I'm sorry to post again. I tried finding a "lastimages" lemmy but I couldn't.
Bear was laid to rest at 10:50am 16th of September 2024. I had him for 15 and a half beautiful years. We went for walks just about every day and he was the king of his block. Neighbors and friends come and go but my stinky man was always finding something to smell in the next bush. Even when the weather was against him, he could always sneak around and find something new stuck to grandma's shoes.
He loved nothing more than salmon, PINK salmon (none of that red or smoked nonsese), and so he ate pink salmon every day he could. His kibbles were never empty for long and the house just wasnt right if he didn't have at least 3 different glasses to drink from at any time. Though we bought him beds and blankets enough to supply a small army, he loved sleeping on news paper more than anything else. Something about inconveniencing the humans by weight of his sheer existence I'm sure.
We bothered him constantly his last two days, making him absolutely sick of us. We pet and loved him every moment of these last two days, and I held him sleeping on my chest for hours this morning. I don't think he could possibly have been more fed up with our emotional human nonsense if we'd tried. But I stayed with him every last second, and the last thing he could see when his eyes dilated was me.
I will never stop loving my boy.
Considering ~95% of the native population died of disease within 50 years of the settlers landing? Yeah you can say it was pretty empty. I'm always fascinated by the willful ignorance of "settlers" in the context of the old west. Journals talk of "miraculous" groves of fruiting bushes and trees or other edible vegetation and how it's clearly a gift from their white god while studiously avoiding any mention of the signs of previous habitation in the area. We're still discovering massive irrigation networks in AZ and NM with satellite LiDAR that no "settler" ever mentioned.
Don't overlook the first genocide of my people by focusing too hard on the second. The Europeans struggled to quell the survivors. I honestly don't think settlers had much of a chance otherwise, even with the difference in technology.