Savages – We Should Have Bombed Them Back to the Stone Age (if we’d only had the technology)
The late 1860’s were a time of peace on the Great Plains. The Fort Laramie Treaty had been signed with Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne. The liberal intelligentsia of the East had a measure of sympathy for the Indians;their own Indian problem had been solved several generations back. The Great Sioux Reservation comprised nearly 20 million acres and included the sacred Black Hills. Life was good, as the saying goes.
Then gold was discovered in the Black Hills, Paha Sapa. Gold and vast timber resources. The Sioux resisted miners and others encroaching on their land, necessitating the need for a US military campaign.
Americans have never liked their soldiers dying and the money this dying costs them. How might the government have gotten approval of this campaign? I don’t have access to media of the era but I know how we do it now. Just as our media preyed on American’s fears so they viewed Muslims as misogynists and suicide bombers, possibly contemporary 1870’s media portrayed Indians as equally misogynistic and savage.
‘Why should we fight for a bunch of miners and loggers ? What have they done for us?’
‘Don’t you read the papers? Those Indians are savage. They throw their virgin women down wells. They cut peoples hearts out. They ain’t like us’.
‘Wasn’t that the Maya and Aztecs hundreds of years ago?’
‘Their women do all the work.Men just hunt and fight. Look at their religion, if you want to call it that. Stick bones in their chest then hang from them? Savages!’
‘Yeah plus they scalp folks. And kill women and children, or worse kidnap them and make them live like they do, like animals’.
‘Maybe you’re right. They aren’t like us. They cut off women’s breasts then throw them. Oh wait that was Kit Carson‘s men doing that to Navajos. Well they cut out women’s genitals and wear them stretched over their hats. Oh wait that was Col Chivington’s men doing that to the Cheyenne’.
‘What are you, an Injun lover? Don’t you read the papers? We ain’t like them. We’re civilized’.
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This is a sobering reminder of how unchecked racism is brutal and savage.
Great post, Oso 🙂 I can always count on you for that!
Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” is still considered the seminal work on the plains indians, and there is a wonderful illustrated version out now.
Oso, another good informative piece.
Could you recommend any books as far as Indian history, and in particular, anything about the Iroquois League?
Hi Krell
thank you. I’ll check into books on the Iroquois league. Bury my heart at wounded knee of course, but Dee Brown took the stories from a lot of sources then compiled them. Didn’t steal anything, more like made a compendium of knowledge. I’ll think of a general history as well and let you know.
History is a readily available subject.
See “Manifest Destiny.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny
And we are supposed to be civilized? I must have missed something. Nice piece there, Oso.
This was a great piece Oso. I am reading Howard Zinn’s The History of the United States and he brings out the horrors perpetrated on the Indians by the so-called “civilized” white men in a direct and no holds barred style.
Applause from a white woman, Oso. My four directions reflect my homeland, the Ancestors of the Old ones of the land. I am Indigenous here. I know many Muslims, especially in MA, whose children and even they are Indigenous here. I was born here. They were born here. Yet, that part of my soul that is GHB will always be American, connected to the America I love. You belong where your heart sets the anchor. I figure there are parts of my spirit attached to many places and People on the planet I love… but until we accept our Home as a living planet and take up our stewardship…
Gulf oil spills
coal mine collapses
diamond mining
deforestation of the rainforests
and so many other species extinguishing acts of greed and usury will keep us suffering, xenophobic, etc. IGNORANT
So Oso, in the words of the lands’ Old ones, your Old ones,
may it be beautiful before you
may it be beautiful behind you
may it be beautiful below you
may it be beautiful above you
with it, be beautiful all around you…
and in beauty it is finished.
Well said Gwen. Well said indeed.
I view Muslims as modern-day Indians. We can trash them all we want and few are willing to take their side.
I read a column, written by an Englishman, back during the whites only government days of South Africa that with tongue firmly planted in cheek suggested the biggest fault of the white South Africans was that they had not been as efficient in killing off the native people as the rest European settlers throughout the world.
Spreading the Christian gospel and looking for gold must have been really stressful.
Civilized???
There were 60 million of them…they were wiped out, 800,000 were left. So who were the “civilized” bunch and who were the “Savages”???