Oglala riders retrace history (127th Anniversary of the Custer's Last Stand)

Billings Gazette ^ | June 25, 2003 | JAMES HAGENGRUBER

[MARTIAL MONK]

The Indians probably fared somewhat better under British Colonial rule than in the American nation-state that supplanted it,

Rummel, in Death by Government, puts the Indian death toll for the period from the Constitution to the end of the Indian wars at about 3000. I don't see any evidence to increase that number. That is less than 30 per year, not exactly evidence of genocide. Some of those deaths were on purely punative missions or in clearly defensive roles.

In the middle of this period the United States took a time out and killed 600,000 of our own. We had the capacity to obliterate any and all Indian tribes at any time we chose to do so. We did not. Read the Eastern newspapers of the time. The Indians had very powerful defenders and the sympathetic ear of the people.

[MARTIAL MONK]

attacking under a flag of truce, and massacring women and children was a criminal act

And so is hiding behind a flag of truce. We just lost some good folks when the Iraqis did that. An Indian camp was more of a base than a city. People were always coming and going to hunt, to visit, to raid. Some of those in the Sand Creek camp had just come from butchering whites on the Eastern Slope.

I spent some time in the area when I was younger and mothers would command obedience from their children by threatening to "skin them alive". That was a holdover from the deep fears of the settlement days.

[kms61]

Did I ever say it did? My point is we were supposed to be the civilized ones. We didn't always act like it.

[kms61]

It IS irrelevant in that IF, and I stress IF, what you say is true, it did not excuse the murder of noncombatant women and children. The fact that you apparently are trying to excuse those actions speaks volumes about your character.

We have nothing further to discuss. I don't conduct dialogue with poltroons.

[kms61]

I've heard that saying too and I grew up nowhere near the site of any Indian massacres.

Some of y'all are playing a moral equivalency game here. "They did it, so that excuses our side doing it." I'm not accusing anybody of being a Democrat, but....

[MARTIAL MONK]

No, I'm not doing the moral equivalancy thingie. Troopers after the Civil War were by and large the worst of the worst and it showed. Chivington's men weren't even up to that level. Many were recruited from the bars and shantytowns of Denver. They DID have a right to be outraged at what the Indians were doing around Denver. Scum + outrage = atrocity.

The nation was aghast at what happened at Sand Creek. I think that the broad reaction was a better reflection of the state the country's morals than what a few drunken bums did at Sand Creek.

[kms61]

Wasn't directed at you in particular, just some of the posts in general on this thread.

[MARTIAL MONK]

My point is that the U.S. policy toward the Indians was by and large humane. The Eastern press was quick to point out any transgressions on the part of the whites. They served as an unrelenting conscience for our dealings.

We could not tolerate the continuation of these barbaric stone age cultures. The murders had to be stopped. We did a fair job, at least in concept, of providing for them. The Reservations were not designed to keep the Indians in, they were designed to keep whites out. There were broken promises and outright crookedness in some cases but the policy was in the right direction.

I can promise the Greenies that the Clinton created National Monuments will be sancrosect as long as the grass shall grow . . .

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I agree. An ugly Chapter in American History. On the one hand, you have the Indians who were herded on ever-shrinking Reservations and lied to again and again. Every time we discovered gold on a Reservation, we took another piece and crammed the population into the smaller remainder. I have yet to visit a Reservation I can say is unequivocally "livable." Certainly those in the West are not.

Then again, the response of the Indians was to slaughter entire wagon trains of pioneers with such savagery, using live prisoners for target practice, or butchering the men while alive, flaying them etc. and gang raping the women until they died from loss of blood.

The operative philosophy of the US Govt at the time was "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." To some extent, they brought it on themselves early in our history. There were friedly tribes and warring tribes. The warring tribes sometimes sacked entire small communities. Their philosophy requiring that they kill 10 enemy for every brave lost in battle.

Well, the Judeo-Christian Western society developed to generally sparing non-combatants, women and children. The warring tribes sometimes sacked entire small communities -- their philosophy requiring that they kill 10 enemy for every brave lost in battle. It didn't take too many instances of seeing multiple massacres of women and children to convince the general public that Indians were "savages" (so called because they weren't baptized Christians) and their fate was sealed with a decision to mass exterminate all members of the warring tribes.

I remind my liberal friends of these good old days when they tell me modern Americans are so uncivilized. I agree, but only with respect to the 40 million aborted (murdered) babies since 1970.

[kms61]

Agree somewhat in that it was a fait accompli...it's the way of the human race, like it or not.

It WAS, however, naked aggression by today's standards. The Trail of Tears in particular was nothing more than a land grab at gunpoint, in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling, no less. And the Southern tribes were far from stone age or barbaric. They were on a technological level not much different than the whites, and many worshiped the Christian God.

It's to be remembered as well that Custer's campaign, the article on which started this thread, was a direct result of a broken treaty over the Black Hills.

It's part of our history....and it's how this country got to where it is today. But there are a lot of things that weren't very noble about how it all happened. Some people on FR apparently have a hard time admitting even that.

There may be a bit too much revisionism and political correctness going on WRT the way the Indians lived. I think that's a shame, because they're much more interesting as real people than as cardboard cutouts. BUT, there's also a fair amount of political correctness coming from the other side...an unwillingness to face up to some of the sordidness which the whites perpetrated. We've seen a bit of that on this thread tonight...along with some some just plain mean spirited ignorance.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I still challenge ANYONE (including YOU if you know how to use a LIBRARY) to read the books I have listed and not come away with a different opinion of the indian wars.

MY LIFE ON THE PLAINS by G. A. CUSTER

THE INDIAN WAR OF 1864 by Capt. E. F. WARE

MASSACRES OF THE MOUNTAINS by J. P. DUNN JR.

THE SAVAGE YEARS edited by SHEPARD RIFKIN

TOUGH TRIP THROUGH PARADISE by ANDREW GARCIA

LAND OF THE CONQUISTADORES by CLEVE HALLENBECK

There are many others but at your speed you might finish just these in about 20 years.

[kms61]

I have read several of those books, and many others. This is my last post to you.

[coydog]

It was the depredations by the likes of Chivington and his ilk that set the example for the Nazis and encouraged Hitler and his goons to their deviltry, and in various sources they said so, explicitly.

[MARTIAL MONK]

The Trail of Tears was another travesty but the by defying the Supreme Court Jackson was cutting against the grain of our civilization. There will always be exceptions and regressions.

In the West we have our own various versions of the Trail of Tears, Chief Joseph, the Navajo's Long Walk, forcing the Apaches onto San Carlos. The overarching policy was to stop the depredations but to be fair to the Indians.

In acquireing these vast areas from the French or the Mexicans we acquired JURISDICTION over them. No one could accept maurauding and murder under their jurisdiction.

You are right the real cultures are far more complex and fascinating than what has been painted by even the most knowlegable pundits.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***It was the depredations by the likes of Chivington and his ilk that set the example for the
Nazis and encouraged Hitler and his goons to their deviltry***

Strange. I've read the entire RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH and don't remember Chivington being mentioned.

Chivington also saved Santa Fe from falling to the Confederates at Glorietta Pass. This alone should exonerate him in the eyes of the abolishonists.