"James K. Polk" - They Might Be Giants, 1996 (geek rock)

In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist
James Buchanan, a moderate
Louis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tariffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump

President James Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States and the last of the Jacksonian legacy and the last strongest President to hold office before the Civil War. Yet despite his monstrous contributions to the country in his single term, he remains somewhat obscure and little discussed. This shouldn't be all that surprising, though, seeing as how he began his Presidential career in obscurity. He does, however, happen to be my favorite President.

He was the first "dark horse" President ever elected. The term "dark horse" is an old horse racing term used to describe a mount that just seems to appear from out of nowhere - no one knows who he is or anything about his career, and therefore it is difficult to forecast how he will perform. A race's "dark horse" is virtually unknown, making it difficult for gamblers to place give odds and bets on. The last of the Jacksonians, he shot out of the gate and upset Henry Clay by a nose. It was the issue of expansion that sealed the victory for Polk.

The clincher in this 1844 election was Manifest Destiny - the belief that the U.S. was destined, if not divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Henry Clay did not support this idea, and it cost him the election, although narrowly. In his four years as President, he did a great deal to expand the U.S., which proved to stimulate the country economically. Polk's Presidential administration did everything his campaign promised it would do, and he did it better than everyone expected him to.

Probably one of Polk's most famous contributions to America was his permanent acquisition of Oregon. It was certainly a lynch pin in his campaign. The people's feelings regarding the territory of Oregon ran so strong that adamant proponents and extremists were willing to go to war with Great Britain over it, as is evident by their slogan, "Fifty-four forty or fight!". "Fifty-four" refers to the latitude line that marked the boundary of Oregon - 54 degrees, 40 minutes (54* 40') north latitude. The Oregon Question arose as a result of competing ownerships of Britain and America. Both countries had big dreams for their claims on the Pacific Northwest. Polk never did fight for it, though. Neither country wanted an altercation over the area, and so Great Britain conceded to the U.S. and a shot was never fired.

As a result, the U.S. received permanent ownership of said territories, which eventually became the states of: Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. As a result of that, we can now offer the world: tasty potatoes and apples; grunge music and flannel shirts; a Tony award winning Shakespeare Festival; Appaloosa horses; The Simpsons (Matt Groening was born in Oregon); sportscaster Ahmad Rashad; Batman (Adam West - born in Washington); Microsoft, Windows, and home PCs in general (Bill Gates born in Washington); The Price Is Right (Bob Barker - Washington); Jimi Hendrix (born in - Washington); and an Olympic skier with a cute little name (Picabo Street - born in Idaho).

It was Polk's administration that concluded the Mexican-American War in 1848 (in conjunction with what President Tyler's administration had begun earlier), and as a result the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed and the United States acquired the territory of Texas. Of course, we're talking about Texas "back then". The territory of Texas "back then" consisted of what became the following states: Texas, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana.

As a result of that, we are now the purveyors of: the Bonneville Salt Flats; half a google of country songs about the geography here; a place to put London Bridge; Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers; the subject for title of a U2 album (a Joshua Tree only grows in Arizona); John Denver; one half of "Dashmi" (Demi Moore born in New Mex.); The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, and most of the other cartoons on the Boomerang channel (creator William Hannah born in New Mexico); every Paris Hilton fiasco to hit the tabloids (great-grandfather Conrad Hilton born in New Mexico); Hollywood, the Silver Screen, and nearly every movie you've ever seen; "Sin City" (not the cartoon or the movie...the place); only about most of any professional ball teams that have ever held a national title; and beef, corn, wheat, and anything else that might be in your fridge (during the growing season, of course).

Polk also kept one more promise that he'd made during his campaign. He vowed that if he was elected, he would not run for a second term. That's too bad. He was one politician who actually kept his promises and one politician who arguably made the largest territorial and economic contribution to America, which resulted in an explosion of industries that put people to work and made the U.S. self sufficient and prosperous enough to be able to take care of less fortunate places. Of course, Polk's campaigns weren't the only ones to acquire new land for the U.S., but his incredibly large contribution made it possible for the U.S. to acquire land adjacent to his added territories. As a result of Polk's territorial acquisitions, the United States contains zones of nearly every Koeppen Climate classification. That means that the U.S. contains a sample of nearly every type of environment that the world has to offer. There is no other single country in the world that contains such diversity within its own borders - Mediterranean, humid sub-tropics, tropics, and tundra...from the mountains, to the prairie, to the oceans...white with foam...



"James K. Polk" - They Might Be Giants, 1996

~Information manifest from what I remember from 11th grade American History and places like these:
http://www.tmbg.org/learning/jameskpolk/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/JamesPolk/
http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/nc/bio/public/POLK.HTM
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/borders/essay3.html
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dwe/16336.htm

"Run To The Hills" - Iron Maiden, 1982 (heavy metal)

White man came across the sea
He brought us pain and misery
He killed our tribes, he killed our creed
He took our game for his own need
We fought him hard we fought him well
Out on the plains we gave him hell
But many came too much for Cree
Oh will we ever be set free?

Riding through dustclouds and barren wastes
Galloping hard on the plains
Chasing the redskins back to their holes
Fighting them at their own game
Murder for freedom a stab in the back
Women and children and cowards attack

Run to the hills run for your lives
Run to the hills run for your lives

Soldier blue on the barren wastes
Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good indians are tame
Selling them whisky and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old

Happy Thanksgiving! (or thereabouts). It's only fitting that this Thanksgiving episode of What's That Song About talk about Thanksgiving-type stuff...like Indians, for that is exactly what this heavy metal ditty is all about. However, the song has nothing to do with thanks or giving, but has everything to do with taking. True to Iron Maiden form, it's actually a quite brilliant piece of historical poetry-set-to-music which describes, in retrospect, the white man's colonizing of Indian lands. Interestingly enough, there is no particular time period associated with the lyrics.

Verse One is written from the perspective of the Indians, particularly the Cree (which is stated at the end of the verse). The Cree are one of the largest group of indiginous North American peoples. Their tribes are still found across Canada and the American Northwest, especially in Minnesota and Montana. This large people group is made up of many smaller groups, for example: Moose Cree, Swamp Cree, Woods Cree, Plains Cree, etc. However, the name "Cree" is never used by these people unless they are speaking English or French. It is not their proper name, but rather a name that was given to them (as if they didn't have one already) derived from the French "Christenaux" (and other spelling variations), and thus this word is often shortened to "Cri" which then bacame "Cree" in the phonetic spelling. These people, however, do have a name for themselves. In their own language, they call themselves Nehiyaw, Nehithaw, Nehilaw, Nehinaw, which is to mean, "those who speak our nation's language", and Ininiw, Ililiw, Inyu, or Iyyu, all of which mean "person or man" who has descended from this nation historically.

The Cree were skilled buffalo hunters and horsemen who formed an alliance with the Sioux nation and the Stone Sioux (Assiniboin). Their lives were particularly peaceful and open to adaptation. They were first known to the Jesuit missionaries as early as 1640. This nation was known to be quite hospitable, though somewhat nomadic in their lifestlye, as like most hunting peoples they had to follow their food source's migration. The Cree were known to eagerly trade with the foreign white men as well as other Indian nations even if they were not allied. Since their first introduction, the Cree were open and friendly with the French and English settlers, who left the Cree comparatively undisturbed to roam their vast territory. Nevertheless, however well-intended their friendship with the foreigners was, in the long run it did not help them.

While there is very little written history about this nation, there are, however, a few mentions of quarrels and skirmishes between them and other neighboring tribes. Casualties from fighting amongst other native peoples was somewhat minimal. However, the greatest killer of this and other indiginous peoples was the white man's diseases (such as Smallpox and others, a concept which is self-explanatory)...and the colonization of native lands by foreign settlers. While the Cree numbers have recently bounced back, in 1776 the population was estimated at 15,000, but within the last century the population was estimated at a mere 2,000-3,000. It is common knowledge that not only did the intruders fight for the land they wished to settle (which spent lives on both sides), the development of hunting and grazing lands into large farmsteads eventually led to changes in the natural environment (depletion of food animals, deforestation, changes in vegetative dynamics, etc)., which meant to the near disappearance of these native people. The white man just took over and ultimately gave nothing in return...not even a "thank you".

Verse Two of our song is from the perspective of the white settlers who were out to achieve the ultimate goal in their belief in what would later be known as "Manifest Destiny" - the belief that it was obvious (manifest) and certain (destiny) that the United States would expand from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. In 1803, the United States acquired 828,800 square miles of French territory. Prior to its exploration, the U.S. had no idea how much it had actually purchased (or what the land consisted of), but, quite frankly, neither did the French. This Louisiana Purchase was explored by Merriwether Lewis and William Clark (helped, of course, by Sacajawea) and was the first official transcontinental crossing made by people who were not indigenous to the land.

Lewis and Clark had heard rumors during their journey that the Assiniboin nation was a ferocious people, but they did not encounter any of these people and were therefore unable to affirm or dispel this notion. It was based on these sorts of unexplored rumors that many white settlers advanced in the manner that they did. The white frontiersmen advanced westward, many under the assumption that all native people were savages and were to be dealt with before any harm could befall the settler, his family, or his possessions. Even if it could be said that the foreigners did know about the peaceful tribes, it was nearly impossible for the average settler to know the difference between the friend and foe. As many of us would do today, these native people naturally faught to retain their land. However, because their ways were not the white man's ways, this fight for survival was taken by the settlers to be outward and open hostility. Thus, the white man faught the Indians all the more fiercely.

Whatever the Jesuit missionaries and early settlers had learned about the many friendly nations was forgotten. The white man believed that, regardless, he was entitled to take whatever land he laid claim to. In 1823, the Supreme Court handed down a decision (Johnson vs. M'Intosh) that Indian peoples could own land, just not claim title to it, which proved to be an utterly dreadful decision for the natives. Ultimately, this expansion led to Andrew Jackson's 19th century concept of 'Indian removal' - a policy adopted by the U.S. Government to ethnically cleanse the land of Indian people so that the new frontiersmen could have it. In 1830, Congress approved and President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law. Ideally, this was to move southern nations and tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River (as if they thought those lands were yet unoccupied). One such act of this Act was the infamous Trail of Tears. In time, even the relocation of natives to the western lands would prove futile as white settlers eventually moved into these lands, themselves.

Finally, Verse Three of our song is from the perspective of an outside observer looking retrospectively at the deplorable goings-on of the western frontier. Not surprisingly, this observation more closely mirrors verse one than verse two. When we study our nation's history and development, we should realize that perhaps things were not handled as delicately as they should have been. No apologies can be made for man's natural instinct to go forth and expand, for deep inside, for all men feel inside that stagnancy is not survival; it is a death sentence. However, certainly the Indians were not treated fairly, and considering the circumstances surrounding our own fledgeling nation's birth, we as a nation should have been more sympathetic or at least more accommodating to those who were here before us, just as the Jesuits and other earlier settlers had been. For sure, hindsight is always 20/20.

**It should be noted that the acts of the nation as a whole were not condoned by the nation as a whole. There were a great many citizens (particularly Christians) and politicians (including Senator Davey Crockett, Tennessee) who opposed these expansion practices and opposed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the passage of this Act was only after bitter debate and passage by a small majority.**

"Run To The Hills" - Iron Maiden, 1982

~information gathered from all kinds of friendly sources from east to west, including these particularly interesting places I tracked down along the way:

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/cree/creehist.htm

http://www.lewis-clark.org/

http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/