hot today Chile tomorrow

In what seems today to be an odd occurrence the pope decided the border between Brazil and the rest of South America roughly along a north/south meridian (had to look up meridians and longitudes, the things one learns when one is a fellow of The Institute).  I assume that the conquistadors and their ilk carved up South America with the blessing of the crown of Spain, but why those exact boundaries?  And what about comparatively small countries like Uruguay and Paraguay without a coastline?  I'll put a wiki expedition on my calendar.

Chile is indeed one of the oddest nations with the driest desert in the world and some of the highest mountains.  It was not a very habitable area for the Indians and I believe it is the South American country with the highest percentage of Europeans.  I think the countries vary considerably in percentage of white and non-white.  You kind of wonder why more Europeans headed for Ellis Island didn't decide to head for warmer climes.  I wonder if malaria was a problem.

Even though they are high in the polls I don't see much future for Joe or Bernie, or for that matter the Big Girl who has to be stroking her chin.  The dems want new blood.  There is also some troubling talk about how the candidate should be nonwhite and/or a woman.  I don't see anything wrong with such a candidate, but i don't think we should be excluding white guys on principal.  Well we are yet in the primeval mists of 2020.


At what point did the settlers go from being Englishman to Americans, or more accurately to Virginians or Pennsylvanians and so on?  Or maybe I should ask when did they go from being Virginians and Pennsylvanians etc. to being Americans.  The original colonies weren't that interested in expansion because once people got too far into the woods the state lost control of them.  If you take that Frederick Jackson Turner's book about the frontier which we have discussed briefly, it was the guys who went into the woods who were the real Americans while those coastal colonies were just a remnant of the old guard.

I don't know if you can speak for all Indians with this Great Spirit stuff.  There were a lot of Indians in a lot of different places and I'm guessing they came up with a lot of different religions.  That nature worship is a thing that Europeans and I imagine all people had when they were in a hunter/gatherer stage, and I don't think it is unique to the Amerinds.  And while they may not have thought of an individual owning land in the tribal territory, they did believe in the tribe collectively owning the land and fought other Indians and the white man over that.