Obscurity

Chapter 18

There's a certain kind of tree, though we can't remember its name, that weeps of its branches as though burdened by them. They pour into the river as willows, thinking only of their own despair. How gravity tugs at them so, begging them to return to the water's depths, and how unable those branches are to resist their thirst.

One morning, with all the promise of a quickly warming day, a mysterious omen appeared within those reeds. A canoe without passenger or crew drew up to the promenade seemingly of its own volition. Those walking the promenade that morning watched with anticipation as it drifted down the river toward its lonesome destination, settling at times against one branch, and then leaning for a while on another.

A lingering humidity fell exasperated upon the early afternoon and the plants crinkled at the edges, brown and parched from their basking in the summer sun. The water rippled gently in the wake of that unmanned vessel and the palms lulled against it as it lazed through those still waters.

It was a slow and tedious journey, and many who watched its path grew bored in their waiting for it, continuing toward their mid-morning destinations without satisfying their curiosities. Those who stayed, however, were rewarded for their perseverance. For when the canoe finally neared the port and drew close enough that their reaching hands could touch it, they discovered the canoe not so empty as it seemed.

There, laying in the bottom, was a small bible and a leather-bound journal, and beside those personal effects, the missionary who owned them, his mission now complete as his corpse lay at rest.

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As we have thus far ascertained, la Louisiane was an unusual place in an unusual predicament. Not just for the unusual characters who dwelt there, but also for how those unusual characters happened to arrive there.

We struggle with the matters of citizenship to this day, and it works out as follows: every one of us are immigrants, until at once we decide that those who are here now, however we so happened to arrive here, are the natives, and those who attempt to arrive here tomorrow, are the immigrants. It is a strange manner of reasoning, with a rather movable definition of "now," but it appears to be the most widely adhered to rule in matters of immigration.

Ah, but then it is even more complicated than that: what of those who came before those immigrants who are now suddenly natives? What of the original natives? Well, the reasoning further contends that if no one claimed said land to begin with, the first one to do is the claimant, and therein becomes the owner and native occupier of that land. To borrow the old English adage: finders, keepers.

In la Louisiane it was no different. The native populations did not claim the land, for they found the notion of doing so absurd. Naturally, when the French arrived without such whimsical ideals about the Earth, they put their little flags upon it and claimed it for their very own. That is, until France quarreled amongst themselves across the sea, and was then forced to cede it to another quarreling party, Spain.

Both European parties brought with them the perils of slavery and created a mingled citizenship that was the first of its time. Those of French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean origin merged to create the Creole, a new native descended from so many different ones, and those cultures collided in beautiful and unusual ways.

They were intimate yet estranged, integrated yet segregated. A European foreigner visiting the territory at that time might have found it intoxicatingly eclectic, yet startlingly primitive. As though the descendants of Cain at last mingled with the descendants of Seth and were forced to wander the land of nod together, forever banished by God, yet protected from the Devil.

And yet, therein lay the struggle of that fledging little town lingering on the mouth of the Mississippi. For though the natives did not claim the Earth for themselves, they did still reside upon it, the French who had decidedly "found" the land, thought themselves the keepers of it, and yet according to treaties written on rolled-up papers, at roll-top desks, in beautiful mansions across the sea, the Spanish were the official owners of all of it.