I'm a naturalist. I study nature.
I found a root beside an ancient trackway.
It's not much to see, but it's very unusual: small and knarled, with just a few green shoots coming up
in extraordinary places. It has no special taste, nor odor, or color, or beauty, nor useful wealth,
but it's the deepest root I've ever found.
It seems to go down forever
into the Earth Mother. And beneath it is a river.
It's called The Tree of Peace
—where the warriors buried the hatchet

On December 16, 1773
Samuel Adams, Founding Father of the American Revolution,

adjourned a town meeting in Boston by announcing:
"There is nothing further this meeting can do
to save the country." To which I can only add:
"Hear here! And amen!
And all men's women's children's children."

Later that night colonists disguised as Indians

left The Green Dragon Inn in Boston,
a tavern where Masons quaffed ales and traded tales
of temple builder traditions of the ancient Mediterranean. As these radical revolutionaries dumped tea in Boston Harbor, they sang a song:
"Rally Mohawks! Bring your axes!
Tell King George we'll pay no taxes
on his foreign tea!"

Why did they say "Mohawks?"

There were no Mohawk villages in Massachusetts.

Some say "mohawk" is a general term for rowdy.
While that may be true, in 1754 at Albany, New York
Benjamin Franklin invited a Mohawk named Tiyanoga

to explain his people's form of government
based on instructions called The Great Law of Peace
to the first continental meeting of colonists. Tiyanoga told the colonists to follow the example
of his own Six Nations:
to unite and claim their own liberty and democracy. Benjamin Franklin then offered his first proposal
for a Plan of Union:
a Grand Council of the American colonies.

On December 16, 1773 colonists decided

to take the advice
and the appearance
of their Mohawk brothers. The Tree of Peace became The Liberty Tree, and Eagle-that-sees-far became American Eagle.
After the Revolution,
colonists wrote the Articles of Confederation
to give birth to a new nation and form of government. Ben Franklin and many Sons of Liberty formed a brotherhood
which dressed as Indians for meetings
and recited Indian laws and legends.

Today we look at Boston Harbor

and we see a toxic dump.
We are wise to wonder where we are in the cycles of the Ages,
and what it is we have to do now,
in this last decade of the Century
and the Millennium..................

—David Yarrow