The Story of Ama Tsusga

 Osyio. My name is Ama Tsusga and I was born and raised in Walker County, Georgia. It was about 300 years ago that European settlers started naming my tree species Water Oaks. Those were the days when this was Cherokee territory. I don't remember the Cherokees calling us anything, but I do remember that the Cherokee word for water was Ama, and for oak it was Tsusga. I never had a name but I did like the sound of Ama Tsusga so I took it for my own name. It's sort of musical, don't you think?

When I said that Europeans called us Water Oaks 300 years ago, I didn't mean me. I haven't been around that long. According to an estimate from a Georgia Forestry Officer I sprouted from my acorn between 230 and 250 years ago. I use the midpoint and tell other trees that I am 240 years old. What's that?...you don't believe that trees talk to each other? You just pick up J.R.R. Tolkein's book The Lord of the Rings and you'll see for yourself.

Anyway, that forestry officer based his opinion of my age mostly from my size. I am 75' tall, with a crown 75' wide and a trunk with a 4.5' diameter. If there are trees in the area bigger than me, I haven't seen them. 

Being 240 years old means that I first broke through the ground in the year 1785. That's a long time ago. What is now the USA wouldn't have a constitution until two years later and it didn't go into effect until 1779. I saw British soldiers and Colonial militia skirmishing against each other in the war of 1812. I witnessed the Cherokee and Creek Indians being forced off their land in the 1830s. I watched as the Federal soldiers retreated past me on their way to Rossville on September 20, 1863 after being defeated by the Confederate army. There was shooting all around me as the Federals retreated through Mac Farland Gap. The Chickamauga Military Park is only 3,600' from me.

Maybe this would be a good time to tell you where I am. I am near the center of lot# 23, section 4 of district 9, of land lot 81. The lot is 248' long by 95' wide and is shared with me by a tall slash pine, a spruce, a cedar, a bird cherry tree, an old dogwood, an exotic type of magnolia, and a grove of walnut and pecan trees. 

A Cherokee County plat map dated July 28th, 1832, certified by Thomas Gordon Mac Farland may be one of the first maps drawn of what would become Walker County, Georgia. Land lots in northwest Georgia were first plotted between 1805 and 1833, when Georgia began a land lottery to open the territory to white settlers. The Cherokee and Creek Indians had recently been forced off the land and resettled in Oklahoma Territory. 

In 1832, I, Ama Tsusga was 47 years of age and for the first time was owned by a white man who won a 160 acre parcel of land, with me on it. I know that Tom and Maribel (the present owners) have made several trips to the county court house trying to identify the first owner, and also to fill in some of the dates between 1832 and the present with names and events relative to this property, but it has been slow going.

Contrary to popular belief, Indian tribes and individual Indians did own land, though I don't know under what authority structure. Actually, "owning land" is a misnomer. The people named on a land deed are not really owners - they're caretakers. They pay money to occupy the land for a time, and then eventually turn it over to the next caretakers. They don't own the land but they do own the trees and any natural or man-made features on the surface. I believe that I have been lucky to survive all of these years without being cut down for firewood, incinerated in a wild fire or struck by lightning. While I do not remember how many people have been caretakers of this plot, I haven't forgotten how much their life styles have changed, from dwellings lighted by candles and heated by wood fires, to HVAC units and solar power. 

The photo below is of the John Ross house, located in Rossville, Georgia. It has seen all of the technology changes mentioned above. It was built in 1797 and is the oldest structure in North West Georgia. It is only ten minutes by car from where I stand. I was twelve years old when the house was built. My, how time flies. But, since it is not Tom's purpose to write about the Ross house, anyone interested in more information can start with this link.

Tom and his wife Maribel have been occupying this lot since July of 2017. They treat the land and me pretty good, though I know that Tom doesn't like it when a storm comes through and I drop lots of limbs and branches on the ground, but I think he understands that falling apart is part of the aging process.

Prior to Tom and Maribel, the previous caretakers had the property beginning in August, 2013. They took it over from a family who had moved onto the land in November, 1958. I haven't identified these people by name because either they or their family members are living, and maybe don't want any information about them to be made public. Some of the early names that Tom and Maribel came across in deed books, after 1832 and associated with this piece of land I'm standing on are Schmidt, Lemons, Murdock, Follett, Gentry and a few more. Based on buy and sell dates it appears that many if not most of them were land speculators. Which opens the possibility that the deed to this property could have passed through many hands over many years without anyone actually occupying the property. I don't remember when the first dwelling was erected on this site, and Tom and Maribel didn't locate any records of construction on this site or any other for that matter. I think that both of them are a little discouraged by the limited information discovered versus the time spent in searching. 

They do know that land lot 81 was subdivided about 1945 into at least 125 lots and was called Orchard Hills Subdivision. A deed record of restricted covenants was filed on May 15, 1950, detailing the restrictions each lot owner would be held to. The document does say that 23 lots which had already been sold were not bound by the covenants. Interestingly, lot 23; this lot was not listed as sold. In 1953 the restrictive covenants were revised, to last for a period of 50 years. No record was found indicating an update of the record of covenants,  which probably means that the 1953 document has expired without a replacement. 

Orchard Hills Subdivision has apparently also expired. There are no signs, markers or monuments displaying that name. Several old timers in the neighborhood refer to the area as Peach Orchard Subdivision. There were no records found referring to that name.  

I can tell that Tom thinks that this story has run its course, and wants to wrap it up. Maybe someday they will resume their search for information to fill in the gaps after 1832. Or maybe not. I am 240 years old, and Tom is two months away from 85. I think we're both tired.

That did not take long!

 I can’t say that I was expecting it, but while I was writing my previous post the thought did occur to me that some folks might take exception to my statement that over time everyone is forgotten, by invoking the names of biblical figures as examples of beings who will live forever and never be forgotten. One reader did send an email using that very argument to dispute me, specifically citing god and Jesus as examples. I really don’t want to get involved in a discussion on that subject, because the writer of the email is not comparing apples to apples. But…I feel like I have to respond so here goes.

My post dealt with real people, people whose existence can be/has been factually proven. The bones in the cemetery photo in the previous post are real, and with diligent effort their identities could be discovered. There is not one shred of concrete evidence proving that Jesus existed. There is circumstantial evidence but no actual proof. Many respected historians believe that Jesus probably existed. Two ancient historians; Tacitus and Josephus frequently mention Jesus in their writings, but they were writing almost 100 years after the supposed death of Jesus. Personally I believe that a man named Jesus – minus the parables and miracles, probably existed. I also believe that over time he will be forgotten.

Jesus is viewed as a god-like figure, and as such he will go the way of all gods. The longest reigning god in recorded history is the Egyptian god Osiris (center figure above) who was worshiped from about 3100 BC to 30 BC. That’s over 3,000 years. Other Egyptian gods not far behind him are Ra and Isis. All three were gradually replaced with the Greek gods; Zeus, Hera, etc., who in turn gave way to the Roman gods. Just imagine how many hundreds, maybe thousands of gods came into being and then disappeared during the 200,000 years of human existence prior to recorded history. Some ancient gods are still hanging in there. The Indian gods Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu are still with us today.

Human history tells us that, though gods will come and go, it is likely that there will always be gods. In this era one of the most active gods is the Christian god Jehovah, whose followers believe that it is their duty to convert non-Christians. And they are succeeding, having grown to 2.63 billion members from 2.52 in 2020. Christianity has the most followers world-wide, followed by Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Gods only exist if people believe in them. When belief disappears, so do the gods. Why do we need gods…what purpose do they serve? Gods are needed because we are afraid of death and want a landing pad…an afterlife. They are also needed to explain origin – of us and the universe. That is why every religion has a creation story.  

Let me finish this post with some thoughts that I seem to always have about this time of the year. Christmas shopping really heats up starting in November. Gifts and decorations are purchased as are plane tickets and other Christmas related items. Stores increase their hours and inventory and hire seasonal help. Airlines and airports do what they can to accommodate travelers. Work crews are busy decorating city parks and streets while home owners and businesses are stringing lights. Pigs run for their lives but to no avail. They will be the center piece on the Christmas dinner table. And then on the 25^th of December everything comes to a halt. The cost of this mass celebration is estimated in the USA to be 1.1 trillion dollars. And the root of it all is to celebrate the birthday of a man named Jesus, who may never have existed. That to me is mind boggling.

Is it important to be remembered?

 Homo Sapiens (that’s us humans) emerged about 200,000 years ago. During that period of time it is estimated that 107 billion of us have lived on this planet. Today’s population is estimated at 8 billion. Crunching the numbers shows that 99.9% of all the humans who ever existed are dead. In modern times, world-wide, about 170,790 of us die every day. The recent death of a friend started me wondering how many people will remember him or the others who died that day and for how long. I think that if you’re the average person; one who didn’t have a street or building named after you, and weren’t a celebrity or billionaire philanthropist, and weren’t a person of notoriety like Hitler, Alexander the Great, Abe Lincoln or Genghis Kahn, you won’t be remembered very long. That thought led me to another question. What does it mean…to be ‘remembered’? Friends and family who knew you will occasionally think of you and will mention you in conversation with others but that won’t last long, and after the third generation of your descendants has passed no one will know who wrote that old letter found in a drawer, or who that is in that faded photo. When there is nothing or no one left who knew of you or at least had heard your name, you will have ceased to exist. It seems to me that most of us want to be remembered, and remembered at the apex of our lives, probably because we view being remembered as a continuation of our lives. As long as someone thinks and talks about us, we may be dead but we’re not dead dead.

How a person is remembered depends on where you died and where your remains are located. For example, I lived in northern Peru for nine years and witnessed that the average Peruvian has a much closer and deeper relationship with the dead than we have in the USA. The formal grieving period can last for a year. It can include a church mass from day one and then frequently through the year. Those who are strongly religious will wear black and not dance or sing during that year. They will visit the burial site at least monthly and will shed tears each time as if the death had just occurred. The cemetery visits of those who grieve continue through their lifetime.

The cemeteries vary considerably depending on the finances of the municipality. There are some, especially the newer ones that resemble a park-like setting. The photo below is more typical of a small village cemetery.

Some of the individual family tombs can be very elaborate (and expensive). They are well maintained and are never without fresh flowers. I suspect that those inside will be remembered by many generations for a long time. In the poorer villages there is no agency or individual responsibility for cemetery maintenance, thus they are generally older, have been vandalized, and in too many cases the collective tombs are in various states of disintegration.

Are these people remembered? Most probably there is no one left who remembers or knew them. They have ceased to exist in body and memory, their bones left to bleach in the sun.

So is it important to be remembered? I think that it is, at least in the short term by friends and family who knew them and find comfort from their memories. In the long term we will all be forgotten.

The future - a good place to be?

The previous post in my opinion proved via the Histomap that no nation prevails forever. What the map doesn’t tell us is why nations decline. There are tons of books written about the fall of Greece, Spain, England, Persia, Egypt, Rome, etc. No one can read them all, and some of those I have read have left me confused and with more questions than answers (I will also admit that some of the more scholarly books are beyond my understanding). When I began my search yesterday for the reasons nations fall, I was hoping to find a Histomap-type graph that graphically depicted the reasons for decline. If not that, I hoped to find several knowledgeable sources that had simple, brief bullet point lists. My plan was then to select those causes in common from the various sources and call it good. That didn’t work. Complexity rather than simplicity seems to be the rule on the subject of empires failing. And agreement on causes are rare. Each source I read seemed to have its own pet theory(s) to explain why nations fail. Another issue adding to complexity is that nations that failed up to and through the Middle Ages fell for reasons different than those nations failing after the Middle Ages. Barbian invasion followed by rape and pillage is not so common in modern times, though Ukraine, Syria and some other countries may disagree.

We are entering the age of artificial intelligence so I asked Window’s Copilot for an answer to my questions. It gave me six reasons for nations declining:

Economic troubles – high national debt, persistent budget deficits,

Political instability – political corruption, loss of public trust in institutions

Social issues – inequality, increased crime rates, declining public health

Military weakness - I don’t think the USA has gotten weak. The bad guys have gotten stronger. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran could be the axis powers of WW lll.

Environmental degradation – Not sure I agree with this

Cultural decline – loss of cultural identity, declining educational standards

Let me add two of my own indicators that a nation is in trouble.

Lack of collective objective reasoning – Many people believe they are thinking when all they are doing is rearranging prejudices.

Ignoring the Golden Rule – nuff said

There is an article in The Hill titled “Five reasons American decline appears irreversible.” It was written a year ago but in my opinion is relevant today. I think that it hits the nail on the head. The article says that the ‘five reasons’ are irreversible. Are they? Human history says that they are. To me it depends on if someday we humans can leave the caves behind behaviorally.  

The Paradox of Learning from History

In my previous post I wrote that in my opinion the first quarter of 2025 is going to be very interesting. I placed it in the context of Donald Trump’s actions, but my interest in/concern for the future transcends Trump, Harris, Biden, Republicans and Democrats. Russia’s president Putin said that there is a new world order in the making. He is right, though it isn’t a world order that is new and happening overnight. Men, countries, nations, empires, gods and institutions have been coming and going for many centuries. Nothing is static; change is ongoing. The Unites States we know now is not the country of 1725 nor will it be the country of 2325, by which time the entire world stage will be different.

In 1931 a man named John Sparks created what is now known as the Histomap which shows the rise and fall of global powers over a 4,000 year period. It is an incredible document in that it graphically depicts the beginning, the high-water mark and the decline of the most prominent world powers from 2,000 BC to 1,900 CE. 

I’ll give you the link in a minute but first let me explain a few things. The x axis on top lists the most prominent world powers. The y axis is the time in 50-year increments. The width of the nations at any given year indicates the country’s relative power.  Egypt for example, is the big kid on the block at the top of the chart in 2000 BC. By following it down you can see the gains and loss of its stature over time until it ceases to be a world power. In the lower left corner you will see the United States. In the grand scheme of things we were a Johnny-come-lately and a medium sized power. If the data continued to today we would be the big guy. But for how long?

Here is the link. Please do yourself a favor and look at the chart. You will see living, moving history, and the certainty that change is inevitable. We can learn from history but thus far we haven’t been able to use that knowledge to alter our future. That is the paradox.   

Of Winners and Losers

For anyone interested in November’s presidential election, broadcast news is still hammering on the election and its aftermath. A barrage of issues old and new are presented every day. For me there are only two issues that I am interested in. One is Trumps nominees, the other is if he will really carry out all the threats that he has made…that he will take action on them on “day one”. I think that his actions will be less severe than his election bluster. For example, he has recently said that he may not pardon all of the capital rioters, and that he may keep us in NATO if the other countries live up to their commitments. Personally, I agree with his stance on NATO, but strongly disagree on pardoning any of the capital rioters.

I am also hearing and reading comments regarding Biden’s “abdication”, and Harris’s disappearance since losing the election. I think that Biden standing down is just dealing with reality. Some years ago a superior that I reported to announced his retirement. Almost overnight he became a non-entity. He was still shown respect, but he was no longer treated as a team leader, or even as a team member. I discussed the situation with him and remember him saying that, “…once you announce, you’re gone.” That’s where Biden is now, in the land of limbo. So is Harris. I feel sorry for her though I’m sure that she doesn’t need my sympathy. She ran a good campaign. Yes, she lost but if she is a loser than so are the 74.4 million of us who voted for her. That number represents 48.3 % of the total vote. Trump finished with 49.9 % or 76.9 million votes. Voter turn out was 63.7 % who cast 151.3 million votes. I find it interesting that in a year when there was so much hype and so much at stake, that out of 244.7 million voter eligible persons, 89.3 million didn’t vote. That raises another thought for me. I have heard a few Republicans say that the American people have given Trump a ‘mandate’. In election speak, mandate is usually interpreted to mean a significant majority. I don’t think it can reasonably be said that Trump received a significant majority. And, if the number of Harris voters and non-voters is added together, the total is 163.7 million who didn’t vote for Trump…more than double the number of votes he did receive. Anyway you slice it he did not receive a mandate from the American people.

Anyway, those numbers don’t mean anything now. For better or worse its over and done. I for one will be watching future events with a degree of apprehension. Whatever Trump does or doesn’t do, it is going to be one hell of an interesting first quarter in 2025. 

An Afternoon Walk in the Past

It has been said of me that I should have been an historian or archeologist, because my thoughts and focus are so often in the past. I usually reply that the future has not yet happened, and that the present becomes the past almost instantly, so for practical purposes the past is all that there is. But I know what they mean and can't argue the point. I definitely do have an affinity for the past. An example is a walk in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon.

Fairview is a large, modest piece of country dotted with modest homes owned by working class people. You won't find any mansions here, and are more likely to see houses that are in need of attention. The area was once known as the Peach Orchard. Some still refer to it as that. I don't know why. Anyway, while we're walking I try to imagine what the land looked like when the Cherrokee were the sole residents. I know that it is completely different, but the geography; the hills and ravines are the same as they were in the early 1800s so I have to content myself with that. 

It was sometime around 1838 that President Andrew Jackson ordered the forced removal of the entire Cherrokee nation to a reservation in Oklahoma. That opened the gates for the settlers to come pouring in. To my knowledge one of the first was Xanders McFarland, who quickly became one of the largest landowners in the area, including the land my house is on. I've been trying off and on to trace the owners of my property from McFarland to me with no success. 

Our walk took us past a car graveyard. For some unknown reason this Chevy Sport Blazer has always intrigued me. 

I can't look at it without seeing it sitting in the Morristown, Tennessee dealer showroom in 1987, with mom and dad and maybe a couple of kids looking at it. Dad is trying his best to look nonchalant in front of his family and the salesman, but inside he wants to drive this vehicle so badly that he is starting to sweat. Later, after the papers are signed I can see the Blazer tooling down the street; a smug look on dad’s face and the kids peering out the back side windows. Who knows where that car has been, who has driven it, how many owners it has had, what adventures it experienced, and how it came to be in this graveyard in Fairview, Georgia? The answer to the last part of this question seems evident - the front end on the driver side is completely demolished. Wherever it happened, it was a violent ending. There are other cars in the graveyard, some so deeply buried in jungle-like brush and undergrowth that it is impossible to get to them. And each has a story to tell.

Not too far away is what remains of what appeared to be a fine house. All that remains now is the front facade. The roof and all the walls are laying crumpled on the ground. The brickwork leading to the house talks to me. I can see quests ascending the concrete steps and following a path that today leads to nowhere. There is no way of knowing when this house was built. My guess would be anywhere from the early to mid-1900s.

There are more reminders of the past; more pictures to be taken. The final photo yesterday was of the return to our house. The sun was setting, the temperature was mild, and as usual the only sounds were from birds. Fortunately history doesn’t stop with our return home. At approximately 3:00 PM on September 20, 1863 a federal army defeated at the Battle of Chickamauga was hastily retreating through the McFarland Gap on its way to Rossville and then to Chattanooga. Our home is about 500 yards from the gap, and no doubt many Union soldiers traveled over our land to reach the gap. There to see them hurry by was a 161-year-old water oak (towering over the garage). The tree is now estimated to be 240 years old, which takes us back to 1784. Perhaps a Cherokee brave out hunting watched a squirrel bury the acorn that would become the massive tree that exists on our land today.    

When I am sitting in a chair 20 feet from that oak, watching burgers cooking on the wood grill, I think about that Chevy Blazer, the remains of the old house, the retreating soldiers, and what the land must have looked like to that oak as a young sapling. If time travel was a real thing....