live. 168 00:09:42,164 --> 00:09:45,001 Wait, General Custer, came from Mennonite background. 169 00:09:45,001 --> 00:09:49,839 Yes, his ancestry was Mennonite, and he himself could speak Pennsylvania Dutch. 170 00:09:49,839 --> 00:09:53,217 Wait, I've never heard that. No. 171 00:09:53,634 --> 00:09:56,053 Can we divert a little bit and hear a bit of that? 172 00:09:56,053 --> 00:09:56,846 Like what? 173 00:09:56,846 --> 00:09:59,140 How close was he connected to the Mennonites? 174 00:09:59,140 --> 00:10:03,019 Well, he wasn't connected anymore, you know, like, you can have Mennonite 175 00:10:03,102 --> 00:10:07,607 ancestry five generations ago and have no memory of it yourself. 176 00:10:07,690 --> 00:10:10,234 It was probably closer than that for him, wasn’t it? 177 00:10:10,234 --> 00:10:11,861 About four, I'd say. 178 00:10:11,861 --> 00:10:14,864 Yeah, but anyway, he 179 00:10:15,072 --> 00:10:19,994 he led the attack there that killed Black Kettle. 180 00:10:20,536 --> 00:10:22,788 Who was the predecessor of Lawrence Hart. 181 00:10:23,873 --> 00:10:24,790 And anyway, as I 182 00:10:24,790 --> 00:10:27,793 put these, factoids together, 183 00:10:28,711 --> 00:10:30,713 I began to have feelings about it. 184 00:10:30,713 --> 00:10:34,091 And so it fueled my curiosity. 185 00:10:34,091 --> 00:10:36,010 Can we know anything? 186 00:10:36,010 --> 00:10:39,013 And I found it. Sure you can. 187 00:10:39,138 --> 00:10:42,308 Scholars had been right, but my story wasn't told. 188 00:10:42,767 --> 00:10:44,060 So here's what I found. 189 00:10:44,060 --> 00:10:45,728 So here's what I found. 190 00:10:46,145 --> 00:10:50,232 That when the people that settled my acreage. 191 00:10:50,858 --> 00:10:54,236 The Clemens's living from the Palatinate, 192 00:10:54,737 --> 00:10:58,199 who came over in the years 1709, 193 00:10:58,824 --> 00:11:01,827 and on that boat 194 00:11:01,869 --> 00:11:04,872 was a letter, a small letter 195 00:11:05,956 --> 00:11:07,667 by William Penn, 196 00:11:07,667 --> 00:11:10,670 who was an old disappointed man, 197 00:11:11,003 --> 00:11:13,923 but who had known Mennonites over the years. 198 00:11:13,923 --> 00:11:15,800 Really? Yes he had. 199 00:11:15,800 --> 00:11:17,218 I didn't know that either. 200 00:11:17,218 --> 00:11:19,845 No, we don't we don't get that story. 201 00:11:19,845 --> 00:11:22,848 He had known Mennonites since 17. 202 00:11:24,433 --> 00:11:26,560 And in fact, he probably had 203 00:11:26,560 --> 00:11:29,772 Mennonite relatives in, in and in southern Germany. 204 00:11:29,772 --> 00:11:32,858 But with that, that aside, he had visited 205 00:11:32,858 --> 00:11:36,195 Mennonites and worship with them in 17, 206 00:11:37,238 --> 00:11:41,951 in 1677, in the Palatinate. Yes. 207 00:11:42,410 --> 00:11:44,787 He knew Mennonites in Germantown. 208 00:11:44,787 --> 00:11:49,542 He knew Mennonites in Heidelberg, he knew Mennonites in Amsterdam, 209 00:11:49,875 --> 00:11:52,878 the sophisticated Dutch, the 210 00:11:54,380 --> 00:11:56,090 in hob nail boots 211 00:11:56,090 --> 00:11:59,135 on the farms of the homes in the Palatinate. Who? 212 00:11:59,385 --> 00:12:02,388 The Swiss refugees. They came. He knew him. 213 00:12:02,388 --> 00:12:06,600 And in this letter, which was not in the three 214 00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:09,603 volume sophisticated, 215 00:12:10,104 --> 00:12:13,107 collection of his correspondence, I found it otherwise, 216 00:12:13,232 --> 00:12:16,652 and I found the original in the archives in Philadelphia his letter 217 00:12:17,069 --> 00:12:20,072 he wrote, He wrote to his, 218 00:12:20,823 --> 00:12:22,533 his secretary in Philadelphia 219 00:12:22,533 --> 00:12:25,369 “Herewith come the Palatines, 220 00:12:25,369 --> 00:12:28,372 diverse Mennonists” 221 00:12:28,914 --> 00:12:30,541 that diverse. 222 00:12:30,541 --> 00:12:33,544 He already knew we were different kinds 223 00:12:34,170 --> 00:12:35,838 Oh, yeah. 224 00:12:35,838 --> 00:12:38,841 You see, from 1663, 225 00:12:39,425 --> 00:12:42,428 when the first Mennonites came 226 00:12:43,471 --> 00:12:46,474 to Germantown, to 1708, 227 00:12:46,640 --> 00:12:48,893 they could not have communion because they came from 228 00:12:48,893 --> 00:12:50,394 five different places over there. 229 00:12:50,394 --> 00:12:52,646 They weren’t united. So the first 230 00:12:54,940 --> 00:12:55,858 adjective that 231 00:12:55,858 --> 00:12:59,278 William Penn used to tell his American, 232 00:12:59,862 --> 00:13:02,740 his secretary about Mennonite was diverse, 233 00:13:02,740 --> 00:13:05,326 but the rest was complimentary. 234 00:13:05,326 --> 00:13:08,037 He said they are a sober people 235 00:13:08,037 --> 00:13:11,248 and who will neither fight nor swear. 236 00:13:12,792 --> 00:13:15,795 Treat them with tenderness and love 237 00:13:16,253 --> 00:13:19,256 so that they will send over a good character. 238 00:13:19,673 --> 00:13:22,551 He wanted more of us, 239 00:13:22,551 --> 00:13:24,261 undocumented. 240 00:13:24,261 --> 00:13:27,264 All he knew was we were Mennonites and I. 241 00:13:27,264 --> 00:13:31,018 When when I hear them talking about immigrants today, how terrible they are, 242 00:13:31,018 --> 00:13:35,064 they're all rapists and stuff like that, and a fear of them. 243 00:13:35,064 --> 00:13:37,983 My people couldn't even talk English either. 244 00:13:37,983 --> 00:13:40,319 And they had lost their properties at home. 245 00:13:40,319 --> 00:13:42,905 That's why they had to travel up to the Palatinate. 246 00:13:43,113 --> 00:13:47,159 Well, anyway, when I saw that William Penn on that boat 247 00:13:48,327 --> 00:13:52,915 was the couple that settled the ground that I grew out of. 248 00:13:52,915 --> 00:13:55,918 They got 690 acres. 249 00:13:56,502 --> 00:13:57,878 I grew out of that. 250 00:13:57,878 --> 00:14:00,714 And that that still that formed me. 251 00:14:00,714 --> 00:14:02,758 That DNA is still there. 252 00:14:02,758 --> 00:14:07,888 And only by curiously pushing and pushing to get to that story. 253 00:14:08,013 --> 00:14:10,057 Well, I got there and, 254 00:14:10,057 --> 00:14:14,103 I read afterward, read the work of sophisticated historians, 255 00:14:14,103 --> 00:14:18,023 and I was shocked at how little I knew that they already knew, 256 00:14:18,274 --> 00:14:20,109 but I didn't know my own story. 257 00:14:20,109 --> 00:14:20,860 Yeah. 258 00:14:20,860 --> 00:14:24,029 So anyway, the that's what pushed me. Now, 259 00:14:25,447 --> 00:14:27,867 When I had to do that, 260 00:14:27,867 --> 00:14:30,452 I said, I got to learn 261 00:14:30,452 --> 00:14:33,455 where Gerhart Clemens came from. 262 00:14:34,164 --> 00:14:36,208 And I have to know, 263 00:14:36,208 --> 00:14:39,420 I found out that his father in law, 264 00:14:40,129 --> 00:14:43,132 Hans Stoffer, was born in Switzerland 265 00:14:43,716 --> 00:14:48,304 in the same year that William Penn was born in London. 266 00:14:48,929 --> 00:14:52,975 And so I've got a narrative, a twin narrative. 267 00:14:53,517 --> 00:14:57,146 Let's follow Penn, and let's follow Gerhart Clement. 268 00:14:57,354 --> 00:14:59,648 But let's put an Indian right beside him. 269 00:14:59,648 --> 00:15:02,985 What were they experiencing when my people were rejoicing 270 00:15:03,152 --> 00:15:07,197 in the new acreage and in the woods, and the peace and the freedom? 271 00:15:07,323 --> 00:15:09,742 What were the Indians doing right then? 272 00:15:09,742 --> 00:15:11,744 And make two chronologies. 273 00:15:11,744 --> 00:15:13,245 That's my story. 274 00:15:13,245 --> 00:15:15,414 Two chronologies side by side. 275 00:15:15,414 --> 00:15:19,793 As the Indians lose more and more, the Mennonites sink their roots more and more. 276 00:15:20,544 --> 00:15:22,421 And then, thank God. 277 00:15:22,421 --> 00:15:25,424 “Where nothing dwelt but beasts of prey. 278 00:15:25,633 --> 00:15:26,675 Men as wild 279 00:15:28,052 --> 00:15:29,428 as they. 280 00:15:29,428 --> 00:15:32,306 God plants his people there and builds them 281 00:15:32,306 --> 00:15:35,559 towns and cities there.” That's what Isaac Watts wrote. 282 00:15:36,894 --> 00:15:37,811 Really? 283 00:15:37,811 --> 00:15:39,688 I've never heard that before either. 284 00:15:39,688 --> 00:15:44,068 no, I wrote my thesis on hymnody, and that's how I got that. 285 00:15:46,403 --> 00:15:48,739 But and so what I did was 286 00:15:48,739 --> 00:15:52,701 I went back to 1644 when Hans Stoffer, 287 00:15:53,369 --> 00:15:58,332 whose daughter came to and came to, bought the land where I live, 288 00:15:58,999 --> 00:16:02,628 Hans Stoffer was born and where when William Penn was born. 289 00:16:02,836 --> 00:16:06,256 And I take their stories side by side, side by side, 290 00:16:06,674 --> 00:16:09,385 no matter how difficult or abstruse it gets. 291 00:16:09,385 --> 00:16:13,639 I say, what happened that year or that year or that decade and, 292 00:16:14,181 --> 00:16:15,557 I follow that. 293 00:16:15,557 --> 00:16:18,560 And when I get to the end of it. 294 00:16:18,602 --> 00:16:20,062 I have a different view of, 295 00:16:21,772 --> 00:16:22,231 in other 296 00:16:22,231 --> 00:16:25,234 words, so God doesn't care for the Jebusites, huh? 297 00:16:26,110 --> 00:16:28,404 Doesn't care for the people 298 00:16:28,404 --> 00:16:31,490 that Israel has chases off of Zion. 299 00:16:31,907 --> 00:16:34,618 And now we sit there and sing Sunday after Sunday 300 00:16:34,618 --> 00:16:38,622 we’re marching to Zion and, that our songs about... 301 00:16:38,664 --> 00:16:41,667 and they're still mourning the loss of their land in Oklahoma. 302 00:16:43,335 --> 00:16:45,796 And I had to rethink I don't care, 303 00:16:45,796 --> 00:16:49,299 I don't care if it's radical or conservative what it is, I don't care. 304 00:16:49,883 --> 00:16:52,636 Just know the story and relate to people. 305 00:16:52,636 --> 00:16:56,223 So when I had to move like, last month 306 00:16:56,849 --> 00:16:59,852 into a retirement home off of that land, 307 00:17:00,102 --> 00:17:04,189 the last person to be with me as we walked down to the creek 308 00:17:04,189 --> 00:17:08,444 and sat there for and talked was a Lenape 309 00:17:08,444 --> 00:17:11,613 Indian from Brattleboro, from from 310 00:17:13,073 --> 00:17:14,450 Bartlesville. 311 00:17:14,450 --> 00:17:16,410 Yeah, yeah. 312 00:17:16,410 --> 00:17:19,288 But anyway, 313 00:17:19,288 --> 00:17:21,707 in, in in this in, 314 00:17:21,707 --> 00:17:25,085 in taking that naive narrative instead of. 315 00:17:27,963 --> 00:17:30,966 A history of ideas or whatever, 316 00:17:31,216 --> 00:17:34,219 a macro culture and taking my parochial, 317 00:17:35,304 --> 00:17:38,057 little local narrative 318 00:17:38,057 --> 00:17:41,060 and following it, just like an Amishman would, 319 00:17:42,227 --> 00:17:43,228 and following it. 320 00:17:43,228 --> 00:17:44,980 And what will it tell me? 321 00:17:44,980 --> 00:17:47,357 That's my book. 322 00:17:47,357 --> 00:17:48,025 What will. 323 00:17:48,025 --> 00:17:52,613 And what it tells me is that when William Penn came 324 00:17:52,613 --> 00:17:57,951 the first time to Pennsylvania, he came in 1682. 325 00:17:58,202 --> 00:18:00,829 He got the land in 1681. 326 00:18:00,829 --> 00:18:03,248 And you know why he got it? 327 00:18:03,248 --> 00:18:07,086 Because the king owed his family a debt. 328 00:18:07,086 --> 00:18:09,922 And you know what that debt was for 329 00:18:09,922 --> 00:18:12,925 a great military victory 330 00:18:13,217 --> 00:18:15,135 between England and Holland. 331 00:18:15,135 --> 00:18:17,346 The Battle of Lowestoft. 332 00:18:17,346 --> 00:18:19,056 But anyhow. Interesting. 333 00:18:19,056 --> 00:18:22,059 So that money it and William Penn 334 00:18:22,518 --> 00:18:26,355 when the Quakers were so persecuted in England, William Penn's 335 00:18:26,563 --> 00:18:29,858 dad was an admiral 336 00:18:30,150 --> 00:18:32,903 who was buddy with Charles the second 337 00:18:33,862 --> 00:18:34,488 and Charles the 338 00:18:34,488 --> 00:18:37,491 second’s Brother, James of York, who then became the King. 339 00:18:37,574 --> 00:18:39,493 They were buddies 340 00:18:39,493 --> 00:18:42,746 and they were social buddies and but, 341 00:18:43,330 --> 00:18:46,375 William Penn's dad, as his name was also William Penn, 342 00:18:47,417 --> 00:18:50,420 the first, 343 00:18:51,004 --> 00:18:53,382 after the Battle of Lowestoft, 344 00:18:53,382 --> 00:18:58,220 they spent a lot of money to fire a lot of cannons and defeat the king owed 345 00:18:58,679 --> 00:19:01,974 a lot of money, and William Penn's dad paid it for him. 346 00:19:02,474 --> 00:19:06,520 So the King owed William Penn a lot of money, never paid it. 347 00:19:07,354 --> 00:19:10,399 And William Penn got a bright idea as a Quaker, 348 00:19:11,108 --> 00:19:14,111 he said, our people so persecuted? 349 00:19:14,361 --> 00:19:17,364 There's the land over there, new Jersey. 350 00:19:17,656 --> 00:19:19,449 There's land west of the Delaware. 351 00:19:19,449 --> 00:19:22,452 Maybe the King would give me that instead of paying off the debt. 352 00:19:22,953 --> 00:19:24,204 He tried it with the King. 353 00:19:24,204 --> 00:19:29,835 He said, yeah, he gave him the biggest bunch of land anybody ever got free 354 00:19:30,836 --> 00:19:33,672 in 1681. 355 00:19:33,672 --> 00:19:36,675 And on it, it says this on the document. 356 00:19:39,219 --> 00:19:40,888 With special reference 357 00:19:40,888 --> 00:19:43,891 to the Battle of Lowestoft. 358 00:19:43,891 --> 00:19:45,976 That's why I'm giving you this land. 359 00:19:45,976 --> 00:19:50,105 Because your dad had a battle and then. 360 00:19:50,105 --> 00:19:51,648 And in the English Channel 361 00:19:51,648 --> 00:19:55,611 in the North Sea and won it for me is basically what he's saying. 362 00:19:55,903 --> 00:19:58,697 So William Penn got Pennsylvania, 363 00:19:58,697 --> 00:20:01,700 because the king owed his dad a military debt 364 00:20:02,743 --> 00:20:07,414 and then but William Penn knows Mennonites because he's traveled to Europe 365 00:20:07,748 --> 00:20:11,084 and he's worshiped with them sophisticated Dutch, 366 00:20:11,960 --> 00:20:14,963 countrified, palatines. 367 00:20:15,172 --> 00:20:16,798 And he knows the Swiss. 368 00:20:16,798 --> 00:20:19,801 And then he finally comes over here himself. 369 00:20:19,968 --> 00:20:23,805 He gets the land in 1681, he comes in 1682. 370 00:20:24,598 --> 00:20:29,895 And we have the date of 1683, when an Indian remembers 371 00:20:29,895 --> 00:20:33,190 sitting down in the woods with William Penn. 372 00:20:33,982 --> 00:20:36,985 And what what they did and what they said 373 00:20:37,069 --> 00:20:41,240 and made friendship that they thought would be forever, which lasted 70 years. 374 00:20:41,823 --> 00:20:44,243 And then it burst into flames. 375 00:20:44,243 --> 00:20:47,579 And I talk about that, that narrative all the way through there. 376 00:20:47,579 --> 00:20:47,746 And I 377 00:20:48,956 --> 00:20:51,166 again and again, 378 00:20:51,166 --> 00:20:55,545 quote what the Indians said at key points 379 00:20:56,380 --> 00:20:58,548 as they were, in the year 380 00:20:58,548 --> 00:21:01,885 1709 when William Penn wrote that letter, 381 00:21:02,886 --> 00:21:05,889 and my ancestors, Clemmons arrived 382 00:21:06,682 --> 00:21:09,017 that year, 383 00:21:09,017 --> 00:21:12,229 the boy that had heard William Penn talk 384 00:21:12,938 --> 00:21:18,193 love for Indians in 1683, in the woods at Perkasie, has left 385 00:21:18,485 --> 00:21:22,656 and is out at the next at the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna. 386 00:21:23,073 --> 00:21:26,076 So you're saying that person had already been pushed out. 387 00:21:26,535 --> 00:21:27,619 He left. 388 00:21:27,619 --> 00:21:32,124 He left because there were so many people coming in now. 389 00:21:32,124 --> 00:21:33,208 He wasn't driven. 390 00:21:33,208 --> 00:21:35,168 He wasn't driven out at that point. 391 00:21:35,168 --> 00:21:40,007 Economically yes, now that that young boy who was just a boy 392 00:21:40,048 --> 00:21:44,553 listening to William but never forgot that he died in the 1740s 393 00:21:45,470 --> 00:21:49,641 and he became the chief of our Indians, the Lanapes. 394 00:21:50,434 --> 00:21:53,478 They didn't use the word chief, I forget, sachem. 395 00:21:53,645 --> 00:21:54,813 I don't know what word they used. 396 00:21:55,981 --> 00:21:58,275 But here's the thing. 397 00:21:58,275 --> 00:22:01,278 First he went to the Schuylkill, 398 00:22:01,570 --> 00:22:04,281 Then he went to the Susquehanna. 399 00:22:04,281 --> 00:22:07,284 And then their people went to the Ohio. 400 00:22:07,743 --> 00:22:11,204 Every time the whites came right after him, took their land. 401 00:22:11,538 --> 00:22:16,168 And only when the Indians finally realized there was no way out of this, 402 00:22:16,168 --> 00:22:19,171 they were going to have nothing is when they attacked. 403 00:22:19,629 --> 00:22:21,798 And that's when the Mennonites tell the story. 404 00:22:21,798 --> 00:22:24,676 When the attack starts. 405 00:22:24,676 --> 00:22:26,553 Well okay. 406 00:22:26,553 --> 00:22:28,597 So my head is spinning a little bit 407 00:22:28,597 --> 00:22:31,600 because I've just never heard any, any of this. 408 00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:32,893 Right. 409 00:22:32,893 --> 00:22:35,729 Why were the Mennonites going along with this. 410 00:22:35,729 --> 00:22:36,438 Was it. 411 00:22:36,438 --> 00:22:39,107 We're just not really going to pay attention to what's happening 412 00:22:39,107 --> 00:22:42,110 or they they were genuinely ignorant of these things. 413 00:22:42,319 --> 00:22:43,695 Do we know at all? 414 00:22:43,695 --> 00:22:46,698 And then, like you said, we start hearing the stories 415 00:22:47,115 --> 00:22:49,868 much later when the Indians start attacking, for example. 416 00:22:49,868 --> 00:22:52,871 I mean that those are the only stories I've heard at least. 417 00:22:52,954 --> 00:22:54,289 Can you speak into that at all? 418 00:22:55,665 --> 00:22:58,168 Well, look, the Lanapes 419 00:22:58,168 --> 00:23:01,171 after the Swedes and the Dutch came, 420 00:23:01,546 --> 00:23:04,633 and the British took over in 1664. 421 00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:08,762 Were so wracked by, 422 00:23:10,097 --> 00:23:10,972 Smallpox. 423 00:23:10,972 --> 00:23:15,143 It killed probably 80% up to 75 or 80% of them. 424 00:23:15,936 --> 00:23:18,522 So they were only a remnant. 425 00:23:18,522 --> 00:23:21,525 And they were, really, 426 00:23:21,942 --> 00:23:25,237 in terms of your vision of reality, insignificant. 427 00:23:25,987 --> 00:23:26,863 And they gave up. 428 00:23:26,863 --> 00:23:29,866 They were so there was no relationship 429 00:23:29,950 --> 00:23:31,660 there. There are exceptions. 430 00:23:31,660 --> 00:23:36,164 But its general picture is the remnant of the Lenapes 431 00:23:36,915 --> 00:23:39,709 were not even of 432 00:23:39,709 --> 00:23:42,504 the only problem you had with them 433 00:23:42,504 --> 00:23:46,716 was to sign papers to give up more and more land. 434 00:23:47,092 --> 00:23:48,051 And they always did. 435 00:23:48,051 --> 00:23:49,803 And they were given gifts. 436 00:23:49,803 --> 00:23:53,765 They were given guns, and they were given needles and, 437 00:23:55,142 --> 00:23:59,688 tools and gunpowder and rum, and they would always sign. 438 00:23:59,688 --> 00:24:01,356 Sure, sure, sure. 439 00:24:01,356 --> 00:24:05,485 And their idea in, in their brain. 440 00:24:05,485 --> 00:24:07,028 And then a heart was never that. 441 00:24:07,028 --> 00:24:10,031 They, when they started talking with the whites, 442 00:24:10,157 --> 00:24:13,535 it was always on the basis of we're going to live together, not like up 443 00:24:13,535 --> 00:24:16,663 in New England or Virginia where there was blood. 444 00:24:17,539 --> 00:24:19,666 William Penn, they said, you’re different. 445 00:24:19,666 --> 00:24:21,626 We're going to live together. 446 00:24:21,626 --> 00:24:24,171 And they both believed it. 447 00:24:24,171 --> 00:24:27,048 And when the Indians would come back from time 448 00:24:27,048 --> 00:24:30,051 to time to Philadelphia 449 00:24:30,135 --> 00:24:32,429 to in order to negotiate. 450 00:24:32,429 --> 00:24:35,432 And I'll mention a couple of reasons why they did. 451 00:24:36,099 --> 00:24:38,685 They would always talk about love. Love. 452 00:24:40,604 --> 00:24:41,313 We have more 453 00:24:41,313 --> 00:24:45,150 talk from the Indians about love than anything about men, than anything. 454 00:24:45,150 --> 00:24:48,153 The mennonites left on record. 455 00:24:48,945 --> 00:24:50,030 But they did. 456 00:24:50,030 --> 00:24:53,158 But like in the book of, Samuel 457 00:24:53,158 --> 00:24:57,704 and Kings and Chronicles, when David wanted the Jebusite 458 00:24:57,704 --> 00:25:00,707 hill of Zion, he said, I’ll have it, thank you very much. 459 00:25:01,875 --> 00:25:03,418 And he drove them away. 460 00:25:03,418 --> 00:25:05,879 And they are no longer part of the story. 461 00:25:05,879 --> 00:25:08,882 And the Lenapes were not part of our story. 462 00:25:09,216 --> 00:25:10,550 So God didn't care about them. 463 00:25:10,550 --> 00:25:15,263 He had to give us this land, and that was where God was interested. 464 00:25:15,597 --> 00:25:19,184 And thank you, God, every time at Harvest Home. And, 465 00:25:20,227 --> 00:25:22,646 about how when we came here, 466 00:25:22,646 --> 00:25:25,941 and one Indian said, well, one a Mennonite minister said, 467 00:25:25,941 --> 00:25:29,861 and I saw this or dreamed I saw it, but I think I saw it on YouTube. 468 00:25:30,445 --> 00:25:35,242 He was showing some German tourists, some land in Lancaster County blooming 469 00:25:35,242 --> 00:25:39,955 with there's nothing like Lancaster County, hardly anywhere, he said. 470 00:25:40,497 --> 00:25:43,458 I don't know if you can talk Pennsylvania Dutch or no, no. 471 00:25:43,458 --> 00:25:47,170 Well, he said in Pennsylvania Dutch to these Indian tourists. 472 00:25:47,170 --> 00:25:49,756 He said, now when we came here, there was nothing here. 473 00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:53,093 There were Indians living there. 474 00:25:53,093 --> 00:25:57,681 The creek was named Conestoga and Pekaway Chickies 475 00:25:58,890 --> 00:26:01,101 and Allegheny. 476 00:26:01,101 --> 00:26:02,811 The names came from before. 477 00:26:02,811 --> 00:26:04,062 But he said there was nothing here. 478 00:26:04,062 --> 00:26:07,065 It doesn't even figure in their imagination. 479 00:26:07,607 --> 00:26:12,195 Well, this bugged me like it bugged Conrad Grebel to start thinking 480 00:26:12,279 --> 00:26:16,074 who is paying for his scholarship at the University of Paris. 481 00:26:17,284 --> 00:26:20,203 Whose land did I am I enjoying so much? 482 00:26:20,203 --> 00:26:24,916 And and, on my wife put the initials 483 00:26:25,292 --> 00:26:28,295 of our ownership of our land all around 484 00:26:29,963 --> 00:26:31,381 her proctor in our living room. 485 00:26:31,381 --> 00:26:37,846 And now it started with WP 1684 when he bought it from the Indians, 486 00:26:37,846 --> 00:26:41,349 William Penn, and then all the all the her’s, Landis's 487 00:26:41,349 --> 00:26:45,353 and Martins and all the names of the Ruths and so forth, 488 00:26:45,604 --> 00:26:50,025 but nothing about what were before for who knows how many thousands of years 489 00:26:50,775 --> 00:26:53,153 it was not even if I didn't have to think about that. 490 00:26:54,779 --> 00:26:57,574 And I think, 491 00:26:57,574 --> 00:27:00,577 well, the Indians never forgot. 492 00:27:00,952 --> 00:27:03,955 Their still sad, 493 00:27:05,165 --> 00:27:08,168 and that's a whole other story, but, 494 00:27:09,002 --> 00:27:11,546 it's important for me to, to to, 495 00:27:11,546 --> 00:27:14,549 to report that 496 00:27:15,717 --> 00:27:17,594 when the Indians left, 497 00:27:17,594 --> 00:27:20,555 I say Indians and they, they use the word to 498 00:27:20,555 --> 00:27:23,808 when they first moved from the Perkiomen, where I lived, 499 00:27:24,934 --> 00:27:27,937 and the Delaware, which is the the eastern border, 500 00:27:27,937 --> 00:27:30,940 they moved to the next big river, which was, 501 00:27:31,107 --> 00:27:34,110 the Schuylkill. 502 00:27:34,194 --> 00:27:38,448 along the Schuylkill and along that general area. 503 00:27:38,448 --> 00:27:42,911 They had to, they had about three pockets left, 504 00:27:44,120 --> 00:27:47,123 the Lehigh that came down from the north, 505 00:27:47,415 --> 00:27:50,794 the Schuylkill, the Brandywine, and the topahoften, 506 00:27:50,794 --> 00:27:53,797 now those are all Indian names. 507 00:27:53,963 --> 00:27:56,966 So there were pockets of Indians left there. 508 00:27:58,343 --> 00:28:02,097 The Quakers finessed the Indians out of Brandywine. 509 00:28:02,097 --> 00:28:03,890 Businessmen, speculators, 510 00:28:06,184 --> 00:28:06,559 other 511 00:28:06,559 --> 00:28:09,771 Palatines that were not Anabaptists came down and they weren't 512 00:28:09,771 --> 00:28:14,150 happy in the Hudson River and took over topahoften, And the Indians protested. 513 00:28:14,984 --> 00:28:17,987 So they moved out to the Susquehanna, 514 00:28:18,238 --> 00:28:19,906 and they lived there. 515 00:28:19,906 --> 00:28:23,868 And then the white people came along and bought that land, 516 00:28:24,285 --> 00:28:27,080 and they found that they couldn't stay there either. 517 00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:29,833 And then they went to the Ohio, 518 00:28:29,833 --> 00:28:32,752 and they found they couldn't stand their stand there either. 519 00:28:32,752 --> 00:28:36,381 And I read what the secretaries wrote. 520 00:28:36,464 --> 00:28:38,216 I mean, 521 00:28:38,216 --> 00:28:40,176 this is not original with me. 522 00:28:40,176 --> 00:28:43,638 University scholars had been at this papers long 523 00:28:43,638 --> 00:28:46,641 before I ever even dreamed of them, 524 00:28:46,766 --> 00:28:50,061 but I went and read them myself from my personal interest level 525 00:28:50,687 --> 00:28:53,815 and here was Sesunan, this boy that sat 526 00:28:53,857 --> 00:28:56,860 and I heard William Penn talk and never forgot. 527 00:28:57,235 --> 00:29:01,239 And he came back, for instance, from the from the, 528 00:29:02,449 --> 00:29:03,950 Schuylkill and said, we have 529 00:29:03,950 --> 00:29:08,747 a question in 1715, first time he came as chief, he said, 530 00:29:09,873 --> 00:29:12,625 how come some years 531 00:29:12,625 --> 00:29:15,587 we got good prices for our furs? 532 00:29:15,879 --> 00:29:19,507 Beaver were almost gone by then, but some next year we come in. 533 00:29:19,507 --> 00:29:21,801 It's no, we don't understand that. 534 00:29:21,801 --> 00:29:24,721 It doesn't seem fair to us. 535 00:29:24,721 --> 00:29:27,932 They said you have to think like they're think in Europe. 536 00:29:27,932 --> 00:29:31,603 Styles change and when there's a fad on for Beaver, 537 00:29:31,728 --> 00:29:34,522 that's when you get good prices or when there isn't you, don't 538 00:29:34,522 --> 00:29:36,107 you got to think like that. 539 00:29:36,107 --> 00:29:39,110 Well, you couldn't get that through a Lanapes head. 540 00:29:40,487 --> 00:29:42,363 So what they did was here, 541 00:29:42,363 --> 00:29:45,742 here are some biscuits and some rum and some gunpowder. 542 00:29:45,742 --> 00:29:48,411 We love you to. Oh, thank you very much. 543 00:29:48,411 --> 00:29:51,414 So he went on a spree with the rum and went home again. 544 00:29:51,414 --> 00:29:52,791 That's 1715. 545 00:29:53,958 --> 00:29:54,876 And the next time 546 00:29:54,876 --> 00:29:58,046 they come back, they have questions about land. 547 00:29:59,297 --> 00:30:02,383 They said, you never paid for this certain land. 548 00:30:02,509 --> 00:30:04,719 Oh, yes we did. 549 00:30:04,719 --> 00:30:06,596 And so what William Penn, 550 00:30:06,596 --> 00:30:11,476 secretary, went to the archives and he pulled out a whole bunch of deeds, 551 00:30:11,476 --> 00:30:15,104 with these Indian signatures on these scratchings. 552 00:30:16,022 --> 00:30:18,483 And he showed them to him. 553 00:30:18,483 --> 00:30:21,194 Well, you know, they recognize him. 554 00:30:21,194 --> 00:30:24,489 So he said, you don't own any land anymore. Oh, 555 00:30:25,490 --> 00:30:29,202 they thought they could come and dig holes and kill deer and 556 00:30:29,452 --> 00:30:30,787 and live there with them. 557 00:30:30,787 --> 00:30:32,539 Well, that was a dream. 558 00:30:32,539 --> 00:30:35,542 So they just kept moving and moving and moving. 559 00:30:35,542 --> 00:30:39,462 And so what William Penn secretary did in 1718 560 00:30:40,380 --> 00:30:43,883 was he drew up he, he legal procedure 561 00:30:44,259 --> 00:30:46,970 drew up a quitclaim 562 00:30:46,970 --> 00:30:51,140 that was a legal document in which the Indian signed their names. 563 00:30:51,432 --> 00:30:52,934 We own nothing here. 564 00:30:55,353 --> 00:30:57,981 And he gave them more to eat and a more. 565 00:30:57,981 --> 00:31:00,984 And they finally signed that to. 566 00:31:02,694 --> 00:31:06,197 And, that didn't settle things 567 00:31:06,197 --> 00:31:09,284 because that was in the white people's minds, 568 00:31:10,451 --> 00:31:14,747 legal, they made promises in their heads and they never forgot them. 569 00:31:14,914 --> 00:31:18,918 And to them, that was more this riding on a feather 570 00:31:18,918 --> 00:31:22,088 on a paper, by the way, they called William Penn feather, pen. 571 00:31:22,839 --> 00:31:25,884 They, they called their name 572 00:31:26,050 --> 00:31:29,053 for him was feather 573 00:31:29,304 --> 00:31:31,014 in their language. 574 00:31:31,014 --> 00:31:35,852 So they have to the white people said, now you got to learn to think like we think. 575 00:31:36,561 --> 00:31:41,232 And I put in my book a document in which Penn’s Secretary 576 00:31:41,357 --> 00:31:45,153 sits down with Sesunan, and for it must have been an hour 577 00:31:45,153 --> 00:31:48,156 or so spelled out the rationale. 578 00:31:48,197 --> 00:31:50,283 He says, now you have to think like this. 579 00:31:51,326 --> 00:31:51,659 Well, the 580 00:31:51,659 --> 00:31:54,662 Indians never did get to their head. 581 00:31:54,913 --> 00:31:56,039 What's fair is fair. 582 00:31:56,039 --> 00:32:01,210 No matter if you write it with a feather, with a goose quill on leather or anything 583 00:32:01,669 --> 00:32:05,632 that's not as real as the promise that we made 584 00:32:05,673 --> 00:32:08,676 that we will always be friends and have love with each other. 585 00:32:08,843 --> 00:32:11,846 So I go in my book and I find those words of love, 586 00:32:12,013 --> 00:32:16,059 and I write them in that book so that whoever bothers to read that book 587 00:32:16,267 --> 00:32:20,355 will at least see that and not have just these vague ideas 588 00:32:20,355 --> 00:32:23,358 in their head of the Indians disappearing. 589 00:32:24,192 --> 00:32:27,153 They disappeared with regret wherever they moved, 590 00:32:27,487 --> 00:32:30,490 and they still have that regret. 591 00:32:30,740 --> 00:32:34,285 So I'm guessing a lot of people hearing this 592 00:32:35,536 --> 00:32:38,998 haven't, haven't heard this story, don't know this at all 593 00:32:39,457 --> 00:32:43,795 and aren't familiar with what the Mennonites like our ancestors. 594 00:32:43,795 --> 00:32:46,756 The process of where this came, comes from. 595 00:32:46,756 --> 00:32:48,466 We were no worse than others. 596 00:32:48,466 --> 00:32:51,052 The Mennonites were no worse and sometimes better. 597 00:32:51,052 --> 00:32:51,636 Right? 598 00:32:51,636 --> 00:32:54,973 But but we paid no attention to that drama. 599 00:32:54,973 --> 00:32:59,268 It sounds more like an issue of perhaps ignorance or who knows, but. 600 00:32:59,268 --> 00:33:03,648 Well, sure, when it's savages who just shoot squirrels and, 601 00:33:04,190 --> 00:33:06,776 and, and are drunk a lot 602 00:33:06,776 --> 00:33:11,155 and are poor and barely living yet, you know, is that what 603 00:33:12,407 --> 00:33:12,824 God wants? 604 00:33:12,824 --> 00:33:15,910 God builds a beautiful country here and gave it to us? 605 00:33:16,285 --> 00:33:17,954 That's our dream. 606 00:33:17,954 --> 00:33:20,957 That's our rhetoric. 607 00:33:21,416 --> 00:33:23,459 There there is, you know, 608 00:33:23,459 --> 00:33:26,629 the whole idea of manifest Destiny and some of that, you know, like. 609 00:33:26,879 --> 00:33:27,714 That’s related. 610 00:33:27,714 --> 00:33:30,675 This related where it's like, oh, see this wonderful thing we were given 611 00:33:30,675 --> 00:33:33,845 while not quite maybe realizing. 612 00:33:34,387 --> 00:33:39,100 But today yet if you talk to a lot of evangelical Mennonites, 613 00:33:39,642 --> 00:33:42,645 if you raise this kind of concern, this visceral, 614 00:33:43,104 --> 00:33:47,066 after all, they say who you've been listening to? 615 00:33:47,358 --> 00:33:48,901 that's wokeism. 616 00:33:48,901 --> 00:33:50,028 It's communism. 617 00:33:50,028 --> 00:33:53,406 I was going to say that I can about 618 00:33:54,449 --> 00:33:59,370 guess to within a high degree of accuracy, the comments and feedback we'll get 619 00:33:59,412 --> 00:34:00,455 when we publish this. 620 00:34:00,455 --> 00:34:01,956 Right now, that means we're 621 00:34:01,956 --> 00:34:04,959 we're still going to publish it, but people are going to say, oh, 622 00:34:05,043 --> 00:34:08,880 that's just you been drinking the liberal Kool-Aid or something crazy. 623 00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:12,216 You know, they're going to say that, I know that, and I can't, 624 00:34:12,717 --> 00:34:17,555 go, I can't do anything about that except to lay on record. 625 00:34:17,764 --> 00:34:21,392 And I know that people who are curious enough will think, 626 00:34:22,477 --> 00:34:23,853 Well, so 627 00:34:23,853 --> 00:34:26,856 so I'd like to to drill in on that a bit. 628 00:34:26,856 --> 00:34:30,735 So as we hear this story get this is this is new for me, right? 629 00:34:30,735 --> 00:34:32,403 I haven't heard this story. 630 00:34:32,403 --> 00:34:35,156 What should our response be? 631 00:34:35,156 --> 00:34:37,992 I'm not there yet. 632 00:34:37,992 --> 00:34:40,995 I'm still drinking in the story. 633 00:34:41,204 --> 00:34:43,081 And I think their response 634 00:34:43,081 --> 00:34:47,418 will take shape in the people's consciousness as they think about it. 635 00:34:47,710 --> 00:34:50,213 And it will be a gradual process. 636 00:34:50,213 --> 00:34:52,298 like a shape, almost like a shaping process. 637 00:34:52,298 --> 00:34:55,802 As, as we dwell with the story it will find form. 638 00:34:55,802 --> 00:34:57,929 It will find form. 639 00:34:57,929 --> 00:35:01,599 I cannot administer or strategize that form. 640 00:35:01,599 --> 00:35:04,602 There are all kinds of groups getting together 641 00:35:04,644 --> 00:35:07,897 and seminars about it and strategizing. 642 00:35:08,231 --> 00:35:10,942 And it's not that I'm against them at all, 643 00:35:10,942 --> 00:35:13,486 except that that's not where I am emotionally. 644 00:35:13,486 --> 00:35:17,323 I had to first understand the story and get some feeling about it. 645 00:35:18,032 --> 00:35:23,246 And out of that, you know, when I was 92, I lived well. 646 00:35:23,246 --> 00:35:25,748 I lived my life along a Creek. 647 00:35:25,748 --> 00:35:28,751 I decided I want to find out where that creek started. 648 00:35:28,835 --> 00:35:33,214 It was high time and it sure was at perkasie where Sesunan heard, 649 00:35:34,924 --> 00:35:35,550 because I lived 650 00:35:35,550 --> 00:35:38,553 on the Perkiomen Creek branch of it. 651 00:35:38,678 --> 00:35:41,681 And when I got to the source of that creek, 652 00:35:42,515 --> 00:35:46,144 I looked for a narrowing rivulet. 653 00:35:46,144 --> 00:35:49,897 I was looking for a narrative, specificity 654 00:35:49,897 --> 00:35:53,442 that I could follow, and I wanted to see where it bubbled out of the ground. 655 00:35:53,860 --> 00:35:56,737 You know, just like I wanted to go to see Conrad Grebel’s letter. 656 00:35:56,737 --> 00:35:58,865 You know, I wanted to go to the source. 657 00:35:58,865 --> 00:36:00,658 And when I got there, I found that 658 00:36:00,658 --> 00:36:03,953 it was not a matter of bubbling out of the specifics. 659 00:36:04,203 --> 00:36:06,998 It was seeping up and gathering. 660 00:36:06,998 --> 00:36:10,293 And that, I think, is how things gather in the human consciousness. 661 00:36:10,543 --> 00:36:13,546 It seeps up and then it takes form, 662 00:36:14,255 --> 00:36:18,634 and then someone gives it a name and and a language, 663 00:36:19,218 --> 00:36:22,930 and then it becomes a concept in our minds and takes, 664 00:36:25,224 --> 00:36:25,892 it becomes an 665 00:36:25,892 --> 00:36:29,145 algorithm, which then becomes a post, 666 00:36:29,395 --> 00:36:32,648 it becomes a thing somewhere, takes form. 667 00:36:33,232 --> 00:36:36,194 And, this is happening in our country. 668 00:36:36,194 --> 00:36:41,157 And by the way, the people that are making the most noise 669 00:36:41,324 --> 00:36:45,494 about helping the Indians can be very annoying to me. 670 00:36:46,621 --> 00:36:48,164 They're very self-righteous. 671 00:36:48,164 --> 00:36:51,334 You can be a fundamentalist on the left as well as on the right. 672 00:36:52,043 --> 00:36:55,171 And to me, it's in my generation. 673 00:36:55,171 --> 00:36:57,632 I'm hearing this story. I'm getting the feeling. 674 00:36:57,632 --> 00:36:59,842 And maybe when I talk like this, 675 00:36:59,842 --> 00:37:02,845 people ask me the same questions to say, what are we going to do? 676 00:37:03,387 --> 00:37:05,640 I don't know, 677 00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:06,933 but I know one thing. 678 00:37:06,933 --> 00:37:10,686 I have struck up a relationship and a conversation with, with them, 679 00:37:11,229 --> 00:37:14,774 and that I'm just a teeny part of that conversation. 680 00:37:14,774 --> 00:37:18,194 Other people are doing it all over, and something will happen. 681 00:37:18,194 --> 00:37:21,113 We'll we'll cross thresholds of feeling. 682 00:37:21,113 --> 00:37:24,367 And in the meantime, we'll argue each other out of 683 00:37:25,743 --> 00:37:27,411 nowhere. 684 00:37:27,411 --> 00:37:30,414 So I'm wondering how 685 00:37:30,873 --> 00:37:34,001 say a podcast like this can 686 00:37:35,253 --> 00:37:37,296 help inspire our audience 687 00:37:37,296 --> 00:37:40,258 to be more aware of our story, our history. 688 00:37:40,466 --> 00:37:43,803 And when I say that, I mean not just the parts that we like. 689 00:37:44,345 --> 00:37:45,471 You know. Right. 690 00:37:45,471 --> 00:37:46,472 Could you speak to that? 691 00:37:46,472 --> 00:37:49,392 Like, what would you like to see there? 692 00:37:49,392 --> 00:37:53,145 Well look, I did what I could by putting it down on paper 693 00:37:53,604 --> 00:37:56,565 and letting you hear Sesunan's words, 694 00:37:56,565 --> 00:38:00,194 not just the, the victorious, 695 00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:04,323 conquerors interpretation of history. 696 00:38:05,241 --> 00:38:08,869 And I ask myself, what would Jesus, what? 697 00:38:08,869 --> 00:38:11,872 What is Jesus in me? 698 00:38:12,498 --> 00:38:15,501 Must respect the Samaritan. 699 00:38:16,544 --> 00:38:20,673 And in the Old Testament really. 700 00:38:21,507 --> 00:38:23,592 David says, I want Zion. 701 00:38:23,592 --> 00:38:24,593 I'm sorry. 702 00:38:24,593 --> 00:38:28,222 They say you can’t have Zion because, that's 703 00:38:28,222 --> 00:38:32,268 where they keep the laim and the blind up there. 704 00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:37,732 And David is quoted by the Righteous Writer, I hate the lame and the blind. 705 00:38:37,815 --> 00:38:39,650 I'm going to get rid of them, and I will. 706 00:38:40,609 --> 00:38:43,529 And then and more seriously. 707 00:38:43,529 --> 00:38:46,157 And there you have to be an adult. 708 00:38:46,157 --> 00:38:50,536 The writer of the Chronicles or kings, I forget, which says quotes God 709 00:38:51,245 --> 00:38:54,999 referring to Zion, and says, my name shall be there. 710 00:38:55,666 --> 00:38:58,044 And now we are all marching to Zion. 711 00:38:58,044 --> 00:38:59,920 Beautiful, beautiful Zion. 712 00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:04,216 And the Jebusites are nothing but roadkill, they’re out of the way. 713 00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:05,760 And I'm not there. 714 00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:10,514 I don't think Jesus was there because when Jesus came to the temple at Zion, 715 00:39:11,599 --> 00:39:14,602 he kicked out the establishment business people. 716 00:39:15,853 --> 00:39:18,439 And who came in 717 00:39:18,439 --> 00:39:20,316 the lame in the blind? 718 00:39:20,316 --> 00:39:21,317 Oh wow. 719 00:39:21,317 --> 00:39:24,195 That's the logic 720 00:39:24,195 --> 00:39:26,364 of the King. 721 00:39:26,364 --> 00:39:29,325 The upside down kingdom I guess you could say you know 722 00:39:29,450 --> 00:39:32,870 Kingdom logic And so my adventure into this 723 00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:36,540 was not as an expert or a historian or anything is simply, 724 00:39:37,375 --> 00:39:40,002 So when I told the story 725 00:39:40,002 --> 00:39:43,422 about a year or two ago, a man came up to me afterward. 726 00:39:44,131 --> 00:39:48,344 I'm sure most people were bemused by my talk, but one man came up and said, 727 00:39:48,344 --> 00:39:52,181 you know, this is the first time I felt this viscerally, he said. 728 00:39:54,433 --> 00:39:56,477 So as we 729 00:39:56,477 --> 00:39:59,814 wrap this story up, what is something 730 00:39:59,814 --> 00:40:02,817 you would like to leave with the next generation? 731 00:40:03,818 --> 00:40:06,278 Maybe a word of advice or. 732 00:40:06,278 --> 00:40:06,529 Yeah. 733 00:40:06,529 --> 00:40:08,531 Anything really that you would like to leave them to 734 00:40:08,531 --> 00:40:11,492 perhaps help guard against the errors of the past? 735 00:40:12,451 --> 00:40:15,204 To be honest, and this is not false humility. 736 00:40:15,204 --> 00:40:18,207 I don't feel much wisdom on this. 737 00:40:18,332 --> 00:40:21,961 I just feel curiosity and a willingness to. 738 00:40:24,380 --> 00:40:27,383 To, to, hear out, 739 00:40:27,925 --> 00:40:30,136 my story, the story 740 00:40:30,136 --> 00:40:33,139 that I had to search for as an amateur. 741 00:40:34,306 --> 00:40:36,767 Let me tell you a closing story that I tell. 742 00:40:36,767 --> 00:40:39,270 And at the end of my book, 743 00:40:39,270 --> 00:40:41,730 it was told to me by a man named Marvin Kraker, 744 00:40:41,730 --> 00:40:46,861 who is from a Russian Mennonite background who was with the, Indians. 745 00:40:47,194 --> 00:40:51,407 I forget the which Indians are in Oklahoma also. 746 00:40:51,574 --> 00:40:52,825 And he told me this story. 747 00:40:53,826 --> 00:40:56,662 He said, they used to tell this story 748 00:40:56,662 --> 00:40:59,665 that in the Cherokee land rush, 749 00:41:01,167 --> 00:41:05,254 somebody shot off a gun, and then you could race 750 00:41:05,254 --> 00:41:08,257 and plant your stake, and you could be a stake. 751 00:41:08,507 --> 00:41:11,677 What they call that anyway, that could be your homestead. 752 00:41:12,761 --> 00:41:15,764 Mennonites lined up with the land rush. 753 00:41:16,599 --> 00:41:19,602 And they took off at the crack of a gun. 754 00:41:19,727 --> 00:41:23,939 And one Mennonite, there was a story that came down of one Mennonite family. 755 00:41:23,939 --> 00:41:29,195 The man drove the horses and the the wife sat in a wagon with the stake. 756 00:41:29,403 --> 00:41:32,406 She was going to plant it when he picked out a place 757 00:41:33,157 --> 00:41:36,035 and he raced in their free land, 758 00:41:36,035 --> 00:41:39,038 you know, Cherokee land, 759 00:41:39,246 --> 00:41:42,249 Indian land raced in there. 760 00:41:42,249 --> 00:41:47,922 Free land finally found the spot and turned around to his wife... 761 00:41:49,089 --> 00:41:51,967 she had bounced out of the wagon 762 00:41:51,967 --> 00:41:54,762 somewhere back, he had to go back and find her. 763 00:41:54,762 --> 00:41:57,640 And where she landed, she put the stake in. 764 00:41:57,640 --> 00:41:59,975 That was the Mennonite homestead. 765 00:41:59,975 --> 00:42:02,645 You could tell that story as a Mennonite quilting 766 00:42:02,645 --> 00:42:04,855 and everybody would be entertained. 767 00:42:04,855 --> 00:42:07,858 How God, how God leads 768 00:42:08,150 --> 00:42:11,153 tell that story to a 769 00:42:11,153 --> 00:42:12,238 indigenous person. 770 00:42:12,238 --> 00:42:15,241 Is it funny? 771 00:42:15,241 --> 00:42:16,492 How about looking at from. 772 00:42:16,492 --> 00:42:18,369 That's all I did in the book. 773 00:42:18,369 --> 00:42:21,372 I try to look at it from both sides. 774 00:42:22,748 --> 00:42:23,624 That's all I could do. 775 00:42:23,624 --> 00:42:24,708 That's all I've done. 776 00:42:24,708 --> 00:42:27,711 I wish I did a better job. 777 00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:28,963 Whoo. 778 00:42:28,963 --> 00:42:30,506 Yeah. 779 00:42:30,506 --> 00:42:33,759 I just want to thank you for the effort 780 00:42:33,759 --> 00:42:36,762 you put in to telling this story. 781 00:42:37,721 --> 00:42:44,353 And that can be the challenge of history, I guess, is there are sometimes there's. 782 00:42:44,812 --> 00:42:46,772 Not necessarily popular. Right. 783 00:42:46,772 --> 00:42:50,484 There's stories sometimes that that we don't like, you know, and. 784 00:42:50,609 --> 00:42:53,571 Oh, I don't really want to hear that or I don't want to have to think about that. 785 00:42:54,196 --> 00:42:55,948 And... That’s how our church got started. 786 00:42:55,948 --> 00:42:58,242 People were saying, things don't make sense here. 787 00:43:00,411 --> 00:43:01,036 We go 788 00:43:01,036 --> 00:43:04,790 to Conrad said, use the word check with the word go. 789 00:43:04,790 --> 00:43:07,793 Go with it and form a church out of that. 790 00:43:08,335 --> 00:43:10,254 Think, think those things. 791 00:43:10,254 --> 00:43:12,214 Yeah. Anyway, 792 00:43:13,257 --> 00:43:15,926 Thanks for listening to this episode with John Ruth. 793 00:43:15,926 --> 00:43:18,429 If you found this interesting, you might want to watch this episode 794 00:43:18,429 --> 00:43:23,475 we did with John Roth, who explains some of the beginnings of early anabaptism. 795 00:43:23,475 --> 00:43:26,478 And you can find that link down in the description below. 796 00:43:26,478 --> 00:43:30,983 All our content is over on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org, 797 00:43:30,983 --> 00:43:34,612 and you can also sign up to our monthly email newsletter there as well. 798 00:43:35,029 --> 00:43:38,032 Thanks again for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.