The Aftermath of Fighting Over the Stars and Bars

It is old news by now that the TV Land channel axed its reruns of The Dukes of Hazard in the wake of the tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina. This act has sparked tremendous controversy. Whether or not you agree with the removal of the Dukes from network television, there is an overarching point here which should not escape this debate. That point is that hate is not conquered by the sacrificial execution of a television show and the flag painted on top of the car at the center of it.


In the South I grew up in, the Dukes of Hazard was the highlight of my Friday nights. I was a devoted fan. On more than one occasion, I sustained injuries and stitches as the result of riding my bicycle off of the precipice of our patio with the unyielding belief that it would fly across the ravine just like the General Lee did on TV. My childhood eyes never saw hate in the General Lee or in Bo or Luke Duke.

I read an article about this debate recently that cited a comment by the Parent’s Television Council on the topic of TV Land’s action which I believe is well worth repeating. They agreed with the removal of the Confederate battle flag from public places but they characterized TV Land’s removal of the Dukes from their lineup as ‘blatant hypocrisy’. I could not agree more. TV Land’s parent company is the media giant, Viacom. As noted by the Parent’s Television Council, Viacom is the purveyor of television content which glamorizes drug use and horrible violence, trivializes pedophilia, rape and the sexual abuse of women and children and when they are called out for so doing, "they are quick to wrap themselves in the banner of Free Speech." That quote deserves front page coverage.

From a very early age, I was taught by my parents and grandparents that a gun was a dangerous and deadly thing. I grew up hunting the whitetail deer and the bobwhite quail and I have never turned down an invitation to a good dove shoot. I have successfully hunted and killed every subspecies of wild turkey in the continental United States excepting only the elusive Osceola turkey of Florida and it is on my radar. Once I tag an Osceola, I will have completed the US Grand Slam of turkey hunting. What I do grasp with absolute certainty is that when the hammer falls, a hand of death is dealt to what is on the other end. Anyone who fails to appreciate this should never wield a firearm.

Video games do not teach this vital principle. These games glorify violence and the killing other virtual people in the air conditioned comfort of your own home. They lend the weak minded or impressionable a belief that death on a TV screen isn’t really permanent. All you have to do is hit the reset button and you can kill the same person again and again and again and it’s not really real... until it is real.

The game manufacturers may say that these episodes are the end result of tragic failures of parenting. In part, they are right. But where it matters, they are tragically and shamelessly wrong. I shudder to think of the abilities, or lack thereof, of the people who raised the boy who walked into a Church in Charleston, South Carolina, listened to their Bible study, conversed with them about scripture and then he stood up, withdrew a gun from his backpack and methodically killed as many of them as he could.

Of course, no one seems to know the detailed circumstances of his childhood but some things can possibly be inferred. The first is that he was indoctrinated and taught to hate people whose skin bore a darker pigmentation than his. Hate must be taught. No one is born with an innate sense of hatred in his or her heart. Second, hatred must be cultivated and reinforced. The mind of a child is inherently malleable but forgiving so you have to really lay it on at some point to get the concept of hatred to stick. Somebody surely did with him. Third, he had a weak and impressionable mind forged in the furnace of a disastrous childhood devoid of love, compassion or guidance.

What this killer did has weighed on my mind considerably so I thought it would help to lay my feelings out by writing about it. My childhood in the small southern town of Wrightsville, Georgia was largely interracial and multi-cultural. Black people spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with us and if they’re not there, we miss them. One of the first and best friends I ever had was Dorsey B. Lewis. He was black and I was white and neither one of us ever noticed the color difference. He died on me before I could tell him goodbye but I miss him daily and especially when I drive past his house.

The mass media desperately coveted the proliferation of racial hostility in the South after this terrible event and that they did not receive because of the integrity and character of those who responded to the calls at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. They wanted riots and strife and calls for blood - just as the killer had wanted. Instead, they received a message of Christian forgiveness. They possessed all of the traits that their killer lacked.

Society should not reduce this to a fight over symbolism. The contest is one of morality, ethics and character. In this debate, the Confederate flag is the equivalent of a bloody piece of meat being thrown between two pit bulldogs. They may fight each other to the death and, in the end, they will fall dead beside the object they were fighting over. But the object will still be there albeit soaked from the blood that they shed as life seeped from their bodies. The better course is to follow the example of the congregants of the Church in Charleston and chart a better path for the future. Introspection should be a key part of this. It is not enough to condemn the act and not the societal ill that creates the actor. This is not the product of a lack of gun control. It is more fundamental than that. This is the collective failure of our society to look in the mirror and address the root cause of very real problems.

The Hard Road to the Happy Hunting Grounds

This is the victim's skull.  A visible crack can be seen

running from behind the right eye ridge to the base of

the cranium.  This is evidence of the tremendous force

of the death blow.  

This is the story of a brutal, premeditated murder.  It happened on a high ridge overlooking a deep hardwood bottom near Limestone Creek just outside of Sandersville, Georgia in Washington County.  The victim had been marched up a foot path winding through towering pine and white oak trees to the site where he would lose his life and the men who would soon kill him walked only a few steps behind.  He knew very well that his fate was sealed.  He need not run for the men in the execution party were all capable of catching him with ease.  All of them were lean, muscular and built for the kill.  One of those men walking behind him was carrying a large ax and this was no coincidence.  To a man, they knew what the ax would be used for once they reached the top of the high bluff.  

 

This is the skeleton of the executed Creek

Indian as he lay in his grave immediately

prior to excavation.

The soon-to-be victim knew this land well.  It was where he grew up.  He had fished in Limestone Creek as a boy and came of age as a highly skilled hunter of the elusive whitetail deer which was a staple of his family's diet.  His youth was a distant memory now.  He had walked many trails before as far west as the Ocmulgee River and to the east all the way to the Savannah River.  He had walked this exact trail before, in fact, but never under these circumstances and it would be the last trail he would ever walk in life.   

 

The terrible weight of what was about to befall him may have brought tears to his eyes but he fought them back and tried to exude what little bit of bravery he could muster.  Cowardice even as he faced his own death would bring shame upon his family and this he desperately hoped to avoid. 

 

As the execution party topped the hill, he saw his mother weeping and his father was there too trying to maintain composure.  They were standing over a shallow, open grave at the bottom of which there was already one dead body which had been washed and bound into fetal position.  The family of the deceased had placed personal items in the grave around the body including a handmade clay bowl that had been filled with kernels of corn.  The items would never again serve any earthly purpose but placing them there helped the family better cope with seeing the dead body of their loved one covered with dirt and committed to the earth for all time to come.  But there was also the belief that the soul of the deceased now walked invisibly within their midst or hovered just above observing the respect that was afforded to the body which it had recently abandoned.  And so it was that these last rites and acts of earthly affection were performed by the survivors to ensure that the spirit would not morph into a malevolent force that would bring them havoc for the remainder of their days in this land. 

 

This is the skeleton of another Creek Indian

found buried beside the one who was

executed.  The clay Muscogee Creek bowl

is seen here as well.

The scene was finally set as the condemned, the executioner and his party and the onlookers gathered in a circle around the other open grave at the bottom of which there was no body.  Yet.  The executioner was the largest man among them all.  The expression on his face was deadly serious as he abruptly outstretched a muscular arm toward the man holding the ax.  The instrument of death was handed over to the lead man and the other men in the party took a few steps back.  The executioner then grabbed the upper arm of the condemned man and walked him a step closer to the edge of the pit then kicked the back of his legs and he fell to the ground on his knees.  One last act of human kindness or comfort was offered though.  At the nod of the executioner, a woman approached and opened her hand in which there were two crude fired balls of clay with small stems attached.  The condemned man took them from her and placed them in each of his ears.  They were ear plugs meant to prevent him from hearing the whir of the wind that would be produced at the moment the ax came down towards the back of his skull.

This is an artist's rendering provided by the

archaeologists who studied the site showing

how this sort of execution would have been

conducted by the Creek Indians.

The executioner then took the ax handle in both hands and centered himself standing directly over his victim.  The doomed man took a helpless last look around at his family and the others gathered to witness his death.  He then filled his lungs with a final breath and looked down toward the earth.  When his head became steady, the executioner lifted the ax high above his head and with all the strength of his upper body, brought it crashing down and buried its blade deep in the man's head with a dull crack.  At the same time, a fine spray of blood, brain matter and small fragments of his skull was cast in all directions landing on the feet of the observers and the bases of the nearby pine trees.  The force of the blow was so great that it shattered the skull along its cranial lines and bright red blood oozed out from the hole over his black hair.  His spirit sprang out and soared upward far above the virgin timber, creeks and rivers in its ascent to the Happy Hunting Ground and his now dead body slumped forward and twitched as the nerves continued to fire at random with no corresponding instruction from the brain.  The executioner then straddled the body and pulled the ax head from its point of rest and the sound of stone scraping against skull bone broke the silence that had descended upon the ridge. 

 

The entry point of the ax can be seen at 

the rear of the cranium in this picture. 

Fractures along the cranial lines are also

visible.  

 

The sentence was now complete and the dead man's mother with the help of some of the other women at the scene brought water from the creek in clay bowls and gourds to wash his body and the blood from his now contorted skull.  After that task was completed, the men remaining at the site of the execution arranged his body into fetal position and bound it with ropes made of natural fibers and vines so that it would not outstretch as rigamortis set in.  The corpse was then lowered into the hole directly facing the other body and the dark, lifeless eyes of both bodies seemed to stare at each other even in death.  The only thing between them was the ceremonial clay bowl filled with corn.  The bodies were then covered with the loamy soil of Georgia's Fall Line and there they remained for all time to come underneath the towering pines.

 

Examples of stone axes found in

Washington County, Georgia.

This case will never be featured on a news network, the GBI will not issue a press release announcing that the body in a cold case investigation has been found and the District Attorney will never bring murder charges against the responsible parties.  The reason?  This murder took place likely before the year 1600 just outside of the city limits of modern-day Sandersville, Georgia.  Now, whether he met his end exactly as described above is anyone's guess. Even so, it's likely the first documented case of murder in Washington County.  The victim was a Muscogee Creek Indian.  The executioners were members of his tribe.  He really was found buried in a grave alongside another Creek Indian with a clay bowl placed between the bodies.  There were remnants of particulate grains in the bowl believed to have been indian corn.  Also found in the grave was a clay ball with a small stem attached which was believed to have been an ear plug to prevent him from hearing the sound of the ax coming down on him.  A matching piece was not found so this is not a certainty but the ear plug theory is the most plausible explanation.  It was clearly not jewelry and was found at the side of the skull near to where the ear would have been.      

 

Savannah Complicated Stamp pattern clay bowl

found between the Indian skeletons.

 

The bowl found at the burial site is of key importance to unlocking its secrets.  It is known as Savannah Complicated Stamp pottery and the design was made by pressing a wooden paddle with the design carved into it against the bowl while the clay was still wet.  The same basic pottery design has been unearthed throughout middle and south Georgia and it is the calling card of the Muscogee Creek Indians.  When you find pottery bearing the concentric circle design, you are standing on or are very near a Creek Indian site.  The Muscogee Creeks were the direct descendants of the Mississippian Moundbuilder culture that constructed the huge mounds outside of Macon at what is now the Ocmulgee National Monument. 

 

Sandersville and Washington County was a stronghold of the Creeks and there are sites littered throughout the area.  The mysterious Indian trade route known as the Uchee Trail ran through southern parts of the county.  The victim of this execution may have been a long term resident of Washington County or he may simply have been here temporarily as he navigated along the Uchee Trail.  However, one thing is certain: something occurred here in which he was involved and it led to his brutal death and burial within walking distance of the Courthouse Square.  

 

Clearly, he was executed but the reason will forever remain shrouded in mystery.  The archeologists who studied his grave concluded that his execution could have been in retribution for a bad act he was responsible for.  Perhaps adultery.  But there is also the possibility that his death was the end result of ritual sacrifice.  If he was sacrificed, there is an implication that the other Creek who he was buried with was the Muscogee Creek equivalent of royalty or a high ranking member of the Chiefdom.  The other skeleton showed no sign of death by force.  The skull was found in pieces but it probably collapsed over time after becoming waterlogged after the brain decomposed.  Upon being unearthed, the skull cavity of the executed Creek had been filled with sand over time - probably thanks to the gaping ax blade hole at its rear and that is what maintained its intact structure.

 

There are many variations of early Creek Indian beliefs about the afterlife.  It is thought that they believed a body had two souls. One soul akin to the breath of the body died when the body died.  The other soul was the eternal, spiritual soul which departed the body at death.  Important in this context is the fact that they believed that the one could capture or harness the eternal soul of another to the captor's benefit.  Thus, it is plausible that the royal Indian here died of natural causes and the victim was sacrificed in order to release his eternal soul from the body so that it could be captured and used by the other to cross successfully into the afterlife.  And that afterlife may have been known as The Happy Hunting Ground, where the game was plentiful and the spears and arrows of warriors always found their mark.