-> NATIVE AMERICAN CURSES
The old Indian burial ground curse is enough of a chestnut that the first time we ran into one, even we couldn't believe it. I mean, when you consider all of the weird stuff we've seen that we'd never heard of before, to suddenly stumble across the oldest of the old radio-serial kind of haunting-kind of jarring.
But American history is chock-full of Native American curses that seem to be bearing fruit, and us Euro-Americans have been talking about Native American ghosts practically since we arrived at Plymouth Rock. Here's one example, from a poem written in 1787 by some guy we'd never heard of named Philip Freneau:
THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND
In spite of all the learned have said,
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead,
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
Not so the ancients of these lands-
The Indian, when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends,
And shares again the joyous feast.
His imaged birds, and painted bowl,
And venison, for a journey dressed,
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that knows no rest.
His bow, for action ready bent,
And arrows, with a head of bone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the finer essence gone.
Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,
No fraud upon the dead commit,
Yet, marking the swelling turf, and say,
They do not lie, but here they sit.
Here, still a lofty rock remains,
On which the curious eye may trace
(Now wasted half by wearing rains)
The fancies of a ruder race.
Here, still an aged elm aspires,
Beneath whose far-projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires)
The children of the forest played.
There oft a restless Indian queen,
(Pale Marian, with her braided hair)
And many a barbarous form is seen
To chide the man that lingers there.
By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer-a shade.
And long shall timorous fancy see
The painted chief, and pointed spear,
And reason's self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here.
"Activity that knows no rest" is right. If there's one thing that can give the Energizer Bunny a run for its money persistence-wise, that one thing would be an Indian curse.
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Supernatural the book of monsters, demons, spirits and ghouls
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