There's a San Jacinto Peak near Los Angeles, California. It's quite a spectacular view from the bottom or the top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jacinto_Peak. Maybe Peter Gabriel is referring to this mountain. I was one of those Scouts who climbed it. He seems to be describing the genocide of Native Americans. We should remember what one civilization can do to another when people think of themselves as belonging to "us" vs. "them" rather than as humans. Genocide is still happening all over the world; we humans still haven't learned to generalize and act on this simple lesson from history. Maybe we need to teach this explicitly in schools since songs like this, moving though they are, don't seem to get through all our thick skulls.
There's a San Jacinto Peak near Los Angeles, California. It's quite a spectacular view from the bottom or the top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jacinto_Peak. Maybe Peter Gabriel is referring to this mountain. I was one of those Scouts who climbed it. He seems to be describing the genocide of Native Americans. We should remember what one civilization can do to another when people think of themselves as belonging to "us" vs. "them" rather than as humans. Genocide is still happening all over the world; we humans still haven't learned to generalize and act on this simple lesson from history. Maybe we need to teach this explicitly in schools since songs like this, moving though they are, don't seem to get through all our thick skulls.