74th Issue: Margaret George and Solomon Bibo
Today I’ll be telling you about two different people I learned about recently who I thought were interesting.
The first is Margaret George, a commander of Kurdish Peshmerga forces during the first Iraqi-Kurdish War. Margaret was Assyrian, which is a Christian ethnic minority in northern Iraq. They lived with the other large ethnic minority, the Kurds, but had been fighting with each other for a while because both of them want their own self-governing country, and the majority in Iraq have been fighting to not let them have that. There have been massacres and Iraq has tried to destroy their cultures as well. By the 1960s, when Margaret George was around, the Kurds and Assyrians had decided that they could fight together against their mutual enemy.
Margaret was born in 1942 in a mountain village. Her father fought for the Kurdish cause and at one point he tried to marry her off but she refused. She got a job at a hospital, but when her village was attacked by a pro government militia she joined the Peshmerga to fight alongside the Kurds. She started as a medical worker but rose in the ranks and became a fighter – one of the few female leaders of an all-male unit of soldiers. Since she was Christian instead of Muslim, she was allowed to fight and it helped that her father and other family members were already involved in the fighting as well. She led her forces to victory in battle multiple times and was well-known for her skills.
Margaret really loved photography, and liked having her picture taken and given out so that she could inspire other women to join the Peshmerga. Her pictures circulated throughout Iraq and made it all the way to Europe, where she became known as the “Joan of Arc of the Kurdish Revolution”. Some said she was even more famous than the actual leader of the Kurdish forces.
Margaret was killed in December of 1969. Assyrians say she was killed because she stood up for Assyrian rights at a meeting of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Kurds say that she was killed because she had a sexual relationship with a high ranking Kurdish official, and that damaged the official’s reputation. Others say she was assassinated by the Iraqi government. Margaret was buried in her village as a hero, with many military leaders in attendance.
For some Peshmerga fighters, she became a symbol of bravery and they carried her picture with them for protection like a talisman. Female fighters especially still are inspired by her. There are many songs about her and her grave was renovated and re-inaugurated in 2018.
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Another interesting person I found out about recently is Solomon Bibo. Solomon lived in the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and he was born in Prussia to a Jewish family. He joined his two older brothers to move to the United States at age sixteen, and spent some time learning English in New York City. His brothers had moved to New Mexico where another Jewish family had lent them money to start up as traders, opening up several stores. Solomon moved to be with them, where all three brothers learned some of the Native American languages to trade better.
The brothers were known for being fair to local Native American tribes. They mediated land disputes and tried to make it so that Native Americans weren’t taken advantage of in their dealings with white people for land sales and other similar issues.
Solomon got involved in the Acoma Pueblo when the Department of the Interior sent Presbyterian missionaries who had married into the rival Laguna Pueblo to do a land survey. Even though Solomon intervened on the Acoma people’s behalf, even learning their language, unfortunately the survey went in the Laguna people’s favor.
Solomon established the first trading post with the Acoma people, and they signed a thirty year lease to give Solomon their land in exchange for $12,000 and keeping squatters away, as well as protecting their cattle. Solomon married the granddaughter of an Acoma governor, Juana, and she converted to Judaism. There was no rabbi there, but they married in an ‘Indian ceremony before a Catholic priest”. This made Solomon a member of the Acoma tribe officially.
In 1885, Solomon was elected as governor, and served four times. He started up a ‘modern education system’, which were the schools that became known as Indian residential or boarding schools. He did face opposition, and the schools were controversial at the time, because some believed traditional tribal ways should be preserved. If you’d like to read more about some of the abuse that took place at these schools, here’s a good place to start. Solomon moved to San Francisco at this time and became a partner in a grocery store. He lived there but kept his properties and investments in New Mexico until the Great Depression, when he and his brothers lost much of their money. Solomon died in 1934 and he is cremated and buried in Colma, California. Many of his descendants, who are of Hispanic, Jewish, and Native American descent, still live in New Mexico.