The Long List of Anglo American Sins Includes the Murder of America’s Parrot!
A Forgotten Chapter in American History Reveals What We Lost, Gained and May Lose Again.
A lot of Americans don’t want to know the truth. About anything. Certainly not anything that might challenge their worldview, or make them feel bad. Like, for instance, how black and brown and Indian and Asian people have been treated by white people. Not that white people haven’t contributed greatly to the advance of society. Of course they have. But too often they are reluctant to acknowledge the destruction that followed in their wake, or even determined to — what else? — “white” wash it.
Conservatives in Texas and other states are passing laws that prohibit the teaching of certain truths, including the existence of a thing called “white privilege,” which they claim is “not a thing” even though we can see it threaded through the history of nation, and continuing today. In other words, they say, don’t believe your own eyes, or our own experience.
Well, I’m here to make you feel bad. American history is FILLED with atrocities — much of it (but certainly not all) perpetrated by white “Christian” people. Unless we open ourselves to these painful truths, we cannot know where we came from, where we are, or where we are going in history. It doesn’t take much to be big and strong enough to take the truth and use it to become a better person, while lending a shoulder to bending society as a whole toward a more compassionate bearing. “Feeling bad” is part of the learning, healing and corrective process. No pain, no gain. It’s not a bug it’s a feature, of taking responsibility for one’s own place in history and culture. No matter what we — or our ancestors — have done, there is always the opportunity for self awareness, regret, recalibration, reconciliation and resolve to step up to help make this world better. None of this is possible if we stubbornly insist on hiding from the truth, or distorting it to keep from feeling bad. Maybe my willing embrace of “inconvenient truth” is made easier by my one drop of Cherokee blood that rages against ignorance, selfishness, injustice and oppression… especially that which serves to harm nature.
Here’s a “little” American atrocity that you have probably never heard of, committed almost solely by white men. The hunting — to extinction — of America’s parrot, the Carolina Conure (or Parakeet). Once these beautiful, smart, cheeky parrots were common throughout almost the entire eastern half of the nation. They were so abundant — and so perfectly evolved to fit their environment — their flying flocks blocked out the sun. And then came the white man to these virgin shores, and within 300 years, they were gone. BILLIONS of them… all gone. The last one, named Incas, died in 1918 in the Cincinnati Zoo (the very same place where the last Passenger Pigeon was kept), passing away from grief after losing its mate, Lady Jane, the next-to-last Carolina Conure, a few months previous.
They were intentionally killed by farmers who resented the parrots raiding their crops, by collectors seeking their colorful feathers to adorn women’s hats, and by those “sport” hunting good-old-boys just having fun killing things. Importation of honey bees from Europe pushed Carolina Parakeets out of their nests, and it’s possible they were plagued by diseases which originated from settlers’ chickens.
Though largely forgotten today, the murder of the Carolina Conure species is one of Anglo America’s great sins. It should be remembered because it tells us where we were, where we are, and where a certain ideology — ahem, conservatism — might take us straight back to. The killers of the Carolina Conure were conservatives… conserving their own advantage, privilege and power… even as they utterly destroyed a species which took four BILLION years to create!
I’m a white person. descended from ancestors, many of whom arrived on this continent in the late 1600s and early 1700s, and were farmers who roamed through Carolina Conure territory. That’s also Native American and Black Slavery country. I must presume some of them eagerly participated in stealing native land, owning slaves, as well as this speciecide. Does that bother me? Hell yes! What a creep I would be if it didn’t, and a bigger creep if I tried to ignore it, distort or run away from it, or, worst of all, try to justify it. I honor my ancestors and heritage — all of us should — those people, ignorant and deluded and good or evil as they were, found a way to survive and pass on the torch of life to us… where we have the luxury of hindsight and an avalanche more information with which to judge them. And judge we should…. lest we commit the same errors. And atone, in our own way, for their damage. Given the circumstances and information I have been privy to, they may or may not approve of how one of their descendants became a defender of much that they chose to abuse. I like to think that, better informed and/or challenged on their worldview, they might have chosen differently. But I could be wrong. There are a whole lot of conservatives who, given the chance, would repeat all of that.
As their numbers plummeted in the late 1800s, the killing of Carolina Conures continued. No real effort was ever made to save them, a testament to how society has evolved from barbaric unconcern for wild animals just 100 years ago. In 1973, the United States passed the Endangered Species Act. Something like that might have saved the Carolina Parakeet and Passenger Pigeon, but it was way too late for both of them. Yet the ESA is a law American conservatives despise. They are angling to get rid of it, and with a stacked conservative Supreme Court, they just might pull that off,
One thing I would have told my ancestors, as well as modern conservatives, is I don’t see how you can , with a straight face, claim to love the “Creator” when you don’t give a damn about the Creation! Yet conservatives do exactly that when it comes to their exploitative, adversarial, oppressive relationship with virtually the entire biosphere.
Good night, sweet, beautiful, American parrots. I’m so sorry we failed you. I fear we are perfectly able, and willing, to fail the rest of nature… and soon enough, ourselves. I will do what I can to stop it. If nothing else, I would think my conservative ancestors might appreciate that.
