Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin...

So as not to be guilty of peddling any hidden agenda here, I am challenging one of the good folk of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin to correct me on a matter of their local history.

Why?

Because a person from Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin has been regularly reading this blog ( a heinous crime in itself) but has so far failed to engage in commentary on what they have been reading here (another unforgivably heinous crime).

Not good enough, Wisconsin!

And so I looked up Soldiers Grove and found their website. In particular, their telling of the "history" of their place. And that's when I spat my dummy!

I'm good at spitting my dummy...

To me, their "history" represents one of the very worst examples I have ever seen of the European white man's disgusting use of propaganda to cover up his evil actions. In this day and age of "civilisation", I find this utterly unacceptable.

Utterly...

Now, I'm not a scholar of the history of that area (or any area), therefore I have issued this challenge in the hope that, if I've got it wrong, some informed scholar (as opposed to brainwashed regurgitator), will correct me.

Here's a couple of references to start us off:

http://www.soldiersgrove.com/village_history.htm

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_War

In this chautauqua I will be using the format "he said, she said". By that I mean that I will quote a bit of the "village history" and then offer my "translation" of it. The Wikipedia article is there merely to help those who wish to go deeper, to find some start-points for their own research. You gotta do your own learnin' dudes...

Ready? Here we go:

"Settlement came to the Kickapoo area in the first half of the 19th century. Much of the local land had been deeded to veterans of U.S. wars."


Translation: "The dispossession of the traditional owners, the Kickapoo Indians, by the white supremacist invaders was finalised with the deeding of their land to the murderous marauders who did most of the killing. Namely, the soldiers." Once again, "might is right" triumphed over anything even remotely resembling "truth", "respect" and "fairness". And thus, this part of the world lurched one notch further towards racist corruption.

Image: Chief Black Hawk, the leader of a band of Sauk and Fox Indians,


Tobacco growing also became a staple of the area’s small family farms. High quality cigar leaf and chewing tobacco became valued cash crops as evidenced by the unique tobacco barns that still dot the countryside.

Translation: "The lucrative rewards of the drug trade replaced more subsistent forms of agriculture and the rule of the drugs barons set a chilling precedent which future generations all over the world would come to rue."

"The 20th century saw the rise and decline of small family dairy farming. Remaining local dairy farmers are fiercely competing with large corporate farms, trying to maintain the American tradition of family farming."

Translation: Having invented globalised capitalism, America is rapidly falling victim to the evil it created (a tick for the buddhist concept of karma.) Ironic, given that America is the most rabidly extremist Christian nation on earth and yet it seems to fail to understand Jesus's injunction against capitalism. Jesus might well have said "He who lives by the dollar, shall die by the dollar." Even more ironic is the fact that the All-American invention, "agribusinesss", is replacing "family farming" all over the world in order to subjugate local farmers everywhere into the blood-sucking service of the American (and their global co-conspiritor) "shareholders".

"The area provides breathtaking scenery and outstanding opportunities to hunt, fish, canoe and hike."

Translation: Having failed to survive through the time-honoured work of subsistence farming, the corrupted locals are now trying desperately to sell themselves, their wildlife, and the natural features of the countryside they murdered the traditional owners for, to the few who remain with sufficient access to The New God (The God of the Almighty Dollar), in a final attempt to survive. A revolution cannot be too far away...

(The biblical floods) A temporary dike built in 1968 seemed to be working fine until the weekend of July 4, 1978. On that weekend, heavy rains saturated the area and sent the Kickapoo over the dike and again into Main Street. This flood was the last straw that convinced local residents that the business section of Soldiers Grove had to be moved.
A new site for the downtown businesses was selected about one mile east of the original location. More the 6.5 million dollars of Federal, State, and local funding was obtained, in part by agreeing to incorporate solar heating systems into the new buildings. Thus Solar Town Soldiers Grove was born.

Translation: Having realised that they had set themselves up on a floodplain (something the original inhabitants might have told them about, had they not brutalised them quite so badly), the Big Money Boys used money syphoned off from the proles to relocate themselves. Realising that an energy crisis was looming, they cunningly switched to solar heating in order to save future dollars, and made a big deal about being "green and clean". Spinmeisters preened themselves, and the gullible public loved it. A real win-win outcome...

The former downtown section was transformed into a large public area which includes sports fields, a playground, a camping area, and a beautiful Veteran’s war memorial. The park area is also home to Region 5’s only Medal of Honor Wall, celebrating the heroism of more than 600 Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from eleven Midwestern states.

Translation: The floodplain, which once might have provided the promise of rich alluvial soil for farming, was now turned into a place for the glorification of those poor sods who were sucked into fighting for the interests of Big Money. And the locals love it!