The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision by James Redfield Read Free Book Online Page A

that
     she personally had negotiated at great risk.
    But the general had refused to see her, remaining in the tent as she shouted at him, finally ordering her from his camp at
     gunpoint, not knowing the content of her message, not wanting to know. Again Williams kept quiet. He knew his commander wasunder great pressure, having already promised that the region would be opened up for economic expansion. A war was necessary
     if the vision of the power brokers and their political allies was to be actualized. It was not enough to let the settlers
     and the Indians create their own frontier culture. No, in their view, the future had to be shaped and manipulated and controlled
     for the best interests of those who made the world secure and abundant. It would be far too frightening and altogether irresponsible
     to let the little people decide.
    Williams knew that a war would greatly please the railroad and coal tycoons and the newly emerging oil interests, and would,
     of course, ensure his own future as well. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and play along. And he would, under silent
     protest—unlike the general’s other primary aide. He remembered looking across the room at his colleague, a small man who limped
     slightly. No one knew why he limped. Nothing was wrong with his leg. Here was the ultimate yes-man. He knew what the secret
     cartels were up to and he loved it, admired it, wanted to become a part of it. And there was something more.
    This man, like the general and the other controllers, feared the Native Americans and wanted them removed not just because
     of the Natives’ alienation from the expanding industrial economy that was poised to overrun their lands. They feared these
     people because of something deeper, some terrifying and transformative idea, known in its entirety only by a few of the elders,
     but which bubbled up throughout their culture and called out for the controllers to change, to remember another vision of
     the future.
    Williams had found out that the missionary’s daughter had arranged for the great medicine chiefs to come together in one last
     attempt to agree on this knowledge, to find the words to share it—one last bid to explain themselves, to establish theirvalue to a world quickly turning against them. Williams had known, deep within, that the woman should have been heard, but
     in the end he had remained silent, and with one quick nod the general had pushed away the possibility of reconciliation and
     had ordered the battle to begin.
    As we watched, Williams’ recollection shifted to a gorge in the deep woods, site of the coming battle. Cavalry poured over
     a ridge in a surprise offensive. The Native Americans rose to the defense, attacking the cavalry from the bluffs on either
     side. A short distance away, a large man and a woman huddled among the rocks. The man was a young academic, a congressional
     aide, there only to observe, terrified he was this close to the battle. It was wrong, all wrong. His interest was economics;
     he knew nothing of violence. He had come there convinced that the white man and the Indian need not be in conflict, that the
     growing economic surge through the region might be adapted, evolved, integrated to include both cultures.
    Beside him in the rocks was the young woman seen at the military tent earlier. At this moment she felt abandoned, betrayed.
     Her effort could have worked, she knew, if those with the power had listened to what was possible. But she would not give
     up, she had told herself, not until the violence stopped. She kept saying, “It can be healed! It can be healed.”
    Suddenly on the downslope behind them, two cavalrymen rode hard toward a single Native. I strained to see who it was, finally
     recognizing the man as the angry chief I had seen in my mind when talking to David, the chief who had been so vocal against
     the white woman’s ideas. As I watched, he turned quickly and shot an arrow into the chest of one of his