The Indian Grief

Young nettle growing from the mulch.

Yesterday we went to Felicita Park, which is one of the county parks in Escondido. It's a very nice park with plenty of trees and some unique plant species. We also found there oodles of nettle and as you might know nettle is an edible plant.

So we harvested nettle and curly dock there a couple of times before. I want to point out that we harvest plants "the Indian way" that is to say we just take a little and leave plenty more. We don't touch species that are scarce and we prefer the methods that do not damage the plant.

So we went to our usual nettle meadow and were horrified to see that it was demolished by tractor or some other machine. Literally nothing was left of the nettle. A few luxurious species of curly dock were mercilessly hacked and what used to be a glorious and fragrant patch of sweet alyssum was reduced to a few sparse blotches mingled with short grass. Mushrooms were gone too.

Now for the first time probably we knew how Indians felt when white man destroyed the buffalo and other resources. And the Indians really depended on them. White man promptly destroyed Indians too.