Geronimo.
What is a pilgrim?
Pilgrims are people who travel to religious sites and shrines to pay their respects for blessings received or to solicit divine assistance for some worthy plan or cause.
Pilgrims are not covetous individuals seeking to harm anyone or deprive anyone of something they may possess. The people who came on the Mayflower were not coming to offer religious gestures or thanks for anything. They came seeking a better at all costs.
The people who were later called “savages” were very hospitable and humane when they encountered the European immigrants who needed food, shelter and all other necessities for life. At first everything worked all right. The hosts were magnanimous and understanding and had everything to offer the new comers who had nothing.
After a couple of years and learning how to manuever in the new environment the new comers began to covet things which had previously been freely shared with them. They now conveniently claimed that their hosts didn’t know God but were only superstitious “pagans” without love or understanding of things divine.
With more advanced weapons and dishonest bargaining practices the new comers murdered, enslaved and chased away the same people who had welcomed and nurtured them. The later progressive killings of a people who were by then demonized led to extermination. How can a people whom you acknowledged welcomed and fed you suddenly become “savages” one day.
If those early arrivals had been true pilgrims they would have come prayed and taken themselves back home.
Don’t we owe it to ourselves to be honest with words?
So, in memorium….
