I'm actually dipping into Hetalia without a canon character. The idea of toying around with my past in a fanfiction has plagued me ever since I saw the image of an American Indian in one of the APH comics. I believe the caption had to deal with the French and Indian War? Hm.. Well! This piece of work is a result of Early Morning Syndrome, a disease that I have just now created. I've had to dig around in my memory bank and books for incidents and different recounts of these experiences. Unfortunately, I don't have a clear understanding of the occupation of Wounded Knee, in 1973, so I couldn't put it in. I don't think I ever will LOL.
If anything in this fic sounds racist to you, please. Don't blame me. You can either blame my childhood or history. Preferably history. It's not my fault I was raised like I was! D:
Disclaimer! If I happened to own Hetalia, then I would be loved by thousands, possibly millions of people. Unfortunately, I'm not. My interpretation of Native America is my own creation.
He was a nameless silhouette in the face of so many other nations. Even the new personification of the land that was once his had a modern name. It was impossible to place a name upon a nation that held so many languages and customs.
He was left behind. His people were left behind. In the rush for land and money and politics, his people were left with the poverty and memory of the past. They didn't have reliable jobs or bosses, nor did they have successful futures ahead of them. The government did everything they could in their race for land to get rid of them, once and for all.
Trekking across miles of frozen land at the hands of soldiers was one thing. In that instance, they could rebel and proudly face the Creator when they died at the ends of musket barrels. When they died fighting for their home, they would be remembered in stories to come in the generations ahead. After all, his people had a healthy streak after enduring the diseases.
That had wiped them out when the first pale-skins had come. So many illnesses had weakened the entire population to low numbers. When the second wave of ships arrived, it was as if to rub salt in their infected wounds when they enslaved and persecuted them. "Witches" and "heathens" they had called him and his people, pushing words onto them that they could not understand. They pushed books into their hands, demanding that they read them, that they repent and join the Church so that they wouldn't go to hell. Maybe they had good intentions but it wasn't enough to change his ways to the white man's.
And when they finally formed a new country? He spited the fact that the son he had raised - no matter how briefly - had neglected to mention anything of the northeastern Confederacy when the world declared America as the first united government. He was even more upset when the boy conformed to the idea of Manifest Destiny. After all, if Alfred was the embodiment of the people and the land, then he must've had some positive thoughts about removing his father's people from their homes. The population must've given him the will to go through with everything. That meant that America - in both terms - was against him, his own father and the past that he had once embraced.
There had been jeers thrown at them as they walked. Forced into Oklahoma among women, children, warriors and chiefs, he endured their suffering. Their heartbreak was almost enough to send him into tears at any given moment. Their memories flitted before his eyes in images of massacred camps and stern faced soldiers holding muskets, of starvation and old wounds now infected. Swollen feet and tired eyes were one thing. Broken pride was another matter altogether.
While there were the times that he was subjected to the destructive hands of America's government, there were also the times when he would fight back with spear and gun on the back of prized ponies or simply in moccasins. One of his ideas of war had simply been a game of stick and ball, without the need for bloody deaths, but that had changed soon enough. If the white men were going to simply take his land and claim it as theirs, then they had another thing coming.
He'd speared some of them, hearing only the pounding of his heart and the yips and screams of his fellow warriors as they tore through the plains. Somewhere in his beating heart though, he knew the Creator would be disappointed with the death and chaos. They were only imprinting the bad image of the Indian on America. Every pale man, woman and child would see him as a savage creature who wanted nothing more than to burn their house and steal their livestock, much like a cowardly wolf. And while he prided himself on being such a brave warrior, he was also determined to prove them wrong.
Then, after all the rebellions with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and when the new century rolled around, he thought that they had finally gained recognition after the massacres. Surely, they must've garnered enough sympathy from the public for them to embrace them with welcome arms.
He'd been wrong.
It was worse than ever.
The unfair possession of young children from their families and homes was another blow to his heart. So many families were lost without their little ones and even when they returned from those wretched boarding schools, they were unable to speak to them. The culture gap had extended to a deep chasm as the newest generations lost the ability to speak in their native tongues, unable to learn it again because the pain was too deep. Emotional scars forbid them to even utter a word of Native speech should they be whipped, slapped or abused in the worst manner possible. For such young minds to see death before their eyes was torture.
And during those long years, he did succumb to the emotional tide and let the tears fall. He would cry until his throat was raw with heaving sobs and until his eyes were bloodshot with tears. Granted, they were accepted into modern society, but it was at a cost that couldn't be compensated with government money and the public's acceptance.
Before the twentieth century, Native America had lived and prospered on modern ways without losing the ability to remember. After the missionaries swept through the country, that trait was lost and each new generation lost touch with their heritage. It pained him to see men and women who were afraid of who they were, who were scared to admit to others that they were descended from old honored sachems.
There were those who were afraid to embrace the past and then there were those who refused to let the white man have his way in their land.
He could feel their strength in his own heart. There wasn't a location to serve as the capital of his land, and thus his heart. His people were responsible for the strength of his will. If they were rightly proud and rebellious, the blood in his veins pulsed ever faster and his head swam with visions of bright grins on dark faces, of childrens' hands pumped in the air.
The tears that fell these days were those of happiness and hope. It was only in the early twentieth century that he had first cried, and then he had wept for the pure heartbreak of broken families. Even when he felt himself being gouged and slashed as tribes were massacred before then, it was the defiance of his people that kept the tears from falling. When his land grew ill with foreign diseases, he was still able to stand, and the people grew strong again to enable him to fight the invaders.
His muscles dully ached with the history of his being, given that he had lived many years, but he still felt as if he were a young warrior holding his first weapon. The young men of his tribes were lively, though, and the thought of his children was always enough to make him smile. He hadn't given up on trying to reason with America's government, the racism never quite leaving him, but he was always glad to teach the young people new things. He could give them pieces of his many languages, from Apache to Seneca, and he could teach them the proper customs that their textbooks couldn't replicate.
To see the happy smiles upon faces, albeit pale and often with differently colored eyes; it was something he'd always wish to see again.
He didn't want war. He didn't want to see such innocent children grow up into cold men and women, to see their faces indifferent to his cause. He didn't want his own children covered with the blood of their own friends.
He didn't want violence. If things did not change, however, he'd take action.
He'd gladly sling a gun over his shoulder and fight for the land that deserved to be free.
"Johëgoh" would be the Seneca word for the title. It literally translates into "our life sustainers." Seneca, as well as all other American Indian languages, are tricky in the fact that they don't translate back to Latin or English. I have heard so many words that cannot be described in English or have lost their meaning over the past hundred years. But we usually use Johëgoh to describe the Three Sisters to the young children, though it can be used to describe any kind of food that gives us life.
I couldn't give Native America a name. D: I'm not that fluent in Seneca, and I don't know any other Indian tongue and I'm not about to use the internet for such things.
Read and review! I'd love to get some feedback on my first Hetalia fic, as well as my interpretation of my own people. Ji:gwus~!
-Zilver