Time goes by and not much changes. The world has about completely lost it. Ain't happened overnight and it ain't going to be fixed overnight. Makes me think about the folks in the past. Seems everyone always lost their way of life sooner or later. One of my favorite subjects is pre settlement days in this area. Before the droves of immigrants came flooding in during the late 1800s. Once the new comers took every square inch of land the life of freedom was pretty well over. It was part of the system. A system where all wealth is one way or another directed towards the top. But before the that happened was a way of life much different than what the majority thing of as the old days around here in the north country.
Before governments came and laid down the rules of everything going towards them were a people who were in the upper midwest that lived free. They were European and native mixed blood, a new race if you will. Not subduing the land but living with it, farming for what was needed but also living off the wild bounty, taking what was needed. They raised cattle, and it must have been more than a few because back in the day they had ox cart trains going from the Red River Valley to the edge of civilization, St Paul, MN, that numbered up to 600 carts, with a steer pulling each one. They would bring the furs from Canada down and return north with supplies.
They lived for decades as free men, a free people. And I can only wonder what that would have been like. To make a long story short, the British finally got around to what is now Manitoba and being those free folks were mixed blood they got the shaft, royally. But that's another story, the story of terrible conquest by greed. No different than south of the border.
I wonder, I often wonder, what would it have been like to live as a free man. If you're reading this and saying to yourself, "well I'm free", I beg to differ. You are not. Not at all. What would it have been like to wake up with no one to answer to? No taxes to pay, no hoops to jump through? No bills to pay. Raise your crops, hunt and trap, raise a family, tend to your cattle and other livestock.
Pretty well impossible to achieve anything like this nowadays. But a person can take bits and pieces of it, a little at a time and have a much better life than what people call successful today. Don't follow the crowd, not at all. Tend to your own. Enjoy what you have. Don't let the world, (or social media), bother you. If possible find like minded folks.
