| Getting Serious About That Whole Defense Thing |
[Jun. 5th, 2012|02:44 pm]
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PROGRESS REPORT FOR 6/4/12
New Words: 950 on Chapter 6 ("The Presidio") of Arizona.
Total Words: 126150.
Reason For Stopping: Need to decide which possibility should come next.
Book Year(s): 1782-84.
Mammalian Assistance: None.
Exercise: Walking down to campus; hauling library books.
Stimulants: None.
Today's Opening Passage(s): The immediate effect of the six hundred strong Apache attack on Fort Tucson was that the military authorities finally took the presidio more seriously and ended their years-long neglect. More soldiers filled the open spaces on ramparts. Construction resumed, although it wouldn’t be finished until the following year. The officers—including the Commandant-General himself on occasion—started leading expeditions into the eastward wilderness trying to root out the Apaches and drive them out.
Or as some among the government and the Franciscan friars at the Mission San Xavier del Bac near Tucson suggested, to force them to surrender and peacefully settle on Spanish-controlled land, forging the Indios barbaros into civilized people. Alejandro remembered his father arguing for this very thing several years before. The son didn’t quite agree with the idea, even after growing up among his family’s Pima vaqueros, but he knew his father was an influential man in the Pimeria Alta. It was possible that his bringing forth the idea rippled it outward all the way to Santa Fe and Mexico City.
Darling Du Jour: “An Apache peace camp,” Alejandro muttered, scoffing by flattening the words on his tongue. Some of the soldiers openly wondered if the Indians were laughing at them from hiding—more than some wondered at any given moment if the notoriously sneaky enemy was hiding behind this rock, or just over that hill. Alejandro didn’t imagine them laughing, however. He imagined the unwavering eyes of the girl warrior watching when she let him go, wondering if she had because she knew he was unimportant, that the Spaniards were unimportant, that eventually they would either give up and leave or be killed off, and her people would rule this land again.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress:  dancinghorse. |
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