Long or Short Capital

Old Algonquian proverb: “Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your babies closest.”
[Translated from the Algonquian]

The earliest form of human was the Native American, or as they prefer to be called, the Indian. These Indians populated all of the land we now know as America, from the Southern tip of Argentina, where lived the giants known as Patagãos, through the Aleutian islands, where Eskimos warmed themselves in their icy igloo homes. Indians were excellent survivalists adept at riding horses, using all of the deer and camping. But they didn’t dominate the Americas and thrive because of any of these things.

The key to their domination lay in a simple apparatus, the papoose. The papoose was a baby-carrier, a sling pouch that an adult could use to carry a child close to to their body. Think a bjorn, but with more feathers and less yuppy. The papoose could be supplemented with a board for comfort, like a babypack, or worn as is to better bottle in warmth. In this fashion babies were transported here and there, across the plains, the pampas and the rivers of the Mexican valley. Or so that was assumed to be the purpose of the papoose.

In reality, the papoose allowed Indian adults to keep close tabs on their greatest threat: babies. They used the proximity the papoose provided to monitor all baby-to-baby contact and communication. Any baby that became a problem could be easily isolated and crushed before the contagion spread. Their legs were wrapped so they lacked the mobility to escape and wreak murderous havoc on the tribe.

Apocryphal tales attribute the death of the Indians to disease (smallpox), dislocation and general rapine. But real research indicates that the contact with Europeans that proved most perilous to the Indians was the introduction of new baby mores and technology that eventually took down Indian empires with no regard to their greatness or size. Inca, Apache, Nahuatl, or Sioux, the babies saw fit to crush all tribes under their boot.

Thankfully this wave of powerful Indian babies was subsequently wiped out by smallpox before they could likewise crush the conquistadors and Christian pilgrims that began populating the Americas. But a new wave has been gestating in Man’s womb, a tsunami 500 years in the making.

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