You Saw this Speech in the MMMemo Two Weeks Ago. I sometimes blow off the wizard, but I never blow off Princess Pennie. So when she asked me to put this speech in today’s rabbit hole, I said, “Yes ma’am.”

In 1744, when ­Thomas Jefferson was still in diapers, all of North America outside the 13 colonies was “Indian Territory.” So when a delegation from Virginia offered to provide a college education for a dozen Native American boys, Chief Canassatego replied,

“We know you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in these colleges. And the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We’re convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily. But you who are so wise must know that different nations have different conceptions of things. And you will not, therefore, take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours.”

“We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up in the colleges of the northern province. They were instructed in all your sciences. But when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, and therefore were neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor councilors. They were totally good for nothing.”

“We are, however, not the less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting. To show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.”

Some people are street smart and some people are book smart.

The thing to remember is that one does not negate the other.

Roy H. Williams