Native American’s had a government way before the United States was formed – They had a “Grand Sachem” whom governed all tribes – He had Sub Chiefs and War Leaders and such –  individual tribes under him were lead by a Chief – whom he governed all smaller tribes  – The United States has followed the way of the Native American Government – if we look at our city’s mayors they would be Chiefs and each Governor of the state as Sub Chiefs and our Presidency as Grand Sachem you can see where I’m going with this – the more I research my Ancestors the more I see that some of their beliefs and ways of life are still practiced – even in our Government~

With my research I’m find out a lot about ruling of tribes –  One of the tribes I’m working with are of the Turtle Clan~

Wanted to share this

Turtle Clan: Turtle is considered to be the oldest, sacred symbol of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people. They believed that North America was created on the back of a turtle.  Father Sky’s wife fell through a hole in the sky, and to keep her from drowning little Muskrat managed to bring up a handful of soil from the bottom of the ocean; she placed it on Turtle’s wide back and the land immediately began to grow eventually forming North America.  To this day most Indigenous people refer to North America as Turtle Island. (You might want to take a look at the shape of North America in an Atlas, it look just like a turtle.  The feet are: Alaska, Greenland, B Aha, California and Florida. The tail is South America. Top half of the shell is Canada, bottom half is the continental United States.)  The medicine of turtle is its deliberate and thorough approach to life; Turtle is also courageous because it makes progress only when it sticks its neck out, and moves forward with patient, steady flow to achieve the desired results. The turtle shell, regardless of size, was also used as a calendar, with the thirteen large patterned squares counting out all the full moons of the year. The 28 small squares on the outside counted the days of each lunar month.

Pasted from <http://www.shannonthunderbird.com/symbols_and_meanings.htm>

I’ve been helping to design a newsletter for one of the tribes I’m working with the Wiquapaug Eastern Pequot Indian Tribe –  This past week I have been creating the template and setting it all up – deadline is Jan. 1st – believe I have the bases of it done and everyone seems to be happy with it so far – goes out every 4 months for them~ The newsletter is coming along nicely – I have had a lot of fun creating it – Have the format created and only waiting for everything to come in from the tribe to add it to the newsletter~  I have always done newsletters for my group and such over the years so pretty good at creating them – was an honor to do this for them~

I do believe the past couple of weeks I had the flu – all better now and feel like myself again~

Coni