It was almost a year ago to the day that I first discovered the Seminole Indians in Longview, Texas. No I didn’t discover the Seminole in Texas (they are from Florida), I was in Texas when I found out about them through a song written and recorded by country artist John Anderson and later covered by James Taylor. The song is called “Seminole Wind,” and it’s the Taylor cover that captured me. I will forever associate this song with this place because I played the song over and over again in my rental car as I circumnavigated eastern Texas.
The reason I’m writing about this today is because I am returning to Longview again this month to speak at LeTourneau University, and the power of association is so strong in music that as soon as I booked this event, the song started coming back in my mind. It’s a haunting melody about how “civilization” came to Florida and wiped out a native culture.
Progress came and took its toll,
And in the name of flood control,
They made their plans and they drained the land,
Now the ‘glades are going dry.
The song and Taylor’s arrangement is full of sadness and melancholy as it remembers what was lost, and in my mind’s eye, I see the pride and dignity of a race of people stripped of their homeland and way of life. It’s a deep loss that can never be returned.
And these thoughts lead me to a new appreciation for native people wherever they try to hold onto a piece of their identity. It’s all about giving all men and women the value and worth of being formed in God’s image, especially when that image is different from ours. For the sake of all people who have been displaced, we need to remember.
So blow, blow Seminole wind,
Blow like you’re never gonna blow again.
I’m calling to you like a long lost friend,
But I know who you are.
And blow, blow from the Okeechobee,
All the way up to Micanopy.
Blow across the home of the Seminole,
The alligator and the gar.
John Fischer The Catch 
I believe the name of the country artist who wrote & recorded this song is John Anderson. The only reason I know this is because he & his family live in the same small town in Middle Tennessee as my mom.
Yes! My bad.
A “Beautiful Honor” of a “Beautiful Tribe” of our nation. But, most of all, you’ve reminded us, to “value” EVERYONE! Just as our Father does…Thanks, John!
I struggle with the genocide we see in scripture and how it has taught us to disrespect faith that is not our own. We taught the Indians to be Christian after we took everything else they had away.
Mark Twain said,
I do not know why we respect missionaries. Perhaps it is because they have not intruded here from Turkey or China or Polynesia to break our hearts by sapping away our children’s faith & winning them to the worship of alien gods. We have lacked the opportunity to find out how a parent feels to see his child deriding & blaspheming the religion of its ancestors. We have lacked the opportunity of hearing a foreign missionary who has been forced upon us against our will lauding his own saints & gods & saying harsh things about ours. If some time or other, we shall have these experiences, it will probably go hard with the missionary … The missionary has no wish to be an insulter, but how is he to help it? All his proposition are insults, word them as he may …
Tim … I see how a bad interpretation of the Old Testament has been used to support bad missions practices. Is that what you mean? The genocide accounts, approved by God, properly understood, do not support disrespecting other faiths. They were the right thing for God to do at those ancient times but you have to do some “time travel” back into those times to understand it was right. What Jesus and Paul did to convert others is our model but they are not contradicting what God did back then. In fact, there is a great harmony in them both showing passion for the truth when false religion was destroying people and something had to be done. …. Harsh genocide then, sacrificial service and proclamation now. Both come from God’s love.
I know what you are saying, John but I am not as convinced that harsh genocide ever coincides with a loving, merciful forgiving God. We of the Christian tradition have always used the excuse of God on our side to dominate others. From our Jewish roots in the old testament to the Crusades in the Middle Ages.
Even today it is hard to turn on the radio or TV to a “Christian” broadcast and not hear how we should dominate our culture with conservative founded religion.
My reference to Twain is more in line with what we do today to those that have values or a faith that is different from our own.
I have to ask what the old testament says about God and it seems he is a God with a fragile ego that destroys anyone that doesn’t follow Judaism. Now if God never changes either they got it wrong then or we have it wrong now.
Missionaries have messed up because they haven’t had a big enough concept of truth that would allow it to exist out side of their own structures. Not everything has to be displaced. Pick up what is useful and respect what has been there for a long time. Christians are not the only carriers of truth.
We are involved with people in Africa that that can see a day when whole mosques are “Muslim Followers of Jesus”. That will bend your mind and we think it will recognize the bigger God you may be thinking of John. So there is change and reason to hope Tim.
Great commentary, John but the song’s author was John Anderson.
Yes. This is the second time I’ve mixed up Anderson and Alexander. Don’t know what the deal is with that!
True missionaries…do not impose their faith…they share it. There are many Catholic Missionaries that die in severe poverty sharing the gospel…they are largely unknown for Satan owns television and most media and so we only hear of those who do satan’s work. The Catholic Church is the mother of Christianity and is Holy for its Founder Jesus Christ is God.