That day arrived.

We traded blindly with those from every corner of the earth. The yellow man, the reddish brown, the tan. Every man wanted what he did not have. In exchange for gold and ivory, they gave us sweet spices and guns. Some of the traders never went home. They were impressed by our ways, by how our children relished the company of elders, by how our healers cured diseases, often without medicine. They spoke the names of their countries: England, Portugal, Spain, France, The Netherlands. We wondered what those nations were like. If, like us, men hunted while women planted crops and cared for children. Or if, in their villages, some painted and decorated their bodies. We didn’t know. No pale man bore the marks of his tribe. Some told of their people and cultural ways that were unlike our own. They spoke of beasts we did not know and foods we’d never heard of. They showed us currency that resembled mere pieces of paper, and flat, round stones they called coins. Their children played strange games with strange objects, but, like us, they played all the same. We were definitely different people, but on the surface, it seemed, very much the same.

We also wondered if, perhaps, back in their lands they performed rituals to honor their dead. When we mentioned ours, they seemed not to understand how the two, the living and the not-living, coexisted. We laughed at first, sure that they were mocking us, since everyone knows that life transcends all realms, but once we discovered their seriousness, we froze in horror.

Then came the disaster.

With open arms, we embraced those who looked nothing like us, assuming all life honors life.

We were wrong.

In the end, we fed and strengthened our own captors. We cannot claim naiveté. We cannot say we were people undeveloped. We cannot say there were no signs. We can say only that we did not heed them. Sound wisdom was as common to us as the evening breeze. We scoffed and shrugged at elders’ forewarning of a time of great tragedy and chaos. We did not believe them. We had learned to ignore our own gods. To take their goodness for granted. To believe that because of them, we were immune to external attack. So we did not hear them. We heard only what we sought to hear. Now we hear it all, echoing in our regretful memories.

If only we could have seen into the future, we might have avoided the onslaught. Most of us had no such powers. The few who did, the seers and sages, we dismissed. They were always speaking of things to come, warning of impending disasters that rarely came to pass. At least in our lifetime. Now we know that prophesies come to one generation and materialize in another. If only we had listened. If only we had had more disciplined ears. We did not.

We blamed ourselves. We blamed our gods. We blamed each other. But there was no one to blame. Only shame to bear. And pity. Great pity. That a people so strong had missed so many clues. The forests whispered it. The birds chirped it. The trees waved it. The antelope danced it. The tall grass swayed it. The lions roared it. The elders said it, over and over. “Beware! Seek not the thing you do not need. Greed destroys wisdom. Let just enough be enough.” We were too blessed. Our abundance suggested immortality, so we stopped searching for invisible things. Our mothers had worked so hard that we did not have to. Our fathers had killed enough game that their sons hardly knew the hunt. We didn’t know then what we know now: A life of leisure destroys a child. When there’s nothing to work for, there’s nothing to gain, nothing to die for. So we had to die that we might live again.