Book Blog #8

Chapter 5: Westward into Native American Plains:

Aggressive invasion was Renamed and Reframed

as the United States' "Manifest Destiny."

Wetiko and racism converged as the United States moved west. Knowing the impact is a step toward understanding how to mitigate and recover from its destruction. Native cultures west of the Mississippi were ravaged and wounded, but not defeated. Tribal Nations east of the Mississippi and west of the Appalachians made a strong, unified stand to defend their lands. Their multi-tribal leader was Tecumseh of the Shawnees. He sent out a rousing call for resistance:

Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, “Never! Never!” [[i]

Chief Tecumseh. having reputation of being caring, fearless and wise, found open ears from the leaders of neighboring tribes. A poem attributed to Chief Tecumseh shows him to be a person of depth as well as a warrior:

“Live your Life”

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect the views of others and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day you go over the great divide

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home." [ftn https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1025817-so-live-your-life]

Allies joined his confederation in battle against the United States to defend their homeland but were unsuccessful in achieving the rescinding of Midwest land treaties. They formed an alliance with Great Britain in the War of 1812 and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. However, after U.S. naval forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, the British and their Indian allies retreated into Upper Canada, where the American forces engaged them in battle and Tecumseh was killed. His death caused the pan-Indian alliance to collapse. Within a few years, the remaining tribal lands in the Old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin) were ceded to the U.S. government and subsequently opened for new settlement.[ii]

The frontier line that tribes were told was to protect “Indian land” kept moving west. The Mississippi River boundary, established by the Indian Removal Act was soon overrun by settlers when gold was discovered in California. But after the frontier boundary was moved even further west to the 95th meridian, gold was discovered in Colorado, prompting an additional rush of settlers, again making the boundary obsolete.

[i] Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (p. 1). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. [ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh

]

During the 1st half of the 19th century, about 35 treaties were made to purchase land from the tribes remaining in the Old Northwest and Southeast, thereby extinguishing Native American rights to These ratified agreements were signed either by the executive branch or by Congress. Treaties were typically made in the context of military pressure that weakened Native American negotiating positions. All of these treaties were subsequently broken by the United States.

The California Gold Rush, spannlng from about 1848 to 1854 prompted a flood of settlers to head West, who paid minimal attention to boundaries. The “frontier line” that tribes were told was to protect “Indian land” kept moving west. The Mississippi River boundary, established by the Indian Removal Act was soon overrun by settlers when gold was discovered in California. But after the frontier boundary was moved even further west to the 95th meridian, gold was discovered in Colorado, prompting an additional rush of settlers, again making the boundary obsolete.[iv]

To justify these breaches of the “permanent Indian frontier,” the policy makers in Washington invented "Manifest Destiny," a term which lifted wetiko, including land hunger, to a lofty plane. The Europeans and their descendants believed that they were ordained by destiny to rule all of America. They were the dominant race and therefore responsible for the Indians—along with their lands, their forests, and their mineral wealth. Manifest Destiny became the new cloak for encomiendas, the royal mandates that had given colonizers rights over land and over people. Greed for land, power, wealth, and exploitation of other people, characterizing the contagious disease of wetiko, became integral to the United States’ westward movement. Only the New Englanders, who had destroyed or driven out all “their” Indians, spoke against Manifest Destiny.[v]

As, so-called, civilization advanced, supposedly taming the wilderness; clear streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and wastes. The earth was ravaged and squandered. To the Indians, it seemed that Europeans hated everything in nature – living forests and their birds and beasts, grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.[vi]

Reviewing the unfolding of this history is vitally important to the present. Native American sensitivity and resistance to the destruction of land, water and air continues; for example, in resisting unnecessary and destructive pipelines at Standing Rock, N.D., in northern Minnesota across the wild rice pristine lakes and the TransCanada pipeline transporting the world’s dirtiest oil from the oil sands in Alberta to the endangered waters of the Puget Sound. The destruction motivated by wetiko is exponentially increasing to the point where we have brought reality to the proverbial metaphor of the bird destroying its own nest.

The World Wildlife Fund 2020 report notes the staggering extent of human impact on the planet. Populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have, on average, declined in size by 68 percent in just over 50 years.

The biggest drivers of current biodiversity loss are overexploitation and agriculture, both linked to continually increasing human consumption. Given the interconnectivity between the health of nature, the well-being of people and the future of our planet, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) urges the global community to unite for a global deal for nature and people to reverse the trend of biodiversity loss.

Nor has the concept of Manifest Destiny receded into history. In a speech to the U.S. Naval Academy’s class of 2018, Ex-President Trump recently said of settlers that they “tamed a continent,” adding “We will not apologize for America.”[vii] What settlers regarded as wilderness, however, Native Americans regarded as home. Those whom so many settlers regarded as savages, Native Americans referred to as tribal nations and communities. Most tragically, the racism and Wetiko of White Nationalism provided the rationalization for thousands of atrocities and the genocide of millions of Native Americans. Their spokespersons from past and present provide a description of their values and way of life that was demeaned and assaulted. To understand the impact of these invasions, the culture that was nearly lost will be described. Key features of the Native American Plains Culture included:

· Experiencing the land as Mother Earth – People and all other beings are children of the Earth; therefore, animals and plants are relatives, to be treated as such!

The Dakota word “Mitaqouyasin,” meaning “for all our relatives,” has become an intertribal word because of shared meanings. The close of prayers for self or for others, is marked by saying “Mitaqouyasin,” signifying that spiritual aspirations for oneself or those who are close, are always in a context of living with and for others.

In a world where Spirit is experienced as an integral part of everyday life, stories are told of animals becoming people and people becoming animals. Hunter and prey are intimately related. Animals are respected, gratefully taken for food and seen as gifting themselves to sustain the life of the hunters’ community.

· Spiritual awareness is cultivated through attention to everyday experiences.

The power of Spiritual energies is everywhere, connecting everything. Paying respectful, caring attention to land, rocks, individual plants and animals and other people are important ways of tuning into Spiritual communication. Attentiveness to Spirit is taught to the young, not by words, but through the imitation of elders.

Sacred sites have evolved through a history of relationships, beginning when sensitive people realized that a particular place was blessed by an unusually high concentration of Spiritual energy. Through visitations by generations of others, these places have absorbed and reflect extraordinarily strong relationship energy.

· Ceremonies originate in outreaching from Spirit to people. They enhance mutual relationships between Spirit, participants and relatives (all other beings). The Lakota Sweat Lodge embodies elements that are core to many Spiritual ceremonies. The Lodge is circular, reflecting sacred interconnectedness. It is entered, with humbleness, close to the ground, sitting intimately on Mother Earth with others in a circle of equality. When entering and leaving and when concluding individual prayers, participants say “Mitaqouyasin,” acknowledging that they are seeking blessings for all their relatives, not simply themselves. Preparation by the Medicine Person directing the ceremony, includes a loading of the Pipe whose stem is wood, representing the plant people; with a stone bowl, representing Mother Earth; wrappings of hide, representing animal people; and feathers, representing the flying people. Loading of the tobacco that carries prayers, is done with song and movement that acknowledges Earth, Sky, and the 4 Directions. “Grandfather” rocks, heated in a sacred fire and brought into the center of the Lodge represent Mother Earth’s core passionate creativity and ancient ancestors. A smoking of the pipe and Feast following the ceremony is a transition into replenished living with a community of gratitude.

Nuanced interpersonal relationships[viii] –

Codes of respect toward others varied according to type of relationship. Casual relationships often meant the avoidance of direct eye contact so as not to be intrusive; and to avoid excessive talk so as to be respectful of individual space. Friendships and familial relationships could be gentle and jocular. Relationships between genders included norms to respect sexual energies and avoid sexual abuse. Children were regarded as sacred and discipline was generally nonphysical so as not to harm their spirit.

Norms were internalized rather than externally enforced, leading to an enhanced experience and valuing of individual freedom.

· Tribal relationships included norms protecting the elderly and women and children from being left alone or without food, shelter, and caring.

· Intertribal relationships were woven together through marriages and through societies organized according to common interests across tribes. Multi-tribal gatherings could measure into the thousands. They were woven together by feasting and dancing societies, craft guilds, women’s societies (sometimes also open to homosexual men) and male soldier societies. All these organizations had their own officers, insignia, ceremonies and rules. They were experienced as part of a sacred order, established so that their nations could live harmoniously and well. The soldier societies upheld many of the highest ideals of the culture; e.g., ensuring that hunters followed the prescribed regulations for killing and distributing meat, feeding first the helpless, the old, the poor and widows who had no other means of support.[ix] The animals had given themselves to their human relations and since the gift was intended to benefit all the people, it was natural to, in turn, share the meat with the same generosity.

Across Plains Tribes, the pattern of cultural disruption and Native American genocide that was triggered by the invasion of traders, settlers, missionaries and the US government was similar to that which we described in colonial America. Descriptions of this invasion are not meant to vilify those who participated, often unwittingly. The purpose of this exploration is to highlight the wetiko and racist infections that drove these events.

Initial contact was through traders. They brought devastating European diseases, for which Native Americans had no immunity. Native Americans were also vulnerable to the infection of wetiko. The concept of balanced trading and of taking no more animal life than was needed, was challenged by greedily taking and trading as many pelts as possible for the maximal amount of European goods, often including guns and alcohol. When fur trading began to decline, some traders got into the market of speculative land acquisition and selling. The government would become the middle broker, buying from the Indians, then selling to the traders, who would in turn sell to settlers. Those Native American leaders who became infected with wetiko, sometimes changed their concept of land as something living that could not be sold, to property that could be sold at minimal values through treaties. Usually, such selling was reinforced by military pressure.

The impact of the US government on tribes came in several ways. Firstly, the forced removal of Eastern tribes to the Plains created competition for lands that had traditionally been used or shared by resident tribes for their homes and material support. The adding of guns to such competition, created intertribal tensions that sometimes escalated to violence. Government troops became a tool for land grabbing on behalf of the pressuring settlers and gold miners.

Treaty making “squadrons” included traders, representing commercial interests; government representatives, paving the way for westward expansion; and missionaries, seeking to pacify and civilize Native Americans, according to European values. When treaty making failed, or when treaty promises were deceptive or breached and subsequently resisted by Native Americans, military enforcement by the US government was accented by racism and carried out with atrocities.

As in the colonial invasions of the East, tribes initially welcomed Europeans; however, as their culture was disrupted and racistly scorned, their homeland and animal relatives ravaged, treaty promises broken and atrocities perpetrated by the military and frontier militia, tribes resisted. Sampling violence, from the Civil War era to 1890, in succession, we will look at the Minnesota Valley Sioux uprising, the Sand Creek massacre, Custer’s Last Stand, the massacre at Wounded Knee and the California Genocide. The importance of remembering genocidal traumas is that the suffering of the victims is transmitted through subsequent generations; likewise, issues of entitlement and collective guilt plague descendants of the perpetrators. To move ahead with healing and the establishment of a society with equal opportunities, requires understanding how the past is affecting the present.

The Minnesota River Valley Sioux Uprising, 1862

March 1860, the U.S. Congress passes Pre-emption Bill, providing free land to settlers living in western territories before the land was purchased from Native Americans. On May 20, 1860, Congress passed the Homestead Act, granting 160 acres of western land to settlers at $1.25 per acre.[x]

Responding to the availability of land and lured by speculators, more than 150,000 settlers pushed into Minnesota Sioux country during the ten years preceding the Civil War, thus collapsing the flank of the once “permanent Indian frontier,” a line established with the pretense of preserving land for Native Americans. As the result of two deceptive treaties, the woodland Sioux were crowded into a narrow strip of territory along the Minnesota River. From the beginning, agents and traders had hovered around them like buzzards systematically cheating them out of the greater part of the promised annuities for which they had been persuaded to give up their lands.[xi]

In 1862, incidents of racist scorn plus abuse of Native American women, had heightened tensions between Native Americans and White men. Then, with crop failures and most of the wild game gone from reservation land, and when Indians crossed into their old hunting grounds now claimed by White settlers, violence was barely constrained. The final catalyst of violence came when annuities were not received from Washington and the Sioux were not given credit to release food and supplies from the trading post at Fort Snelling.

Because their people were starving, Little Crow and some of the other chiefs went to their agent and asked why they could not be issued food from the agency warehouse, which was filled with provisions. The agent replied that he could not do this until the money arrived, and he brought up a hundred soldiers to guard the warehouse.

Five hundred Sioux surrounded the soldiers while others broke into the warehouse and began carrying out sacks of flour. The White Commander, sympathized, so instead of firing upon them. he persuaded the agent to issue pork and flour to the Indians and await payment until the money arrived. After the Agent did this, the warriors went away peacefully. Little Crow did not leave, however, until the Agent promised to issue similar amounts of food to the Sioux at the Lower Agency, thirty miles downriver. The Agent kept him waiting several days before arranging a council. Early that morning Little Crow and several hundred hungry Mdewkanton Sioux assembled, but it was obvious from the beginning that Galbraith and the traders at the Lower Agency had no intention of issuing food from their stores before arrival of the annuity funds.

Little Crow arose, faced the Agent, and spoke for his people:

“We have waited a long time. The money is ours, but we cannot get it. We have no food, but here are these stores, filled with food. Make some arrangement by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry, they help themselves.”

One of the traders responded, “So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.”[xii]

The words of the trader angered all the Indians, but to Little Crow they were like hot blasts upon his already seared emotions. For years he had tried to keep the treaties, to follow the advice of the White men and lead his people on their road. It seemed now that he had lost everything. His own people were losing faith in him, blaming him for their misfortunes, and now the agents and traders had turned against him. This was a pattern to be repeated as settlers and the Army moved west. Older chiefs who were aware of the strength of the United States Army, often sought conciliation to avoid battles that they knew they would eventually lose. But in the process, they would lose the trust of warriors who wanted to defend their homeland at any cost.

Little Crow knew that young warriors were talking openly of war to drive Whites out of the Minnesota River Valley. It was a good time to fight, they said, because so many Bluecoat soldiers were away fighting the Graycoats. Little Crow considered such talk foolish; he had been to the East and seen the power of the Americans. They were everywhere like locusts and destroyed their enemies with great thundering cannon. War upon them was unthinkable.

Late that night Little Crow was awakened by the sound of many voices. They told him of an encounter between young warriors and settlers.

“They came to a settler’s fence, and here they found a hen’s nest with some eggs in it. One of them took the eggs, when another said: ‘Don’t take them, for they belong to a White man and we may get into trouble.’ The other was angry, for he was very hungry and wanted to eat the eggs, and he dashed them to the ground and replied: ‘You are a coward. You are afraid of the White man. You are afraid to take even an egg from him, though you are half-starved. Yes, you are a coward, and I will tell everybody so.’ The other replied: I am not a coward. I am not afraid of the White man, and to show you that I am not I will go to the house and shoot him. Are you brave enough to go with me?’ The one who had called him coward said: ‘Yes, I will go with you, and we will see who is the braver of us two.’ Their two companions then said: ‘We will go with you, and we will be brave, too.’ They all went to the house of the White man, but he got alarmed and ran to another house where there were some other White men and women. The four Indians followed them and killed three men and two women. Then they hitched up a team belonging to another settler and drove back to camp … and told what they had done.”

Little Crow rebuked the young leaders, and then sarcastically asked why they had come to him for advice when they had chosen another to be their spokesman? They assured Little Crow that he was still their war chief. No Sioux life would be safe now after these killings, they said. It was the White man’s way to punish all Indians for the crimes of one or a few; they might as well strike first instead of waiting for the soldiers to come and kill them. It would be better to fight the White men now while they were fighting among themselves far to the south.

Little Crow retorted,

I am not a coward, and not a fool. Braves, you are like little children; you know not what you are doing. You are full of the White man’s devil water. You are like dogs in the Hot Moon when they run mad and snap at their own shadows. We are only little herds of buffalo left scattered; the great herds that once covered the prairies are no more. See!—the White men are like the locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is a snowstorm.

You may kill one—two—ten; yes, as many as the leaves in the forest yonder, and their brothers will not miss them. Kill one—two—ten, and ten times ten will come to kill you. Count your fingers all day long and White men with guns in their hands will come faster than you can count. Yes; they fight among themselves—away off. Do you hear the thunder of their big guns? No; it would take you two moons to run down to where they are fighting, and all the way your path would be among White soldiers as thick as tamaracks in the swamps of the Ojibways. Yes; they fight among themselves, but if you strike at them they will all turn on you and devour you and your women and little children just as the locusts in their time fall on the trees and devour all the leaves in one day. You are fools. You cannot see the face of your chief; your eyes are full of smoke. You cannot hear his voice; your ears are full of roaring waters. Braves, you are little children—you are fools. You will die like the rabbits when the hungry wolves hunt them in the Hard Moon of January. Little Crow is not a coward; I will die with you.”[xiii]

Little Crow told his warriors that to be victorious they must

drive the Bluecoat soldiers from the valley, then all the White settlers would go away. They could gain nothing by killing defenseless settlers. But he knew that his decision to begin the war had unleashed raiding parties. But it was too late to turn back. The war against the soldiers would go on as long as he had warriors to fight them.[xiv]

Battles during the early weeks of the uprising were not decisive. Both sides were paying a price. Gen. Sibley was also one of the perpetrators who had swindled the Sioux, and was appointed by Gov. Ramsey to squelch the uprising. He sent little Crow a note, asking him to make proposal. Little Crow, because of their history, of course, did not trust him. Nevertheless, he elected to describe the circumstances leading to the uprising, in hopes that they would gain sympathies from the General and the Governor. The latter had told Minnesotans that “The Sioux Indians must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.”[xv]

Gen. Sibley replied to Little Crow’s note, “You have murdered many of our people without any sufficient cause. Return me the prisoners under a flag of truce, and I will talk with you then like a man.” Little Crow knew this was a ploy to capture him. It was a ploy that had been used many times in the battles between the U.S. Army and Native American leaders, a pattern that would be devastatingly repeated again and again as those who trusted truce flags would be captured or killed. Whatever possibility there might have been for little Crow’s proposals to be well received, they were undermined by a rival chief, Wabasha, who wished to court favor with the White establishment by secretly sending a note that blamed Little Crow for the war and offering to unconditionally return prisoners. But Wabasha’s son-in-law spoke for Little Crow and the majority of the warriors:

“I am for continuing the war, and am opposed to the delivery of the prisoners. I have no confidence that the Whites will stand by any agreement they make if we give them up. Ever since we traded with them, their agents and traders have robbed and cheated us. Some of our people have been shot, some hung; others placed upon floating ice and drowned; and many have been starved in their prisons. …We may regret what has happened, but the matter has gone too far to be remedied. We have got to die. Let us, then, kill as many of the Whites as possible, and let the prisoners die with us.”[xvi]

Superior firepower and numbers of soldiers put down the uprising. Little Crow led a band of followers to North Dakota. Gen. Sibley surrounded the surrendering warriors, chaining some 600 of the 2000, for military trials. 303 were sentenced to death, but action depended on the approval of Pres. Lincoln. While President Lincoln was reviewing the trial records, Sibley moved the condemned Indians to a prison camp. While they were being escorted, a mob of citizens attacked the prisoners with pitchforks, scalding water, and hurled stones. Again that night a mob of citizens stormed the prison camp intent upon lynching the Indians. The soldiers kept the mob at bay, and the next day transferred the Indians to a stronger stockade. Sibley decided to keep the remaining 1,700 Sioux —mostly women and children—as prisoners, although they were accused of no crime other than having been born Indians. He ordered them transferred to Fort Snelling, and along the way they too were assaulted by angry White citizens. Many were stoned and clubbed; a child was snatched from its mother’s arms and beaten to death. At Fort Snelling the four-mile-long procession was shunted into a fenced enclosure on damp bottomland, there, under soldier guard, housed in dilapidated shelters and fed on scanty rations, The remnants of the once proud woodland Sioux awaited their fate. On December 6th President Lincoln notified Sibley that he should “cause to be executed” thirty-nine of the 303 convicted Sioux. That morning the execution site all was filled with vindictive and morbidly curious citizens.[xvii]

The thirty-eight condemned men were marched from the prison to the scaffold. They sang the Sioux death song until soldiers pulled White caps over their heads and placed nooses around their necks. But for the intercession of Abraham Lincoln there would have been three hundred; even so, a spectator boasted that it was “America’s greatest mass execution.”

After the execution, many of the bodies were dug up and used to practice autopsies. William Mayo (one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic) acquired the body of Mahpiya Akan Nažin (Stands on Clouds), dissected it before an audience, boiled and cleaned the bones, shellacked them, and kept them on display in his office for many years afterward. [xviii]

Surviving Indians were informed that they would be removed to a reservation in Dakota Territory. “Exterminate or banish,” was the cry of the land-hungry settlers. The first shipment of 770 Sioux left St. Paul by steamboat on May 4, 1863. Minnesotans lined the river landing to see them off with shouts of derision and showers of hurled stones.[xix] The convergent infection of wetiko and racism had deeply infected a strong segment of Minnesota settlers. The war provided them an opportunity to seize the Sioux’s remaining lands without compensation or treaty impediments.

Crow Creek on the Missouri River was the site chosen for the Sioux deportees reservation. The soil was barren, rainfall scanty, wild game scarce, and the alkaline water unfit for drinking. Soon the surrounding hills were covered with graves; of the 1,300 brought there in 1863, less than a thousand survived their first winter. Among the visitors to Crow Creek that year was a young Teton Sioux. He looked with pity upon his Santee Sioux cousins and listened to their stories of the Americans who had taken their land and driven them away. Truly, he thought, that nation of White men is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. Soon they would take the buffalo country unless the hearts of the Indians were strong enough to hold it. He resolved that he would fight to hold it. His name was Tatanka Yotanka, the Sitting Bull.[xx]

The Sand Creek Massacre

This event illustrates how the convergence of wetiko and racism contributed to one of the most horrific massacres in the West. Because it drew national attention, graphic records were saved and because its atrocities echoed across the Plains Tribes, oral traditions are also plentiful. Three major characters are herein highlighted: Chief Black Kettle, whose village was slaughtered, plus Gov. John Evans of the Colorado Territory and Col. Rev. Chivington who together strategized to render the village defenseless.

Black Kettle became a foil to more assertively resistant chiefs because of his repeated endeavors to make peace, his vulnerabilities to deception and repeated signing of treaties. He and his wife were among the few to escape the Sand Creek massacre after he had been deceptively promised safety for his village. Then, later, he and his wife were both murdered by the cavalry in the Washita massacre, led by Gen. Custer, again after he had been promised safety for his peaceful village. Two things are to be said on Black Kettle’s behalf. Firstly, because of the strong custom of truth telling among the Plains Tribes, he seemed unable to get a handle on the deceptive lying of White negotiators. Secondly, because of a trip to Washington DC, he was keenly aware of United States military strength and the futility of war

Black kettle’s endeavors to make peace had led to an invitation for him and his longtime friend Lean Bear to visit Abraham Lincoln in Washington. President Lincoln gave them medals to wear on their breasts, and Colonel Greenwood presented Black Kettle with a huge United States flag with White stars for the thirty-four states “bigger than glittering stars in the sky on a clear night.” They were told that as long as that flag flew above them no soldiers would ever fire upon them. Black Kettle was very proud of his flag and when in permanent camp always mounted it on a pole above his tepee[xxi]

While in peaceful encampment, Lean Bear and Black Kettle received a message that soldiers were coming. Lean Bear told Black Kettle he would go out to meet them and find out what they wanted. He hung the medal from Lincoln outside his coat and took some papers that had been given him in Washington certifying that he was a good friend of the United States, and then rode out with an escort of warriors.

“Lean Bear told us warriors to stay where we were,” Wolf Chief said, “so as not to frighten the soldiers, while he rode forward to shake hands with the officer and show his papers. … When the chief was within only twenty or thirty yards of the line, the officer called out in a very loud voice and the soldiers all opened fire on Lean Bear and the rest of us. Lean Bear and his lone escort were shot off their horses and then executed at close range. Wolf Chief related that they were ready to take vengeance but Black Kettle held them back shouting, “do not make war.”[xxii]

After this engagement, Chivington sent out a larger force, which attacked a peaceful Cheyenne camp, killing two women and two children. Even after the murder of Lean Bear his friend of more than 50 years, and now this attack, Black Kettle still endeavored to make peace. He sought out a long time White friend for information. He learned that the commanding officers in both attacks had been under orders from Col. Chivington to “kill Cheyenne’s whenever and wherever found.”[xxiii]

Gov. Evans, who unknown to Black Kettle, was complicit with Chivington in wanting the Plains Indians driven out of Colorado, issued orders for citizens and troops to fire on any Indians who were not within reservations. Black Kettle, fearing war, gathered a small circle of chiefs and headed off to see the governor, accompanied by Wynkoop, a friendly officer who had come to respect the Native Americans. They traveled with Black Kettle’s American flag waving above their wagon. After a 400 mile journey, officer Wynkoop, had great difficulty persuading Gov. Evans to even talk with Black Kettle. “But what shall I do with the Third Colorado Regiment if I make peace?” Evans asked Wynkoop. “They have been raised to kill Indians, and they must kill Indians.” He explained to Wynkoop that Washington officials had given him permission to raise the new regiment because he had sworn it was necessary for protection against hostile Indians, and if he now made peace, the Washington politicians would accuse him of misrepresentation.

When an audience was finally achieved, the governor spoke to the Chief with unmistakable bias and hostility. Officer Wynkoop, wanting to prevent war and also to honor Black Kettle, promised that if his people were brought into the Fort Lyons reservation, he would protect them from the killing orders that had been sent out by the governor. Black Kettle complied, soon after, however, Wynkoop was replaced for being too soft on Indians.[xxiv] Major Scott J. Anthony, an officer of Chivington’s Colorado Volunteers, arrived at Fort Lyon with orders to relieve Wynkoop as commander of the post.[xxv]

One of Anthony’s first orders was to cut the Arapahoe encampment’s rations and to demand the surrender of their weapons. A few days later when a group of unarmed Arapahos approached the fort to trade buffalo hides for rations, Anthony ordered his guards to fire on them. Anthony laughed when the Indians turned and ran. He remarked to one of the soldiers “that they had annoyed him enough, and that was the only way to get rid of them.”

The Cheyenne, who were camped on Sand Creek, heard from the Arapahos that an unfriendly little red-eyed soldier chief had taken the place of their friend, Wynkoop. In the Deer Rutting Moon of mid-November, Black Kettle and a party of Cheyenne journeyed to the fort to see this new soldier chief. His eyes were indeed red (the result of scurvy), but he pretended to be friendly. Several officers who were present at the meeting between Black Kettle and Anthony testified afterward that Anthony assured the Cheyenne that if they returned to their camp at Sand Creek, they would be under the protection of Fort Lyon. Then, deceptively, to empty the camp of defending warriors, he also told Black Kettle that their young men could go east to hunt buffalo until he secured permission from the Army to issue them winter rations.[xxvi

Pleased with Anthony’s remarks, Black Kettle said that the words of Major Anthony made them feel safe at Sand Creek. They would stay there for the winter. After the Cheyenne delegation departed, Anthony ordered Left Hand and Little Raven to disband the Arapaho camp near Fort Lyon. “Go and hunt buffalo to feed yourselves,” he told them. Alarmed by Anthony’s brusqueness, the Arapahos packed up and began moving away.

When they were well out of view of the fort, the two bands of Arapahos separated. Left Hand went with his people to Sand Creek to join the Cheyenne. Little Raven led his band across the Arkansas River and headed south; he did not trust the Red-Eyed Soldier Chief. Anthony now informed his superiors that “there is a band of Indians within forty miles of the post. … I shall try to keep the Indians quiet until such time as I receive reinforcements.”

Twenty-four hours later the reinforcements which Anthony said he needed to attack the Indians were approaching Fort Lyon. They were six hundred men of Colonel Chivington’s Colorado regiments, including most of the Third, which had been formed by Governor John Evans for the sole purpose of fighting Indians.

Two of the younger officers argued that attacking the peaceful camp would violate the pledge of safety given the Indians by both Wynkoop and Anthony, “that it would be murder in every sense of the word,” and any officer participating would dishonor the uniform of the Army. Chivington became violently angry at them and brought his fist down close to the Lieutenant’s face. “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians!” he cried. “I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.” The objecting lieutenants would have to join the expedition or face a court-martial.[xxvii]

Altogether there were about six hundred Indians in the creek bend, two-thirds of them being women and children. Most of the warriors were several miles to the east hunting buffalo for the camp, as they had been told to do by Major Anthony. So confident were the Indians of absolute safety, they kept no night watch except of the pony herd which was corralled below the creek. The first warning they had of an attack was about sunrise—the drumming of hooves on the sand flats. “I was sleeping in a lodge,” Edmond Guerrier (a half-breed, living with the Cheyenne) said. “I heard, at first, some of the squaws outside say there were a lot of buffalo coming into camp; there was a lot of confusion and noise—men, women, and children rushing out of the lodges partly dressed; women and children screaming at sight of the troops; men running back into the lodges for their arms. … I looked toward the chief’s lodge and saw that Black Kettle had a large American flag tied to the end of a long lodgepole and was standing in front of his lodge, holding the pole, with the flag fluttering in the gray light of the winter dawn. I heard him call to the people not to be afraid, that the soldiers would not hurt them; then the troops opened fire from two sides of the camp.” …I could see soldiers dismount and firing with their rifles and pistols. I struck out; but my older companion kept moving ahead toward the cavalrymen to try and talk with them. “Shoot the damned old son of a bitch!” a soldier shouted from the ranks. “He’s no better than an Indian.”

By this time hundreds of Cheyenne women and children were gathering around Black Kettle’s flag. Up the dry creek bed, more were coming from White Antelope’s camp. After all, had not Colonel Greenwood told Black Kettle that as long as the United States flag flew above him, no soldier would fire upon him? White Antelope, an old man of seventy-five, unarmed, his dark face seamed from sun and weather, strode toward the soldiers. He was still confident that the soldiers would stop firing as soon as they saw the American flag and the White surrender flag that Black Kettle had now run up. Medicine Calf Beckwourth, riding beside Colonel Chivington, saw White Antelope approaching. “He came running out to meet the command,” Beckwourth later testified, “holding up his hands and saying ‘Stop! stop!’ He spoke it in as plain English as I can. He stopped and folded his arms until shot down.” White Antelope sang the death song before he died: “Nothing lives long Only the earth and the mountains.”

Robert Bent, unwillingly riding with Chivington, reported that from the direction of the Arapaho camp, Left Hand and his people also tried to reach Black Kettle’s flag. When Left Hand saw the troops, he stood with his arms folded, saying he would not fight the White men because they were his friends. He was shot down.

I think there were six hundred Indians in all. I think there were thirty-five braves and some old men, about sixty in all … the rest of the men were away from camp, hunting. … After the firing the warriors put the squaws and children together and surrounded them to protect them. I saw five squaws under a bank for shelter. When the troops came up to them they ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all.

All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed, and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Everyone I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as I thought, lying by her side. I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them. I saw one squaw whose privates had been cut out. … I saw a little girl about five years of age who had been hid in the sand; two soldiers discovered her, drew their pistols and shot her, and then pulled her out of the sand by the arm. I saw quite a number of infants in arms killed with their mothers.”[xxviii]

Robert Bent’s description of the soldiers’ atrocities was corroborated by Lieutenant James Connor: “In going over the battleground the next day I did not see a body of man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner—men, women, and children’s privates cut out; I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman’s private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick; other men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks.”[xxix]

In a public speech made in Denver not long before this massacre, Colonel Chivington advocated the killing and scalping of all Indians, even infants.[xxx] Subsequent to carrying out such mutilations, Chivington’s men exhibited their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.[xxxi]

Lessons from the Sand Creek massacre (taken in the context of wetiko & racism) –

religious vows to value human life, to protect women and children and to love strangers are not sufficient to overcome wetiko and racism. To be meaningful, verbal commitments require the emotional undergirding of empathy, usually gained through intimate association with others as equals. Earlier in this book, I noted that Plymouth Rock Leader, Increase Mather, a scholar and a devoted pastor had been overcome by both wetiko and racism. Likewise, Evans and Chivington were both religious, members of the Methodist Church, whose pledges include loving others, including strangers outside their fellowship; additionally, Chivington was a pastor. The Methodist Church, in 2016 and 2018 has done public penance for its complicit role in the Sand Creek Massacre and for supporting Manifest Destiny, offering apologies and land to the Arapaho and Cheyenne nations.

(Hypocrisy of religious vows regarding the love of strangers, continues to be an issue for American churches, as the U.S. faces a contemporary immigration crisis.)

George Washington, Gov. John Evans and Col. Rev. John Chivington were all Freemasons who had declared vows to protect women and children. Washington, as noted earlier, ordered the extermination of the Iroquois in Western New York. Evans and Chivington implemented the hunting down and massacre of Native Americans, including women and children.

Leaders in positions of political, military, corporate or other types of organizational power are especially vulnerable to wetiko. Pres. Andrew Jackson set a strong precedent, overseeing the Indian Removal Act. “Clearing out” Native Americans from their land also served the career advancement of both Chivington and Evans. In addition to gaining favor with federal officials for his military accomplishments, Evans was opening the plains for his railroad empire of which Denver would become the hub. He was adding to his egotistical crown which already included the founding of Northwestern University and having the city of Evanston ILL named after him.

Segments of the general population, when it inflates their own interests or self-identity, cheer the exploits of wetiko leaders. Such crowds, like their leaders, can equally be infected with wetiko and racism; they are described as cheering the Denver presentation of scalps from the Sand Creek village, as cheering the banishing of Sioux from Minnesota, throwing stones when they passed; and, as attending to the exhibition of scores of slaves’ heads along a 35 mile route after an 1811 rebellion near New Orleans.

Black Kettle’s odyssey shows that loving peace, honesty and trusting in Leaders without skepticism, evidence or a deep awareness of the evils of wetiko and racism can lead to violent disaster.

Wetiko and racist violence can go beyond winning battles or suppressing rebellions to the unleashing of primal rage that human psyches carry within them, heightened by unsavory childhoods and released through battles colored by racism. How else can we account for the pervasive butchering of bodies at the Sand Creek Massacre, the systemic torturing in Nazi concentration camps, or in such contemporary genocides as the slaughtering of Rohingya in Myanmar and the Yazidi in Iraq?

The role of racism in such genocidal events is to make enemies subhuman in comparison to oneself, shutting off all empathy, and then releasing primal rage, sanctioned by a shared cause. At Sand Creek, Native Americans were seen as savages, as subhuman. Their daring to “resist” was getting in the way of European Americans’ Manifest Destiny to move west, and to dominate the Plains. That such savages would dare to resist, “warranted” the extreme rage that was released and the cruelty that it inflicted.

As news of the Sand Creek massacre spread across the plains, the Cheyenne, Arapahos, and Sioux sent runners back and forth with messages calling for a war of revenge against the murdering White men. Many Indians now rejected Black Kettle and other chiefs who still endeavored to make peace, turning to their war leaders to save them from extermination. [[xxxii]

The Stage Was Set for Custer’s Last Stand

White invaders were challenging Plains Indians on the east in Dakota and on the south along the Platte, but Plains Indians were ready to meet all challenges.

The Great Spirit raised both the White man and the Indian,” Red Cloud said. “I think he raised The Indian first. He raised me in this land and it belongs to me. The White man was raised over the great waters, and his land is over there. Since they crossed the sea, I have given them room. There are now White people all about me. I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it.”[xxxiii]

Red Cloud and other chiefs, residing in the Northern Plains, decided it was time to teach the soldiers a lesson; they would strike them at the point where they were farthest north, a place the White men called Platte Bridge Station. Because the Cheyenne warriors from the south wanted revenge for the relatives massacred at Sand Creek, most of them were invited to go along on the expedition. Roman Nose of the Crooked Lances was their leader, and he rode with Red Cloud, Dull Knife, and Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses. Almost three thousand warriors formed the war party.[xxxiv]

They traveled south from the Powder River country until they reached the hills overlooking the bridge across the North Platte. At the opposite end of the bridge was the military post—a stockade, stage station, and telegraph office. About a hundred soldiers were inside the stockade. After looking at the place through their field glasses, the chiefs decided they would burn the bridge, cross the river at a shallow ford below, and then lay siege to the stockade. But first they would try to draw the soldiers outside with decoys and kill as many as possible.

Soon, however, the soldiers were drawn out by a wagon train approaching from the west. In a few minutes, the Indians had the wagon train surrounded, but the soldiers dug in under the wagons and put up a stubborn fight. During the first minutes of the fighting. Roman Nose’s brother was killed. When Roman Nose heard of this, he was angry for revenge. He called out for all the Cheyenne to prepare for a charge. “We are going to empty the soldiers’ guns!” he shouted. Roman Nose was wearing his medicine bonnet and shield, and he believed that no bullets could strike him. He led the Cheyenne into a circle around the wagons, and they lashed their ponies so that they ran very fast. As the circle tightened closer to the wagons, the soldiers emptied all their guns at once, and then the Cheyenne charged straight for the wagons and killed all the soldiers.

That night in camp, Red Cloud and the other chiefs decided they had taught the soldiers to fear the power of the Indians. And so, they returned to the Powder River country, hopeful that the White men would now obey the Laramie treaty and quit prowling without permission into the Indians’ country north of the Platte.[xxxv]

By late August,1865, the tribes in the Powder River country were scattered from the Bighorns on the west to the Black Hills on the east. They were so sure of the country’s impregnability that most of them were skeptical when they first began hearing rumors of soldiers coming at them from four directions. Three of the soldier columns were under command of General Patrick E. Connor, who had transferred from Utah in May to fight Indians along the Platte route. In 1863 Star Chief Connor had surrounded a camp of Paiutes on Bear River and butchered 278 of them. For this he was hailed by the White men as a brave defender of the frontier from the “red foe.”[xxxvi]

In July,1865, Connor announced that the Indians north of the Platte “must be hunted like wolves,” and he began organizing three columns of soldiers for an invasion of the Powder River country. He warned his officers to accept no overtures of peace from the Indians and ordered bluntly: “Attack and kill every male Indian over twelve years of age.”[xxxvii]

When Conner’s forces arrived in the Powder River Country, he took everyone by surprise. A young family spotted Conner’s forces coming, but when they warned an Arapahoe Village, no one would believe them that there could be soldiers within hundreds of miles. The village of 250 lodges and hundreds of ponies were victims to a surprise attack that killed about 50 Indians, including women and children.

Subsequent to that attack, the Native Americans discovered Conner’s two other columns, humiliated them and drove them out of the country inflicting harsh losses. Connor left a garrison holding newly established Fort Conner and retreated back to Fort Laramie. The Native Americans cut off Fort Connor’s supplies and kept the soldiers enclosed in the fort through the winter, wherein the soldiers fared badly.

The Indians, all except the small bands of warriors needed to watch the fort moved over to the Black Hills, where plentiful herds of antelope and buffalo kept them fat in their warm lodges. Through the long winter evenings, the chiefs recounted the events of Star Chief Connor’s invasion. Because the Arapahos had been overconfident and careless, they had lost a village, several lives, and part of their rich pony herd. The other tribes had lost a few lives but no horses or lodges. They had captured many horses and mules carrying U.S. brands. They had taken many carbines, saddles, and other equipment from the soldiers. Above all, they had gained a new confidence in their ability to drive the Bluecoat soldiers from their country.

“If White men come into my country again, I will punish them again,” Red Cloud said, but he knew that unless he could somehow obtain many new guns like the ones they had captured from the soldiers, and plenty of ammunition for the guns, the Indians could not go on punishing the soldiers forever.[xxxviii]

In the Spring, Plains Chiefs were offered gifts to come in the Fort Laramie for treaty negotiations with a delegation of federal commissioners. But just before negotiations began, a regiment of federal troops arrived and camped just east of the Fort. Since the chiefs had become aware of the regiment, the commissioners decided to introduce Officer Carrington to the chiefs and quietly inform them of what they already knew—that the United States government intended to open a road through the Powder River country regardless of the treaty.

Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses took the platform. In a torrent of words, he made it clear that if the soldiers marched into Sioux country, his people would fight them. “In two moons the command will not have a hoof left,” he declared.

Now it was Red Cloud’s turn. His lithe figure, clad in a light blanket and moccasins, moved to the center of the platform. His straight black hair, parted in the middle, was draped over his shoulders to his waist. His wide mouth was fixed in a determined slit beneath his hawk nose. His eyes flashed as he began scolding the peace commissioners for treating the Indians like children. He accused them of pretending to negotiate for a country while they prepared to take it by conquest.

“The White men have crowded the Indians back year by year,” he said, “until we are forced to live in a small country north of the Platte, and now our last hunting ground, the home of the People, is to be taken from us. Our women and children will starve, but for my part I prefer to die fighting rather than by starvation. … Great Father sends us presents and wants new road. But White Chief goes with soldiers to steal road before Indian says yes or no!”

While the interpreter was still trying to translate the Sioux words into English, the listening Indians became so disorderly that Commissioner Taylor abruptly ended the day’s session. Red Cloud strode past Carrington as if he were not there and continued on across the parade ground toward the Oglala camp. Before the next dawn, the Oglalas were gone from Fort Laramie.[xxxix]

Scouting out the new military force, Red Cloud heard from the Cheyenne that their new fort was too strong to be captured without great loss. They would have to lure the soldiers out into the open, where they could be more easily attacked. Next morning at dawn, a band of Red Cloud’s Oglala stampeded 175 horses and mules from the military herd. When the soldiers came riding in pursuit, the Indians strung them out in a fifteen-mile chase and inflicted the first casualties upon the Bluecoat invaders of the Powder River country. From that day all through the summer of 1866, Carrington’s force was engaged in a relentless guerrilla war.

None of the numerous wagon trains, civilian or military, that moved along the Bozeman Road was safe from surprise attacks. Mounted escorts were spread thin, and the soldiers soon learned to expect deadly ambushes. Soldiers assigned to cut logs a few miles from Fort Connor, now called Fort Phil Kearny were under constant and deadly harassment.[xl]

As the summer wore on, the Indians developed a supply base on the upper Powder, and their grand strategy soon became apparent—make travel on the road difficult and dangerous, cut off supplies for Carrington’s troops, isolate them, and attack. Red Cloud and a young Oglala named Crazy Horse, invented decoy tricks to taunt, infuriate, and then lure soldiers or emigrants into well-laid traps.[xli]

Crazy Horse was more than a courageous warrior. Some of his biographers have called him a Monk-Warrior. He had learned from his stepfather, after his father was murdered, how to center himself in “Mother Earth” and shift into Sacred Reality. In visions, he had received the support of Thunder Beings, giving him the experience of great power. Now, in battles with the cavalry, he was not simply a warrior, but even more, a defender of Sacred Ground. He had become selfless, non-egotistical, refusing to take any personal credit or glory for his exploits, even refusing to wear the customary war bonnet that would have been due to a man of his achievements.[xlii]

By late summer Red Cloud had a force of three thousand warriors. Through their trader friends at Fort Laramie, they managed to assemble a small arsenal of rifles and ammunition, but the majority of warriors still had only bows and arrows. During the early autumn, Red Cloud and the other chiefs agreed that they must concentrate their power against the Little White Chief and the hated fort on the Pineys. Before the coming of the Cold Moons they moved toward the Bighorns and made their camps along the headwaters of the Tongue. From there they were in easy striking distance of Fort Phil Kearny.[xliii]

High Back Bone and Yellow Eagle sometimes worked with young Crazy Horse in planning their elaborate decoys. Early in the Moon of Popping Trees they began tantalizing the woodcutters in the pinery and the soldiers guarding the wagons which brought wood to Fort Phil Kearny. Once, the Ofc. Carrington came out and gave chase. Choosing just the right moment, Crazy Horse dismounted and showed himself on the trail in front of one of Carrington’s hot-blooded young cavalry officers, who immediately led a file of soldiers galloping in pursuit. As soon as the soldiers were strung out along the narrow trail, Yellow Eagle and his warriors sprang from concealment in their rear. In a matter of seconds the Indians swarmed over the soldiers.[xliv]

At their camps that night and for several days following, the chiefs and warriors talked of how foolishly the Bluecoats had acted. Red Cloud was sure that if they could entice a large number of troops out of the fort, a thousand Indians armed with only bows and arrows could kill them all.

The morning of December 21, the chiefs and medicine men decided the day was favorable for a victory. In the first gray light of dawn, a party of warriors started off in a wide circuit toward the wood-train road, where they were to make a feint against the wagons. Ten young men had already been chosen for the dangerous duty of decoying the soldiers—two Cheyenne, two Arapahos, and two from each of the three Sioux divisions, Oglala, Minneconjous and Brulés. Crazy Horse, Hump, and Little Wolf were the leaders.

By midmorning almost two thousand warriors were waiting there for the decoys to bring the Bluecoats into the trap. While the war party was making its feint against the wood train, Crazy Horse and the decoys dismounted and waited in concealment on a slope facing the fort. At the first sound of gunfire, a company of soldiers dashed out of the fort and galloped off to rescue the woodcutters. As soon as the Bluecoats were out of sight, the decoys showed themselves on the slope and moved down closer to the fort.

Crazy Horse waved his red blanket and darted in and out of the brush that fringed the frozen Piney. After a few minutes of this, the Little Soldier Chief in the fort fired off his big twice-shooting gun. The decoys scattered along the slope, jumping, zigzagging, and yelling to make the soldiers believe they were frightened. By this time the war party had withdrawn from the wood train and doubled back toward Lodge Trail Ridge. In a few minutes, the soldiers came in pursuit, some mounted, some on foot. They were commanded by Captain Fetterman, who had explicit orders not to pursue beyond Lodge Trail Ridge.

Crazy Horse and the other decoys now jumped on their ponies and began riding back and forth along the slope of Lodge Trail Ridge, taunting the soldiers and angering them so that they fired recklessly. Bullets ricocheted off the rocks, and the decoys moved back slowly. When the soldiers slowed their advance or halted, Crazy Horse would dismount and pretend to adjust his bridle or examine his pony’s hooves. Bullets whined all around him, and then the soldiers finally moved up on the ridgetop to chase the decoys down toward Peno Creek.

They were the only Indians in sight, only ten of them, and the soldiers were charging their horses to catch them. When the decoys crossed Peno Creek, all eighty-one of the cavalrymen and infantrymen were within the trap. Now the decoys divided into two parties and quickly rode across each other’s trail. This was the signal for attack. Little Horse, the Cheyenne who a year earlier gave warning to the Arapahos of General Connor’s approach, had the honor of signaling his people, who were concealed in gullies on the west side. He raised his lance, and all the mounted Cheyenne and Arapahos charged with a sudden thunder of hooves.

From the opposite side came the Sioux, and for a few minutes the Indians and the walking soldiers were mixed in confused hand-to-hand fighting. The infantrymen were soon all killed, but the cavalrymen retreated to a rocky height near the end of the ridge. They turned their horses loose and tried to take cover among the ice-crusted boulders. Soon it was all over. Not a soldier was left alive.

Casualties were also heavy among the Indians, almost two hundred dead and wounded.[xlv] In memory of the Sand Creek Massacre, soldiers’ bodies were mutilated and it became known as the Fetterman Massacre.[xlvi] The unsavory lesson is that violence begets violence. Revenge is not sweet.

The Fetterman Massacre made a profound impression upon the United States government. It was the worst defeat the Army had yet suffered in Indian warfare, and the second in American history from which came no survivors. Consequently, a new peace commission was dispatched from Washington to Fort Laramie.[xlvii] Plains chiefs were once again invited, with promised gifts, to come to the Fort and make a treaty.

(Spotted Tail) Of The Brulé Sioux, a reputed peacemaker spoke, [xlviii]

This war did not spring up here in our land; this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things. The Great Father and his children are to blame for this trouble. … It has been our wish to live here in our country peaceably, and do such things as may be for the welfare and good of our people, but the Great Father has filled it with soldiers who think only of our death. Some of our people who have gone from here in order that they may have a change, and others who have gone north to hunt, have been attacked by the soldiers from this direction, and when they have got north have been attacked by soldiers from the other side, and now when they are willing to come back the soldiers stand between them to keep them from coming home. It seems to me there is a better way than this. When people come to trouble, it is better for both parties to come together without arms and talk it over and find some peaceful way to settle it. —SINTE-GALESHKA

Then, Bear Tooth spoke for the Crows; he condemned all White men for their reckless destruction of wildlife and the natural environment:

“Fathers, fathers, fathers, hear me well. Call back your young men from the mountains of the bighorn sheep. They have run over our country; they have destroyed the growing wood and the green grass; they have set fire to our lands. Fathers, your young men have devastated the country and killed my animals, the elk, the deer, the antelope, my buffalo. They do not kill them to eat them; they leave them to rot where they fall. Fathers, if I went into your country to kill your animals, what would you say? Should I not be wrong, and would you not make war on me?”

A few days after the commissioners’ meeting with the Crows, messengers arrived from Red Cloud. He would come to Laramie to talk peace, he informed the commissioners, as soon as the soldiers were withdrawn from the forts on the Powder River road. The war, he repeated, was being fought for one purpose—to save the valley of the Powder, the only hunting ground left his nation, from intrusion by White men.

“The Great Father sent his soldiers out here to spill blood. I did not first commence the spilling of blood. … If the Great Father kept White men out of my country, peace would last forever, but if they disturb me, there will be no peace. … The Great Spirit raised me in this land, and has raised you in another land. What I have said I mean. I mean to keep this land.”[xlix]

Red Cloud’s guerrilla war continued with raids of illegal forts in treaty territory, civilians on the disputed road, and the spreading of train tracks followed by ransacking the wrecks. Finally, the federal government caved in and gave Red Cloud what he wanted, honoring a Fort Laramie Treaty, which had protected a large parcel of land, including parts of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, in South Dakota, and eliminating forts, and the disputed road from Powder River Country.

In only a couple of years, however, the federal government was giving signals that they would be moving the Plains Indians far eastward to reservation lands on the Missouri River where game was scarce and the soils were poor. The first tangible event occurred when Red Cloud went to Fort Laramie for trading and was told that he would have to go 300 miles to the northeast to Fort Randall. Red Cloud laughed and since he had 1000 warriors with him, the agent of the trading post acquiesced.[l]

As settlers, railroads and gold miners pressured the federal government for more land and protected roads, threats and treaty violations evoked more violent pushback from Red Cloud. Then came a catalyzing event that caused Native American anger to erupt across the plains, chasing White agents off reservations and burning some agency buildings. A regiment of cavalry in Montana had attacked an undefended Blackfeet village of 219 people, mostly old man, women and children, many suffering from smallpox. Only 46 escaped to tell the story. 33 men, 90 women and 50 children were shot as they ran from their lodges.

Because of cover-up, the new Commissioner of Indian affairs in Washington DC did not hear about it until long after the Plains Indians had reacted. When he did, however he was quick to call for an investigation; in part, because he was a surviving Seneca Iroquois, recently appointed by Pres. Grant. His name was Eli Parker, but his real name was Donehogawa. He had studied English and gotten a law degree so that he could help his People. The State of New York, however, had blocked him from taking the bar exam because he was an Indian. Pres. Grant, learned of him and appointed him as the first Native American Commissioner.

Red Cloud accepted an invitation to visit Commissioner Parker in Washington DC. Commissioner Parker quickly learned from Red Cloud that the Laramie Treaty ratified in Washington was quite different from what Red Cloud understood, when signed. Parker, easily detected deception and they visited with Congress and a presidential representative to see what could be remedied. Several concessions were achieved, including the maintenance of a trading center near Fort Laramie, rather than 300 miles northeast at Fort Randall.

Red Cloud had not altogether succeeded in getting what he believed was right and just. But he returned to Fort Laramie with the good feeling that he had many White friends in the East. Soon, however, he found many White enemies waiting for him in the West. Land seekers, ranchers, freighters, settlers, and others were opposed to a Sioux agency anywhere near the rich Platte Valley, and they made their influence felt in Washington.[li]

Although Red Cloud’s stubborn determination secured a temporary agency for the Sioux, thirty-two miles east of Fort Laramie on the Platte, they were permitted to use it for less than two years. By that time, Donehogawa was gone from Washington. Because he was an Indian, his appointment was causing so much pushback from Congress and Christian missionaries that he was unable to fulfill his personal mission of helping his people. William Welsh, e.g., engaged in a public letter writing campaign, blaming Pres. Grant for putting into office a man “who is but a remove from barbarism.” Welsh believed the Indians went on the warpath because they were not Christians, and therefore his solution to the Indian problem was to convert all of them to Christianity; he took a violent dislike to the “heathen” commissioner.

Commissioner Parker’s reforms had created enemies among political bosses, especially the wetiko infected Indian Ring, who had long been using the Indian Bureau as a lucrative branch of the spoils system. His thwarting of the Big Horn mining expedition, a group of White frontiersmen who wanted to open the Sioux treaty lands had created virulent enemies. Their Big Horn Association members were ardent believers in the wetiko concept of Manifest Destiny:

“The rich and beautiful valleys of Wyoming are destined for the occupancy and sustenance of the Anglo-Saxon race. The wealth that for untold ages has lain hidden beneath the snow-capped summits of our mountains has been placed there by Providence to reward the brave spirits whose lot it is to compose the advance-guard of civilization. The Indians must stand aside or be overwhelmed by the ever advancing and ever increasing tide of emigration. The destiny of the aborigines is written in characters not to be mistaken. The same inscrutable Arbiter that decreed the downfall of Rome has pronounced the doom of extinction upon the red men of America.”[lii]

Wetiko, gold-hungry, would be miners soon had the Black Hills in their cross-hairs as well. But Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, were the Sacred Center for the Northern Plains tribes; geographically, they were also at the center of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. It was written, “no White person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the territory, or without the consent of the Indians to pass through the same.

The great chiefs’ statements were often translated into an “I” language, but really they were thinking as “we” and speaking for their tribes. Sitting Bull spoke, “the Black Hills belong to me. If the Whites try to take them, I will fight. Crazy Horse had declared, “one does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.”[liii]

The White man is in the Black Hills just like maggots, and I want you to get them out just as quick as you can.. The chief of all thieves [General Custer] made a road into the Black Hills last summer, and I want the Great Father to pay the damages for what Custer has done. —Baptiste Good[liv]

In 1868 the Great Father considered the hills worthless and gave them to the Indians forever by treaty. Four years later wetiko driven White miners were violating the treaty. They invaded Paha Sapa, searching the rocky passes and clear-running streams for the yellow metal which drove White men crazy. When Indians found these crazy White men in their sacred hills, they killed them or chased them out. By 1874 there was such a mad clamor from gold-hungry Americans that the Army was ordered to make a reconnaissance into the Black Hills. The United States government did not bother to obtain consent from the Indians before starting on this armed invasion, although the treaty of 1868 prohibited entry of White men without the Indians’ permission

.

During the Moon of Red Cherries, more than a thousand pony soldiers marched across the Plains from Fort Abraham Lincoln to the Black Hills. They were the Seventh Cavalry, and at their head rode General George Armstrong Custer, the same Star Chief who in 1868 had slaughtered Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne on the Washita.[lv]

Ulysses Grant, announced his determination “to prevent all invasion of this country by intruders so long as by law and treaty it is secured to the Indians.” But when Custer reported that the hills were filled with gold “from the grass roots down,” parties of White men began forming like summer locusts, crazy to begin panning and digging. The trail that Custer’s supply wagons had cut into the heart of Paha Sapa soon became the Thieves’ Road.

Red Cloud and Spotted Tail made strong protests to Washington officials. The Great Father’s response was to send out a commission “to treat with the Sioux Indians for the relinquishment of the Black Hills.” In other words, the time had come to take away one more piece of territory that had been assigned to the Indians in perpetuity. As usual, the commission was made up of politicians, missionaries, traders, and military officers.[lvi]

Half-breed Louis Richard took the government letter to Sitting Bull and read it to him. “I want you to go and tell the Great Father,” Sitting Bull responded, “that I do not want to sell any land to the government.” He picked up a pinch of dust and added: “Not even as much as this.”[lvii]

From the Missouri River on the east to the Bighorn country on the west, all the nations of the Sioux and many of their Cheyenne and Arapaho friends had gathered there—more than twenty thousand Indians. Few of them had ever seen a copy of the treaty of 1868, but a goodly number knew the meaning of a certain clause in that sacred document: “No treaty for the cession of any part of the reservation herein described … shall be of any validity or force … unless executed and signed by at least three-fourths of all the adult male Indians, occupying or interested in the same.” Even if the commissioners had been able to intimidate or buy off every chief present, they could not have obtained more than a few dozen signatures from those thousands of angry, well-armed warriors who were determined to keep every pinch of dust and blade of grass within their territory.

The warriors were dressed for battle, and as they came nearer, they swerved to encircle the commissioners, fired their rifles skyward, and gave out a few whoops before trotting off to form a line immediately in the rear of the cavalrymen. By this time a second band of Indians was approaching, and thus tribe by tribe the Sioux warriors came in, making their demonstrations of power, until a great circle of several thousand Indians enclosed the council. Now the chiefs came forward, well satisfied that they had given the commissioners something strong to think about. They sat in a semicircle facing the nervous White men, eager to hear what they would have to say about the Black Hills.

Recognizing the mood of the Indians, the commissioners realized that they could never buy the Black Hills and instead decided to propose to buy the mineral rights, or rent them. Spotted Tail took this proposal as a ludicrous joke. Was the commissioner asking the Indians to lend the Black Hills to the White men for a while? His rejoinder was to ask Senator Allison if he would lend him a team of mules on such terms.

“It will be hard for our government to keep the Whites out of the hills,” Allison continued. “To try to do so will give you and our government great trouble, because the Whites that may wish to go there are very numerous.” The senator’s ignorance of the Plains Indians’ feeling for the Powder River country was displayed in his next proposal: “There is another country lying far toward the setting sun, over which you roam and hunt, and which territory is yet unceded, extending to the summit of the Bighorn Mountains. … It does not seem to be of very great value or use to you, and our people think they would like to have the portion of it I have described.”

After a few days of breaks from the negotiations, when they began again, a group of warriors rode up, singing in Lakota,

The Black Hills is my land and I love it And whoever interferes Will hear this gun.

The commissioners packed up, returned to Washington, reported their failure to persuade the Sioux to relinquish the Black Hills, and recommended that Congress disregard the wishes of the Indians and appropriate a sum fixed “as a fair equivalent of the value of the hills.” This forced purchase of the Black Hills should be “presented to the Indians as a finality,” they said.[lviii]

November 9, 1875: E. C. Watkins, special inspector for the Indian Bureau, reported to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that Plains Indians living outside reservations were fed and well armed, were lofty and independent in their attitudes, and were therefore a threat to the reservation system. Inspector Watkins recommended that troops be sent against these uncivilized Indians “in the winter, the sooner the better, and whip them into subjection.”

February 7, 1876: The War Department authorized General Sheridan, commanding the Military Division of the Missouri, to commence operations against the “hostile Sioux,” including the bands under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.[lix]

About, the middle of March a mixed band of Sioux were camped on the Powder River, hunting for food for both agency and nonagency Native Americans. Without warning, at dawn on March 17, Crook’s advance column under Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds attacked this peaceful camp. Fearing nothing in their own country, the Indians were asleep when Captain James Egan’s White-horse troop, formed in a company front, dashed into the tepee village, firing pistols and carbines. At the same time, a second troop of cavalry came in on the left flank, and a third swept away the Indians’ horse herd. The first reaction from the warriors was to get as many women and children as possible out of the way of the soldiers, who were firing recklessly in all directions. “Old people tottered and hobbled away to get out of reach of the bullets singing among the lodges,” Wooden Leg said afterward. “Braves seized whatever weapons they had and tried to meet the attack.”

As soon as the noncombatants were started up a rugged mountain slope, the warriors took positions on ledges or behind huge rocks. From these places they held the soldiers at bay until the women and children could escape across the Powder. “From a distance we saw the destruction of our village,” Wooden Leg said. “Our tepees were burned with everything in them. … I had nothing left but the clothing I had on.” The Bluecoats destroyed all the pemmican and saddles in the camp, and drove away almost every pony the Indians owned, “between twelve and fifteen hundred head.”

As soon as darkness fell, the warriors went back to where the Bluecoats were camped, determined to recover their stolen horses. Two Moon succinctly described what happened: “That night the soldiers slept, leaving the horses to one side; so we crept up and stole them back again, and then we went away.”Three Stars Crook was so angry at Colonel Reynolds for allowing the Indians to escape from their village and their horses that he ordered him court-martialed. The Army reported this foray as “the attack on Crazy Horse’s village,” but Crazy Horse was camped miles away to the northeast. That was where Two Moon and the other chiefs led their homeless people in hopes of finding food and shelter. They were more than three days making the journey; the temperature was below zero at night; only a few had buffalo robes; and there was very little food. Crazy Horse received the fugitives hospitably, gave them food and robes, and found room for them in the Oglala tepees. “I’m glad you are come,” he said to Two Moon after listening to accounts of the Bluecoats plundering the village. “We are going to fight the White man again.”[lx]

Most of these Indians had left their reservations in accordance with their treaty rights as hunters, and those who had heard of the January 31 ultimatum either considered it as only another idle threat of the Great Father’s agents or did not believe it applied to peaceful Indians. “Many young men were anxious to go for fighting the soldiers,” said the Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg. “But the chiefs and old men all urged us to keep away from the White men.”

Early in the Moon of Making Fat, the Hunkpapa Sioux had their annual sun dance. For three days Sitting Bull danced, bled himself, and stared at the sun until he fell into a trance. When he rose again, he spoke to his people. In his vision he had heard a voice crying: “I give you these because they have no ears.” When he looked into the sky, he saw soldiers falling like grasshoppers, with their heads down and their hats falling off. They were falling right into the Indian camp. Because the White men had no ears and would not listen, Wakantanka the Great Spirit was giving these soldiers to the Indians to be killed.[lxi] Looking back from the battle with Custer at the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull knew that this victory had been the meaning of his vision.

Crazy Horse was also readying himself for war. In all the years since the Fetterman fight at Fort Phil Kearny, he had studied the soldiers and their ways of fighting. Each time he went into the Black Hills to seek visions, he had asked Wakantanka to give him secret powers so that he would know how to lead the Oglala to victory if the White men ever came again to make war upon his people. Since the time of his youth, Crazy Horse had known that the world men lived in was only a shadow of the real world. To get into the real world, he had to dream, and when he was in the real world everything seemed to float or dance. In this real world his horse danced as if it were wild or crazy, and this was why he called himself Crazy Horse. He had learned that if he dreamed himself into the real world before going into a fight, he could endure anything.

A party of Cheyenne hunters had a chance encounter with a regimen led by Officer Crook who was marching down the Rosebud, looking for an encampment that he had heard about. On June 17, 1876, Sitting bull and Crazy Horse left a force to protect their village camp and led a group of 100 warriors to meet Crook’s troops. Crazy Horse had been waiting for an opportunity to test the knowledge he had gained. Crazy Horse dreamed himself into the real world, and he showed the Sioux how to do many things they had never done before while fighting the White man’s soldiers. When Crook sent his pony soldiers in mounted charges, instead of rushing forward into the fire of their carbines, the Sioux faded off to their flanks and struck weak places in their lines. Crazy Horse kept his warriors mounted and always moving from one place to another. By the time the sun was in the top of the sky he had the soldiers all mixed up in three separate fights.[lxii]

Chief-Comes-in-Sight was among the Cheyenne distinguishing themselves in that battle, but as he swerved in front of the enemy lines on his fast pony, it was shot out from under him leaving him vulnerable to the soldiers. Then suddenly another horse and rider galloped out from the Cheyenne position and swerved to shield Chief-Comes-in-Sight from the soldiers’ fire. In a moment Chief-Comes-in-Sight was up behind the rider. The rescuer was his sister Buffalo-Calf-Road-Woman. The Cheyenne always remember this fight as the Battle Where the Sister Saved Her Brother. [lxiii] Crook’s forces considered themselves defeated and went into retreat, seeking reinforcements.

After this battle, the chiefs decided to move their people west to the Valley of the Little Big Horn, where game was plentiful, as was the grass for their horses. Their number was at least ten thousand, including three or four thousand warriors.[lxiv] Encampments of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho were spread out for 3 miles. Deep in their own territory, and their hunting parties not having seen any cavalry between the Powder and the Big Horns, they were not prepared for an attack. Not seen until they were at close range, Reno’s regiment attacked from one end of the encampments, while Custer was approaching from the other. When alarm was called out, warriors were quickly assembled; and as was their custom, the first step was to remove women and children from the battle; but as they were doing so, women and children were among the first casualties. As in other attacks upon villages, the cavalry had not distinguished between shooting women, children and combatants. Indeed, part of Custer’s strategy had been to capture women and children to use as hostages and negotiating pawns.

Warriors quickly assembled, routing Reno’s regiment and surrounding them so that they could be held in place, freeing more warriors to battle Custer. They were able to quickly hide on both sides of Custer’s approach into the valley, then swarm upon his troops. Angered by Custer’s past massacres of Native Americans and the day’s loss of women and children, warriors were in no mood to take prisoners. After Custer’s troops, had been slain, they returned to Connor’s troops and slew them when morning broke.[lxv]

When the White men in the East heard of the Long Hair’s defeat, they ignored the fact that the cavalry had attacked a peaceful village and called it a massacre. They went crazy with anger and wanted to punish all the Indians in the West. Because they could not punish Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the war chiefs, the politicians in Washington decided to punish the Indians they could find—those who remained on the reservations and had taken no part in the fighting. Gen. Sherman received authority to assume military control of all reservations in the Sioux country and to treat the Indians there as prisoners of war. A law was then passed, requiring the Indians to give up all rights to the Powder River country and the Black Hills. They did this without regard to the treaty of 1868, maintaining that the Indians had violated the treaty by going to war with the United States. This was difficult for the reservation Indians to understand, because they had not attacked United States soldiers, nor had Sitting Bull’s followers attacked them until Custer and Reno’s troops went charging through the Sioux villages.[lxvi]

(Truism: Minds infected by wetiko are inclined to reinterpret failures by placing blame upon their opponents; especially minorities, when racism is present.)

Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre

After the battle with Custer, the village encampments traveled in different directions to avoid United States soldiers. They were nearly out of ammunition and could not afford another battle. The war Department flooded the West with soldiers, often shooting Indians on site. Tribal leaders, sought to avoid contact but encumbered with moving and protecting their women and children it was nearly impossible not to be chased down. Eventually, short on food, supplies and enduring harsh weather, while being hunted, tribal remnants found their way to reservations where they were treated as prisoners. Guns and horses taken away and land allotments increasingly shrinking, they were totally dependent on meager rations.

This context of suffering and hopelessness set the stage for the emergence of the Ghost Dance. The core of the belief was that if they danced and sang, a Messiah would bring the resurrection of their dead and the replenishment of the Earth, which had been ravaged of pristine forests, streams and animal relatives. The dynamics fueling this vision were very similar to Judeo-Christian ideas of a Resurrection in which the dead and the Earth are restored with beloved people living in a New Creation. And as with the Native American Ghost Dancers of that time, those who often cling to this vision most fervently and expect it to become a reality soon, are those whose living conditions are most forlorn.

Parallel expectations of messianic inspired resurrection --

Ghost Dance teaching similar to parts of Judeo-Christian Bible

THE COMPARISONS WERE IN A TABLE -- WON'T COPY TO WIX

Ghost Dance teaching:

In the beginning, God made the earth and then sent Christ to teach the people, but when they treated him badly, leaving scars on his body, he had gone back to Heaven. Now he had returned as an Indian and Christ would renew everything as it used to be and make it better. In the next spring time, when the grass was knee-high, the earth would be covered with new soil and covered with Sweetgrass and running water and trees. Great herds of buffalo and wild horses would come back. The Indians who dance the Ghost Dance will be with their ancestors on the new earth. You must not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always. Live in brotherly love.

from Judeo-Christain Bible:

Romans 8:21: the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

Revelation 21:8: …and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…

Isaiah 41:20: "I will open rivers on the bare heights and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land fountains of water. "I will put the cedar in the wilderness, the acacia and the myrtle and the olive tree; I will place the juniper in the desert.

Hosea 2:18-19: "In that day I will also make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the creeping things of the ground And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land, and will make them lie down in safety.

Unfortunately, the Ghost Dance offered the believers a solution that was spiritual and peaceful, including lasting values but also, in part, fanciful, including false promises such as how Ghost Shirts would protect them from bullets.

Red Cloud, gave the following description of the Ghost Dance,

There was no hope on earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us. Some said they saw the Son of God; others did not see Him. If He had come, He would do some great things as He had done before. We doubted it because we had seen neither Him nor His works. The people did not know; they did not care. They snatched at the hope. They screamed like crazy men to Him for mercy. They caught at the promise they heard He had made. The White men were frightened and called for soldiers. We had begged for life, and the White men thought we wanted theirs. We heard that soldiers were coming. We did not fear. We hoped that we could tell them our troubles and get help. A White man said the soldiers meant to kill us. We did not believe it, but some were frightened and ran away to the Badlands.[lxvii]

As the Ghost Dance, spread across Sioux reservations, more and more Indians were singing and dancing, and in like step the reservation overseers and the military were becoming increasingly alarmed and fearful about this revitalization of Native American people. The fears of violence were unwarranted, as the Messiah envisioned in the Ghost Dance, like the Christian vision, preached non-violence. A message of love, called for no action but to dance and sing. The Messiah would bring the Resurrection.[lxviii]

Although the similarities noted between Ghost Dance teachings and Judeo-Christian teachings could have provided a bridge for empathic understanding, racist fears prevailed. The Indian Bureau in Washington, ordered reservation agents to send the names of the fomenters of this rebellious behavior. Sitting Bull’s name was on the list because he had failed to remove Ghost Dancers from the Standing Rock reservation. Ironically, Sitting Bull was skeptical of the Ghost Dance teachings but because of his fame, it was assumed that he must be behind the whole movement; so, the military made plans for his arrest. In a botched effort by Agency Indian police, Sitting Bull was assassinated.

An enormous wave of grief and anger over the assassination of Sitting Bull swept the reservation but so prevalent was their belief that the White men would soon disappear and that with the next greening of the grass their dead relatives and friends would return, they made no retaliation. By the hundreds, however, the leaderless Hunkpapa Sioux fled from Standing Rock, seeking refuge in one of the Ghost Dance camps or with the last of the great chiefs, Red Cloud, at Pine Ridge.[lxix]

Chief Big Foot’s band was dancing in the Badlands, constituted by a majority of widows from the wars with the cavalry, who were dancing until they fainted in the hopes that their husbands would reappear. After Sitting Bull’s assassination many fled to join Big Foot’s band. He decided to lead them on the long trip to Pine Ridge, where they could be protected.

As they neared Porcupine Creek, they sighted four troops of cavalry approaching. Big Foot immediately ordered a White flag run up over his wagon, in which he was riding because of severe pneumonia. He raised up from his blankets to greet Major Samuel Whitside, Seventh U.S. Cavalry. Big Foot’s blankets were stained with blood from his lungs, and as he talked in a hoarse whisper with Whitside, red drops fell from his nose and froze in the bitter cold. Whitside told Big Foot that he had orders to take him to a cavalry camp on Wounded Knee Creek. The Chief replied that he was going in that direction; he was taking his people to Pine Ridge for safety. Turning to his half-breed scout, Major Whitside ordered him to begin disarming Big Foot’s band. “Look here, Major,” he replied, “if you do that, there is liable to be a fight here; and if there is, you will kill all those women and children and the men will get away from you.”

Somewhere along this frozen stream, the Ghost Dancers believed that the heart of Crazy Horse lay in a secret place, and that his disembodied spirit was waiting impatiently for the new earth that would surely come with the first green grass of spring.[lxx]

There were 120 men and 230 women and children. Because of the gathering darkness, Major Whitside decided to wait until morning before disarming his prisoners. He assigned them a camping area immediately to the south of the military camp, issued them rations, and as there was a shortage of tepee covers, he furnished them several tents.

Colonel James W. Forsyth, commanding Custer’s former regiment joined them and now took charge of operations. He informed Whitside that he had received orders to take Big Foot’s band to the Union Pacific Railroad for shipment to a military prison in Omaha, because he had been on the list of fomenters of Ghost Dance disturbances. After placing two more Hotchkiss guns on the slope beside two others, Forsyth and his officers settled down for the evening with a keg of whiskey to celebrate the capture of Big Foot.[lxxi]

The next morning, when the encampment was told to put their guns into a pile, Indians’ faces showed their anger, but only the medicine man, Yellow Bird, made any overt protest. He danced a few Ghost Dance steps, and chanted one of the holy songs, assuring the warriors that the soldiers’ bullets could not penetrate their sacred garments. “The bullets will not go toward you,” he chanted in Sioux. “The prairie is large and the bullets will not go toward you.”[lxxii]

All the Indians had seemingly turned in their guns, except Black Coyote. Reportedly, he was deaf, held up his gun and fired it in the air. “Immediately the soldiers shot him and indiscriminate killing followed.” In the first seconds of violence, the firing of carbines was deafening, filling the air with powder smoke. Among the dying who lay sprawled on the frozen ground was Big Foot. Then there was a brief lull in the rattle of arms, with small groups of Indians and soldiers grappling at close quarters, using knives, clubs, and pistols. As few of the Indians had arms, they soon had to flee, and then the big Hotchkiss guns on the hill opened up on them, firing almost a shell a second, raking the Indian camp, shredding the tepees with flying shrapnel, killing men, women, and children.

A few of us tried to run,” Louise Weasel Bear said, “but they shot us like we were a buffalo. I know there are some good White people, but the soldiers must be mean to shoot children and women. Indian soldiers would not do that to White children.” The final total of dead was nearly three hundred of the original 350 men, women, and children. The soldiers lost twenty-five dead and thirty-nine wounded, most of them struck by their own bullets or shrapnel.[lxxiii]

The wagonloads of wounded Sioux (four men and forty-seven women and children) reached Pine Ridge after dark. Because all available barracks were filled with soldiers, they were left lying in the open wagons in the bitter cold while an inept Army officer searched for shelter. Finally the Episcopal mission was opened, the benches taken out, and hay scattered over the rough flooring.[lxxiv

]

Reminiscence by Black Elk:

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream … the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.[lxxv]

(KO: author comment)

The lessons of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee –

Wetiko: arrogance and entitlement, along with greed for land and its resources, blinded most settlers, and the United States government to Native American Plains Culture values, whose appreciation could have led to joint protection of Land, Water and All Species. Dispossessing Native Americans of land and the game that furnished them food and habitat, left them homeless, forlorn and desperate.

Convergent wetiko + racism: the blinders of racism prevented Whites, even Christian missionaries, from seeing the parallels between the teachings of the Ghost Dance and the Coming of the Judeo-Christian Messiah. Whereas, a recognition of overlapping values could have led to just negotiation and collaboration, racism dehumanized Native Americans so that they could be killed with impunity and led to fears that triggered violence. As was the case with the Sand Creek Massacre, the violence went beyond winning a battle to the massacring of women and children plus stealing possessions of the dead as souvenirs.

While in many ways Wounded Knee was the final blow to the flourishing of the Plains Culture; descendants of survivors, to this day, are keeping alive many of the traditions, still seeking to protect the Earth and teach their cultural values. Lessons can still be learned. Among the most important is Spirituality interwoven with everyday life, recognizing and honoring a connectedness of sacred power among all beings, animate, plants, the inanimate and a web of life that includes elements both visible and invisible to the human eye.

California, an American Genocide

The United States westward march across Indian lands takes this historical review to California. Chronologically, the encounter of California Indians with Europeans, begins much earlier, with the Spanish; and it ends before Wounded Knee. But in terms of what happened, it is a story of finality, a climax of American genocide.

Introduction

California, a lush cornucopia before European contact was a thriving, staggeringly diverse place, capable of supporting a myriad of villages. Speaking scores of languages, California Indians created dozens of cultural and political units. About 500 individual bands tended to act as its own politically and economically autonomous entity. They connected themselves to each other via dense webs of local and regional cultural exchange while maintaining trading connections with peoples farther away.

Conflict was rare, the villages were organized around peaceful living with little energy devoted to defense and warfare. Unlike the larger tribal organizations in the East, Midwest, and the Plains, it would prove exceedingly difficult for California tribes to put up formidable resistance to the invasions of European Americans. The following history of the genocide that developed is based on the work of Benjamin Madley. Using scholarly caution, he has drawn upon primary sources, cross-referencing the original narrative that he has put together in his book, An American Genocide. The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe1846-1873. In paraphrasing and quoting from Madley, I have not repeated the many primary source citations that mark his work. If interested, please go directly to his book.[lxxvi]

Europeans Arrive

In March 1543, Spaniards anchored in the blue waters of San Diego Bay, completing the first European exploration of California’s coast. Before leaving, they “took two [Ipai] boys to carry to New Spain to learn to be interpreters.” This first European kidnapping of California Indians foreshadowed a dark new chapter in California history. Spaniards, Russians, and Mexicans would impose race-based, two-tiered legal systems, bondage labor and violence on California’s indigenous peoples. These traditions would later cross-pollinate with preexisting Anglo-American practices of removing and/or exterminating American Indians to create the conditions for genocide in California between 1846 and 1873.[lxxvii]

During California’s seventy-seven-year-long Russo-Hispanic Period (1769–1846) its Indians suffered a devastating demographic decline, from about 310,000 to 150,000. Under US rule, California Indians died at an even more astonishing rate. Between 1846 and 1870, California’s Native American population plunged from about 150,000 to 30,000. By 1880, census takers recorded just 16,277 California Indians. Diseases, dislocation, and starvation were important causes of these many deaths. However, abduction, bondage labor, mass death in forced confinement, homicides, battles, and massacres took thousands of lives.[lxxviii]

In 1769—226 years after its first exploratory visit—Spain sent soldiers and Franciscan missionaries north from Mexico to colonize California. Father Serra, called their mission “spiritual conquest.” Serra and his fellow Franciscan missionaries viewed California Indians as pagans and people without reason, to be treated as children. Initially, curiosity, food, and gifts drew California Indians to the missions, in and around which nearly 70,000 met their death. Spaniard invaders introduced “pathogens, plants, and animals that . . . dramatically transformed California’s human and natural landscape,” destroying traditional means of subsistence and introducing Old World diseases to which California Indians had little or no biological resistance. The results were hunger, sickness, and death. Thus, many coastal California Indians increasingly came to the missions out of need.[lxxix]

Baptized Indians, unknowingly, put themselves under the Franciscans’ physical command, relinquishing the right to control their own lives or leave the mission without permission. Mission Indians were whipped, shackled, or placed in the stocks for “desertion . . . insolence, tardiness or absence from Mass, carelessness in learning doctrines, gambling, laziness, fornication, and adultery.” In 1775, Father Serra wrote that he wanted some San Carlos Mission Indians to suffer “two or three whippings . . . on different days,” explaining that they “may serve . . . for a warning and be of spiritual benefit to all.” In 1798, a former Mission San Miguel padre risked his career by reporting to the viceroy of New Spain that “the manner in which the Indians are treated is by far more cruel than anything I have ever read about; for any reason, … they are severely and cruelly whipped, placed in shackles, or put in the stocks for days on end without receiving even a drop of water.”[lxxx]

Soldiers and settlers were exempted from corporal punishment, a form of reprimand almost completely restricted to Indians and one that marked them as low and different.” Corporal punishment reinforced both the Spaniards’ treatment of California Indians as children and the two-tiered legal system on which Mexican and later US citizens built. Father Serra wrote: “The soldiers, clever as they are at lassoing cows and mules, would catch an Indian woman with their lassos to become prey for their unbridled lust. At times some Indian men would try to defend their wives, only to be shot down with bullets.” Unsurprisingly, thousands of California mission Indians resisted by fleeing; perhaps 4,000 left in 1817 alone. Franciscan fathers and soldiers used force to recapture escapees.[lxxxi]

When the Franciscans concentrated California Indians, and held unmarried females in locked, crowded, and poorly ventilated buildings, they facilitated the transmission of pathogens. The results were devastating. “Across the California missions one in three infants did not live to see a first birthday. Four in ten Indian children who survived their first year perished before their fifth [and] between 10 and 20 percent of adults died each year.” By 1833, Franciscans had baptized 81,586 California Indians and buried some 62,600.[lxxxii]

The United States “Conquers” California

The United States chapter of early California began on July 7, 1846. As the sun rose, four US warships rode at anchor in Monterey Bay. Commodore John Sloat sent Captain William Mervine ashore “to demand the immediate Mexican surrender of the California capital.” He proclaimed a new day in which peaceful inhabitants of California would enjoy the same rights as other citizens of the United States. Although they had the power to do so, these new military rulers did not include 150,000 Native Americans within the scope of their promise.[lxxxiii]

Dehumanization, punctuated by anti-Indian violence, characterized the first twenty months of US rule. US military campaigns, slave raiding, and other forms of dehumanization eroded the moral restraints of Anglo-Americans, Californios, and Europeans against killing California Indians. The degradation associated with bondage labor confronted immigrants with an economic system and society in which some colonists treated Indians as animals. These encounters had a powerful psychic effect, fueling racism and emotionally hardening colonists, soldiers, and sailors to cruelty toward California Indians. Sutter’s vast semi-feudal ranch, with its partly clothed or naked Indian laborers and its “harem” of Indian women and girls, exemplified this process. His domain was a Sacramento Valley portal through which many overland immigrants passed on their trek from the eastern United States in the late 1840s and early 1850s. He kept “from 600 to 800 Indians in a state of complete slavery.” They dined in “10 or 15 troughs, 3 or 4 feet long that were brought out of the cook room, and seated in the broiling sun, all the laborers great and small, ran to the troughs like so many pigs, and fed themselves, with their hands, as long as the troughs contained even a moisture.”[lxxxiv]

In 1847, the Californian newspaper rhetorically asked, “What is lower in the scale of humanity than a California Indian?” The author then offhandedly, and without any evidence, declared some Indians he met on “the Sui Sun Ranch, the property of General Vallejo” to be “cannibals.” Demonization—playing on long-standing Anglo-American fears of American Indians—would justify and encourage anti-Indian violence. The Californian concluded by invoking a doctrine of collective, indiscriminate reprisal against California Indian villages that would come to be widely accepted and that all but guaranteed the killing of large numbers of noncombatants: “The only effectual means of stopping [Indian] inroads upon the property of the country, will be to attack them in their villages.”[lxxxv]

California Indian slave raiding was often murderous. An Indian “Chief” near the Truckee River and the Sierra Nevada crest explained that “Whites, had slaughtered his men, taken his women and children into captivity, and driven him out of his country.” Slave raiding often involved killing the adults and taking young women and children into captivity. Over 4000 Native Americans were sold – prices ranged from $60 for a boy to $200 for a girl. In late June or early July of 1847, several Spanish-speaking men “started from Sonoma or vicinity and proceeded” to a tribe of friendly Indians” near present-day Chico. The visitors were received with “the most friendly feelings, offering acorn bread, and other food.” However, “The Spaniards, after having partaken of their hospitality, commenced making prisoners of men, women and children, and in securing them, shot ten to thirteen who tried to escape.” The raiders next tied at least thirty people together, “principally women and children,” and drove them to “the settlements.” The killing continued: “Young children who were unable to proceed, were murdered on the road. In one instance an infant was taken from its mother and killed in her presence.” As Konkow Maidu man John A. Clark recollected, some White men “had absolutely no regard for Indian life, and . . . would wantonly murder an Indian with no more compunction than if they were killing a coyote.”[lxxxvi]

A Sonoma newspaper correspondent, marshaling the myth of sub-humanity, proposed total elimination, calling California Indians “the nearest link of the sort, to the quadrupeds of any [Indians] on the continent of North America.” subsequently, San Francisco’s other major newspaper—the Californian—printed a similarly ominous statement, proclaiming: “We desire only a White population in California, even the Indians amongst us, as far as we have seen, are more of a nuisance than a benefit to the country; we would like to get rid of them.”[lxxxvii]

US Army Capt., John Fremont (also a future senator and governor) had already set a grisly precedent for large scale massacres, designed to leave no survivors. The young Virginian, although assigned to survey pathways through the Rocky Mountains, instead marched his men 900 miles west to California., where Mexico’s rule was tenuous. Captain Frémont’s decision was likely a calculated attempt to be in the right place at the right time. Journalist John O’Sullivan had just coined the phrase “manifest destiny” and Frémont knew—from a personal meeting with US president James K. Polk—that the new leader had “a fixed determination to acquire California. Guided by Kit Carson, Fremont marched his men across mountains and deserts to California. He provoked Mexican authorities by raising the Stars and Stripes outside Monterey before retreating to explore the northern part of the state. According to one Frémont biographer, “He was killing time.” Soon he was killing people.[lxxxviii]

The Fremont led massacre of a large fishing encampment at a fork in the Sacramento River began with long-range small-arms fire. A member of his troop described how “as soon as we got within rifle shot, they began to fall fast.” Using their Hawken rifles, Frémont’s men could kill from well beyond the reach of bows and arrows. Once engaged in close-quarter killing, the attackers began using their sabers, their pistols and butcher knives. The bucks, squaws and papooses were shot down like sheep and those men never stopped as long as they could find one alive,” thus initiating the fourth and final phase of this and many subsequent California Indian massacres: executionary killing. Encirclement, surprise attack, an initial barrage of long-range small-arms fire, close-range attack, and executionary noncombatant killing would become a kind of unwritten tactical doctrine in California Indian-hunting campaigns. The Sacramento River Massacre had become the prelude to about 370 similar massacres and ultimately an American genocide.[lxxxix]

Frémont’s force killed as many as 1,000 California Indian men, women, and children in what may have been one of the largest massacres in US history. Highlighting the one-sided nature of the attack, no extant primary source documented any member of Frémont’s force being killed or even injured in what was apparently an assault on largely unarmed Indian civilians gathered to catch and process salmon. One participant noted that after the massacre, “We camped there all night and ate up all their salmon.” Kit Carson is said to have remarked, “It was a perfect butchery!” Marching south, Frémont’s men continued killing and scalping Native Americans. It was a portentous prelude to US rule in California, which began three months later when military officers took possession of the northern portion of the state.[xc]

John C. Frémont was responsible for the killing of perhaps hundreds of California Indians but went on to an illustrious career. He later represented California as one of its first US senators, became the first Republican presidential candidate, and served as a general during the US Civil War. He is the namesake for Fremont, Nebraska, Fremont, California and for the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle. A scarlet mark lifted on currents of manifest destiny and racism in 19th-century America, accolades for Fremont have been memorialized; his unprovoked Indian killing of men women and children, has been overlooked and forgotten.

Gold, Immigrants, and Killers from Oregon: March 1848–May 1850

In January 1, 1849, California contained approximately 25,000 non-Indians. By the end of June, that number had surged to 30,000 or more. By late December, at least 94,000. The power of wetiko, greedy lust for wealth, often manifests with readiness to use power over others to satisfy selfish needs. Many of these tens of thousands gold-seekers arrived bearing exaggerated preconceptions, shaped and amplified by unscrupulous eastern writers, of Native Americans as hostile and dangerous. John Sutter observed, “The late emigrants across the mountains, and some Oregon trappers and mountaineers, commenced a war of extermination, shooting Indians like wolves; men, women, and children, wherever they could find them.” In California between 1846 and 1873, scalping was an almost exclusively non-Indian practice, inflicted on California Indians. Scalping served to inventory killing, collect macabre trophies, and express a profound disdain for victims. Collecting the severed heads of California Indians served similar purposes.[xci]

Attacks on California Indians were the most lethal element of a loosely organized but growing xenophobic campaign to forcibly expel all nonWhites from California’s gold-mining regions. As early as May 1, 1849, the Daily Alta California reported, “The feeling is very general among the Americans and Californians that foreigners should not be allowed to dig for gold,” and it soon became clear that “foreigners” did not mean White immigrants from the United States. On June 30, the Placer Times reported hostilities against Spanish speakers. Three weeks later, the newspaper announced that “the Peruvians and Chileans have been pretty thoroughly routed in every section of the Middle and North Forks [of the American River], and the disposition to expel them seems to be extending throughout the whole mining community.” Chinese miners would also come under attack, particularly in the 1850s, as Whites forcibly drove them out of many placers and surrounding communities. Yet, if Whites violently expelled Hispanic and Chinese miners, they routinely murdered and massacred California Indian miners.[xcii]

Rebellion on the Stone and Kelsey Ranch Ignites Further Battles of Extermination

Some Californians treated Indians as disposable laborers based on a profound disregard for their value as human beings and how cheaply Indian slaves could be replaced. This twisted moral and economic calculus helps to explain the brutal logic behind Stone and Kelsey’s abysmal treatment of Indian workers, including institutionalized starvation. Stone and Kelsey also tortured their workers and sometimes killed them in the process. If a worker broke a rule, Stone and Kelsey would hang the worker “up by his thumbs, so that his toes just touched the floor . . . and keep him there two or three days, sometimes with nothing to eat.”[xciii]

Stone and Kelsey brutalized Indians for entertainment. Reportedly, it was common for them to shoot an Indian just for the fun of seeing him jump, and that they lashed them as a sort of a recreation when friends from the outside world chanced to pay them a visit. Torture sometimes led to death. Stone and Kelsey routinely raped Indian women and girls, and countered resistance to their sexual assaults with torture and threats of violence. It was reported that Stone shot a young man “to death” for taking wheat to his “sick and starving” mother. Local Whites added that Stone and Kelsey repeatedly slew their workers. An acquaintance reported that in driving them in to their place they would shoot any of the old or infirm ones by the wayside.[xciv]

Hard men, Stone and Kelsey were likely to exact terrible vengeance when they discovered that a horse had been lost. Rather than face horrid consequences, together with a desire to avenge lost Indian lives, 5 Indian laborers were motivated to kill Stone and Kelsey. Thinking that they might as well die one way as another, they decided to take the final fatal step.” Disproportionate reprisal for the murder soon echoed across northern California. Assuming collective guilt, vigilantes and U.S. Army soldiers would kill about 1000 Indians or more during the next five months. The collective guilt argument became a routinely cited pseudo-juridical rationale for both the indiscriminate killing of California Indians (including men, women, children, and elders) and the theft or destruction of their property.[xcv]

By its size and the ruthlessness of its planning, the subsequent Clear Lake massacre reprisal, egregiously stands out from this genocidal storm. U.S. Army Gen. Smith and Capt. Jon Frisbie, planned months in advance for the shipment of boats and other equipment needed to trap Native Americans on an island, where they lodged a fishing camp. The motivation for this genocidal assault was twofold: one, to obliterate the tribe and two, to teach other Indians a lesson about not interfering with White settlers. Alta California reported on May 28 that, according to Capt. Frisbie, “on the 1st of the month an expedition was fitted out . . . (75 [men] in all) with orders to proceed against the Clear Lake Indians, and exterminate if possible the tribe.” The victims were trapped, and the moment was ripe for negotiation. However, General Smith had specifically instructed to negotiate neither for custody of those who had killed Stone and Kelsey nor for a general surrender. Gen. Smith’s primary concern was not justice. His goal was “to chastise the Indians near Clear Lake,” that is, to inspire fear by killing large numbers, regardless of whether or not the victims were guilty of committing, aiding, or abetting the killing of Stone and Kelsey.[xcvi]

The Daily Alta California described the assault, using information provided by army captain John B. Frisbie: “They . . . poured in a destructive fire indiscriminately upon men, women and children. They fell as grass before the sweep of the scythe. Little or no resistance was encountered, and the work of butchery was of short duration. The shrieks of the slaughtered victims died away, the roar of muskets . . . ceased; and stretched lifeless upon the sod of their native valley were the bleeding bodies of these Indians—nor sex, nor age was spared; it was the order of extermination fearfully obeyed. There were not less than four hundred warriors killed and drowned at Clear Lake and as many more of squaws and children who plunged into the lake and drowned, through fear, committing suicide. So, in all, about eight hundred Indians found a watery grave in Clear Lake.”[xcvii]

Brig. Capt. Lyon was not proud of the assault. He explained, “Their position being entirely surrounded, they were attacked under most embarrassing circumstances; but as they could not escape, the island soon became a perfect slaughter pen.” According to a Pomo Indian, the soldiers “killed mostly women and children.” He also retold accounts he heard from survivors: One old man said that he was a boy at the time he said the soldiers shoot his mother, she fell to the ground with her baby in her arms, he said his mother told him to climb high up in the tree, so he did and from there he said he could see the solders running about the camp and shooting the men and women and stabbing the boys and girls. He said mother was not yet dead and was telling him to keep quiet. Two of the solders heard her talking and ran up to her and stabbed her and child.[xcviii]

The San Francisco Herald defended the assault. The paper also inaccurately described the “rumored massacre of the Clear Lake Indians” as a battle in which “many of the soldiers were seriously wounded.” The Herald argued that Captain Lyon had righteously followed orders to “punish and dislodge the Indians” and that whatever civilian deaths took place during the attack were deserved. The Herald’s story then became the definitive national interpretation reprinted in the New Orleans Daily Picayune, the New York Herald, and the Washington, DC, Daily National Intelligencer, with the endorsement that other accounts had “entirely misrepresented” the Clear Lake violence. In July, the New York Herald—the most widely read US newspaper in 1850 with a circulation of some 90,000—also reprinted an article reporting “from 160 to 300 Indians” killed “at Clear Lake and again on Russian River.”

Celebrating the massacre of American Indians as a justifiable military necessity, and as battles rather than atrocities, was hardly new in the United States or in its colonial antecedents. Earlier in this book it was recounted that in 1637, colonial church and government leaders celebrated the Mystic Massacre of Pequot Indians, rationalizing it as both necessary and laudable. Massachusetts Colony governor John Winthrop wrote in his journal, “There was a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches for the victory obtained against the Pequods.” William Bradford, Plymouth Colony governor at the time, wrote that while “it was a fearfull sight to see them thus frying in ye fyer, and ye streams of blood quenching ye same, and horrible was ye stinck & sente ther of; but ye victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prays therof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them.” Such praise for the massacre of Indians, often supported by justifications and camouflaged with martial rhetoric, continued across the West and into California. [Following the 1890 massacre of 260–300 Hunkpapa and Miniconjou people by members of the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee, the US government awarded twenty of these cavalrymen the country’s highest military award: the Congressional Medal of Honor.][xcix]

If army officers could massacre Indians with impunity, could vigilante groups and individuals not do the same? US senators seem to have been even less divided and more adulatory than California journalists. According to Lyon’s twentieth-century biographer, “Lyon’s official report of the expedition was heard in the US Senate, where both its explicit detail and the officer’s meritorious service to his country against an obviously dangerous and subversive Indian ‘menace’ were met with warm approbation.” Smith assumed that fellow generals at army headquarters would agree that killing hundreds of Indians, in retaliation for the murder of two Whites, deserved “the highest praise.” His assumption proved accurate. In October 1851, headquarters selected Smith to command the Department of Texas and to prosecute the army’s expanding operations against the Comanches and other American Indian peoples there. In Texas he told his officers: “All predatory Indians, no matter where discovered, will be pursued, attacked, and put to death. It is not advisable to take prisoners.” In 1856, headquarters awarded him command “of the Department of the West.” By failing to prosecute or condemn the perpetrators, newspaper editors, judges, generals, and US senators effectively approved the large-scale killing of California Indians. Thus began an era of protracted genocidal campaigns that targeted large numbers of Indian civilians in so-called punitive assaults.[c]

California’s Supreme Court initiated a policy of granting effective impunity to those who killed California Indians, removing legal restraints to mass killing. Media support and federal leaders’ acquiescence to army-led massacres helped to unleash large-scale vigilante and state militia killing campaigns. On May 29, 1850, the Daily Alta California editor warned of “…safety only in a war of extermination, waged with relentless fury far and near. Such is the destiny of that miserable race, and we are but fulfilling our own by the enactment of scenes on the Pacific similar to those which have stained with blood our Indian history on the shores of the Atlantic, from the first dawnings of civilization.” Acting on this growing consensus, legislators in California and Washington, DC, added fuel to the flames. Congressional and federal agency support for the killing of California Indians would escalate in the form of massive material and financial support.[ci]

Legislating Exclusion and Vulnerability: 1846–1853

The legislative processes that had progressively taken away California Indian rights, began with martial law proclamations in 1846 by Capt. Jon Montgomery. To ensure an ongoing labor force he legally required Indians to be employed by a master to whom they would be to continue without limits, until dismissed by their employer or a Magistrate. Indians who were not so employed would be considered outlaws and subject to capture and punishment. Montgomery enlisted both the armed forces and civil bureaucracy to enforce this state-sponsored bondage labor system.[cii]

The military government then supplemented its troop strength by engaging civilians in the control of Indians. To this end, a statewide Indian pass system was established. It was designed to help colonists and authorities differentiate between employee Indians and Indians not enmeshed in the colonial economy who would be defined as thieves and marauders. Without the all-important pass, Indians could be arrested, tried, and punished. Not only did the pass system severely limit Indians’ freedom of movement, it also made it easier for non-Indians to distinguish which Indians they could kidnap or kill without offending municipal and federal authorities.[ciii]

In 1850, Governor Burnett signed the infamous, ironically titled “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.” The act:

· made Indians criminals until proven innocent, counter to the stated ideals of the young American nation.

· established a new legal system of California Indian servitude.

· legalized the corporal punishment of Indians.

· legalized custodianship of Indian minors and two types of Indian convict leasing. California jails became low-cost labor suppliers.

Court access was denied, “in no case shall a White man be convicted of any offence upon the testimony of an Indian, or Indians.” , they barred Indians with “one half of Indian blood” or more from giving “evidence in favor for, or against, any White person” in criminal cases. Subsequently, in 1851, lawmakers banned Indians with “one fourth or more of Indian blood”—along with the mentally incompetent—from serving as witnesses in civil cases involving Whites.[civ]

A treaty making process for California Indians was invalidated. The Department of Interior had negotiated 18 treaties, complete with promises, which would have given minimal reservation rights, sustenance and tribal status. But the promises were repealed, the treaties were not ratified by Congress and were opposed by California legislators. The State Assembly asserted that if ratified, the treaties would impose hardships on “not less than twenty thousand American citizens,” who would be forced “to make room for . . . a few tribes of ignorant barbarians.” The Senate thus denied California Indians their lands and made them more vulnerable to kidnapping, slavery, assault, and murder at the hands of California citizens, including state militia forces, while denying federal troops the mandate to intercede. Military, state, and federal policymakers had stripped California Indians of legal power and rights, excluded them from society, denied them protection, and all but erased legal and cultural barriers to their abuse and murder.[cv]

Over the coming decades, vigilantes and militias took full advantage of the state of California’s anti-Indian legal system to kill thousands of California Indians. Between 1850 and 1861, some 3,456 militiamen enrolled in twenty-four volunteer militia expeditions and killed more than 1,342 California Indians. However, their impact was greater than these numbers suggest. The money, arms, and material showered on ranger militias inspired vigilantes to mount their own Indian-hunting operations in hopes of becoming similarly well-supplied and well-funded. Volunteers who had served against California Indians were further incentivized by bounty land warrants for 160 acres of federal land. California required all White men ages eighteen to forty-five not enrolled in a militia unit to pay an annual $0.25 tax to fund the militias. Congress, by agreeing to help pay California’s 1850–1853 “War Debt,” turned the state’s genocide campaign into a federally supported program. From 1846 to 1873 individuals, vigilantes, California state militiamen, and US soldiers killed at least 9,492 to 16,094 California Indians, and probably many more. These figures do not include those hundreds, and perhaps thousands, whom newcomers worked or starved to death. Likewise, these figures do not include California Indians who died of diseases while incarcerated in US Army forts or on federal Indian reservations. In 1935, US Indian Affairs commissioner John Collier explained the “swift depopulation” of California Indians after 1850: “They were totally deprived of land rights. They were outlawed and all treated as wild animals, shot on sight. They were actually murdered . . . enslaved and worked to death . . . driven back to totally barren vastness . . . and they died of starvation. Their life was outlawed and their whole existence was condemned . . . and they died.”[cvi]

Completing his startling book on the little known magnitude of California genocide, author, Benjamin Madley asks, “What role might acknowledgment of genocide have on the “intergenerational/historical trauma” prevalent in many California Indian communities and that trauma’s connection to present-day physical illnesses, substance abuse, domestic violence, and suicide? Should federal officials offer compensation, along the lines of the more than $1.6 billion Congress paid to 82,210 Japanese Americans and their heirs?” Equally important, the poignancy of this genocide challenges us to ask how such a disclosed depth of wetiko and racism is manifesting itself in the present? And, what can we learn from the descendants of the genocide’s resilient survivors about making cultural corrections to the American way of life?