Hope all you DAR-types can sleep OK at night.

 

I really don't know if my ancesters came over on the Mayflower or were brought here in shackles when England cleared out the prisons, but I sleep fine. I have never owned a slave, never shot at a Native American, nor have I ever condoned that sort of thing. I'm proud of my country, the moral stands She makes, and ideals She promotes. I am well aware that not everything we, as a nation, have done was right. In fact, the treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans was downright shameful and in many cases evil. But this great nation has always recognized evil even within her own shores and among her own citizens and, given time, has moved to correct the wrongs. We're not perfect but we are a nation with a conscience and I would want to live nowhere else.

If our government wasn't involved in Genocide with the Native-American, it had to have been within half a step.

 

In the 19th century alone the ironic thing is that the Cherokee relocation from the South to the West (Trail of Tears) was an "illegal" act that the courts said was illegal. But Andrew Jackson ordered the military to invade and forcibly remove the Cherokee and dared the Courts to raise their own armies to stop him.

 

In the late 19th century, the mantra of "The only good indian is a dead indian," drove the attitudes of even the government.

 

Check out this paper on one person's feelings about genocide and Native Americans. http://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/georegions/northamerica/UnitedStates02.htm

 

During a debate on an "Indian Appropriation Bill" that took place on May 28, 1868, in the House of Representatives, James Michael Cavanaugh (1823-1879) from Montana uttered the following words:

 

I will say frankly that, in my judgment, the entire Indian policy of the country is wrong from its very inception. In the first place you offer a premium for rascality by paying a beggarly pittance to your Indian agents. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Butler] may denounce the sentiment as atrocious, but I will say that I like an Indian better dead than living. I have never in my life seen a good Indian (and I have seen thousands) except when I have seen a dead Indian. I believe in the Indian policy pursued by New England in years long gone. I believe in the Indian policy which was taught by the great chieftain of Massachusetts, Miles Standish. I believe in the policy that exterminates the Indians, drives them outside the boundaries of civilization, because you cannot civilize them. Gentlemen may call this very harsh language, but perhaps they would not think so if they had had my experience in Minnesota and Colorado. In Minnesota the almost living babe has been torn from its mother's womb; and I have seen the child, with its young heart palpitating, nailed to the window-sill. I have seen women who were scalped, disfigured, outraged. In Denver, Colorado Territory, I have seen women and children brought in scalped. Scalped why? Simply because the Indian was "upon the war-path," to satisfy the devilish and barbarous propensities.

 

[...] The Indian will make a treaty in the fall, and in the spring he is again "upon the war-path." The torch, the scalping-knife, plunder, and desolation follow wherever the Indian goes.

 

[...] My friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Butler] has never passed the barrier of the frontier. All he knows about Indians (the gentleman will pardon me for saying it) may have been gathered I presume from the brilliant pages of the author of "The Last of the Mohicans" or from the lines of the poet Longfellow in "Hiawatha." The gentleman has never yet seen the Indian upon the war-path. He has never been chased, as I have been, by these red devils - who seem to be the pets of eastern philanthropists.

 

http://www.operationmorningstar.org/The_Only_Good_Indian_Is_A_Dead_Indian.htm

 

 

The following is a typical description of military activity when dealing with many Plains Indians Nations.

 

On the morning of November 28, 1864, troops commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a band of Plains Indians of the Cheyenne tribe under Chief Black Kettle while the Indian village was camped on Sand Creek in Colorado Territory. The camp was just outside a reservation established in 1861 by the treaty of Fort Wise. Two months earlier on September 28, 1864, Black Kettle and White Antelope had met with Colorado Governor John Evans and Colonel Chivington at Camp Weld near Denver to discuss peace. While no formal peace arrangement had been made, the Indians had turned in their arms at Fort Lyon, camping along Sand Creek.

 

When Black Kettle saw the soldiers charging his camp that morning, he raised an American flag plus a white flag in front of his tent to demonstrate his peaceful intent. The United States flag had been given to the Cheyenne by the government during treaty negotiations. White Antelope yelled in English, "Stop! Stop!" then, seeing that they did not stop their charge, stood with his arms folded as the troops galloped toward him, refusing to fight.

 

The soldiers killed about 150 Indian men, women and children, including White Antelope. It had been an orgy of killing. Many of the victims had been physically mutilated by the soldiers. According to Congressional testimony, White Antelope's scrotum had been cut off, later to be used as a tobacco pouch. Soldiers had cut out the vaginal area from slain Indian women. Clusters of women had been shot trying to surrender. Children had been shot and clubbed to death. Their village was burned and several hundred horses captured. (Hoig, 1981, p. 66) (United States Congress, 1865, p. 96)

 

 

I think it splits hairs to white wash our history with debates over the fine point definitions we give atrocities. Our history is what it is. It has glorious moments and moments of horrific shame. We have to learn to live with both and see how the reality of those events shaped our present. Whether we speak of Black-White relations, Native American history, or even the reality of border conflicts with Mexico that are more like 180 years old rather than a new phenomenon.