I Was Reading --- and Then

I was reading -- and then .....

It was (is) a great book too.
By Sharman Burson Ramsey.

Fort Mims

The book, Swimming with Serpents is historical fiction that evolves about the massacre at Fort Mims in 1813, just a few miles from here up the Tensaw River, North of Mobile - in Alabama. Awful Massacre. Over 500 victims and maybe a hundred of the Perpetrators, the Red Stick Creek Indians (Allied to the British (white people) to kill off the White Folk who were despoiling the Indian ways).  Tecumseh from Ohio is a cousin to several of the Red Stick leadership among the Creeks. He stomps the earth when southern tribes balk at his admonition to kill all the white people. The great Mississippi River runs backwards, the earth shakes and village structures in North Alabama fall to the ground. Scientists tell us this was the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811, but the Prophet,Tenskwatawa, a brother to Tecumseh - was not having that explanation.

See Fort Mims? The fire arrow strikes THERE

Blood affair.  People were educated at Oxford on both sides of the conflagration. Family divisions. Brother and Sister and Aunt against Brother and Uncle and son. Godawful mess to sort out - even to this day. This is one of those un-highlighted events in history whose significance is the RESULTING HISTORY. Threatened citizens of Tennessee (including David Crockett and Sam Houston) joined with Andrew Jackson to come down to Alabama and erase the problem. Jackson in Pensacola. War of 1812 in progress. New Orleans. Florida becomes a US Territory. Jackson is Governor  then President. Destin Florida and 30A become a condominium destination.

Indians never lived down the massacre and by 1835 they are well on their way to being deported (along with the US Allied tribes of the war, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and more) to the new frontier - Oklahoma. Well, not all of them. A large contingent remained (mostly from the White Sticks- the other side of the Creek Civil War). Generations of intermarriage with the evil usurpers puts genetic markers in every family here with roots back 100 to 150 years. The Seminoles: Well, they were formed up by many of the Redsticks that got away.

What we KNOW

Disney gets a movie about Davy (Davy) Crockett and at the very start of the Disney series is an faux antique map of the Southern Frontier. A flaming arrow strikes the map just above Mobile - and the map burns. So ---that is all America remembers about Fort Mims.

I had just gotten through the massacre and was recovering with some of the characters in Ramsey's book, when my cat demanded I come to join Karen to watch Inspector Lewis - a BBC concoction of the uncivil murdering community of Oxford England.

I begin to wonder if the commanding enemies at Fort Mims were not immersed in the art of blood-thirst in the village of Oxford, in England. (Several of them, sons of Creek chiefs studied there) I've counted the deaths in Oxford associated with the murders in these connected series. The death rate in Detroit cannot hold a candle.

Lewis (detective inspector) is a spinnoff of the last episodes of Inspector Morse.  After Lewis, the BBC went back to the young Morse and ran a whole other detective series based on the young Detective Morse (Endeavor). My cat and my wife LOVE this BBC series.  I enjoy gathering the statistics from the episodes as the deaths in Oxford pile up - urging a satisfactory end to each episode with the guilty party undone.

John Thaw - Morse

Inspector Morse ran from 1987-2000 ( 13 years 33 episodes) - still not as prolific as America's PBS productions of Barney - but a good effort for the British).

Lewis ran from 2006-2015 for 43 episodes.  Kevin Whatley is the promoted version of Lewis who was the sidekick to Morse in the prior series. Whatley is supported by Laurence Fox who is Detective Hathaway.

A character consistency of these detectives for all the series is their quirky depth of education; at Oxford usually and their preponderance for  Opera and Wagner and Mozart and good wine and an occasional flare of deep wit regarding the philosophies of life.  Not unlike my own preferences in music, Chopin and Ray Stevens and John Anderson. I wax philosophical as well and relate to their deep thoughts out of my education as an Agricultural Economist. It was UF (Florida), not Oxford, but still  .... I am nearly always right regardless of my lack of an all convincing English Accent.

And the final series - still in production is ENDEAVOR, in which we return to the early years when Inspector Morse was just a detective - and NEVER appreciated.  Endeavor is running now from 2012 - 2018 (22 episodes so far) and the dead continue to pile up in Oxford.

While the actors are important, they could be replaced by trained monkeys because the writers for these series are the heart of it. They build complex characters and plots that make the whole program an education and a pleasure to watch.  I do sometimes miss the predictability of my other favorite detective show (of the American variety), Hawaii Five-Oh. The Brits always have someone posted at the back door and the suspect never escapes from that direction. Car chases are rare.

The British Accent could be improved. Sometimes, I need to watch these BBC productions with English captions because they cannot speak good clear English like the Indians can (from India).

When PBS is finally done with Barney, and have some money left over from the rights they pay BBC for good programming --  I'd like to introduce them to a stable of Southern writers who have magnificent stories to tell - set in our US South.  The periods of pre-European, European Contact and Pioneer settlement are woefully under represented in the colorful history of America.  Their works should begin populating good films and series for TV.

READING LIST
Sharmon Burson Ramsey
Gaylier Miller
Dr. Brian Rucker
Sharon D. Marsh
Brian Sullivan
Tommie Lyn
ALL REFERENCES at FORT MIMS Website
Death Statistics for Oxford England
MORE BOOKS - LOCAL AUTHORS
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