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Not many people paid any attention when Dee Brown died last December 12. There were no newspaper headlines, no public expressions of sympathy. He was 94 and had written quite a few books in his lifetime, but his name was no household word. Most of his day work was as a librarian and a few government jobs. The books he wrote mostly about the American West attracted little attention. Then in 1970 he came out with a lengthy 446-page
book dealing with the treatment of the American Indians. He wasn’t the first to explore the mistreatment of an
entire race by the white men, but he brought it to the forefront with
his contribution to social conscience: “Bury My Heart at Wounded
Knee.” It was an instant hit and he made the talk show circuit of
that day. In one interview,
he quoted an Indian named Standing Bear as saying that people herded
cattle into a corral to prepare for slaughter, and the Indians had been
treated the same way. Gen.
Phillip Sheridan may be remembered less for his part in the Battle of
Chattanooga and more for saying, “The only good Indian is a dead
Indian.” There was never an official government policy of
genocide for the ethnic race that greeted Columbus and the hoard of
settlers who followed him. But
it amounted to that. Immigration
doors were flung open and, regardless of any flimsy government treaty or
paper, they flooded into Indian lands and staked their claims.
American population doubled in the three decades following 1860,
from 31-milliopn to 62-million. They
wanted land, the reservation land.
The Indians never understood how anyone could give their word and
not keep up. They never
understood Washington politicians. Efforts by Indians to meld with whites were fruitless. They emulated the whites, even to the point of having black slaves. Blacks also had black slaves. Thanks to Sequoyah, the Cherokees had their own written language and published a newspaper, The Phoenix. The Trail of Tears in 1838 will ever remain a black mark on American history with a 4,000 of the 18,000 Cherokees dying on the forced march to Oklahoma either in stockades or on the trek in the cold of winter. Late in the 19th Century came the Indian Wars,
fueled by horror stories of wild savages scalping innocent whites.
It worked to infuriate the white public against the red man.
No one mentioned the white soldiers scalping Indians.
Pushed and pushed, Creeks in South Dakota fought back in 1890
against the American cavalry. Soldiers
slaughtered more than 150 people. Many
were women and children. Until late in the 20th Century, books, magazines
and movies portrayed the Indians as savages who scalped helpless whites
and massacred without cause. A
social conscience began to develop and people saw clearer what happened
to the inhabitants of the American continent who welcomed white settlers
and were rewarded with syphilis, smallpox and theft of land. Politicians have always been pretty good at
exploiting minorities, going back to the African slaves brought ashore
in the 1600s. The term “doesn’t have a Chinaman’s
chance” had basis in reality. Californians
hated the coolie laborers so much they chased them through the streets.
Within comparatively recent memory of World War II, anyone who
looked Japanese was herded up and put in a concentration camp.
Much, much later they were given an official policy and a few
dollars to soothe the pain, as if that could wash away the disgrace. Some African Americans are beating the drum to
seek payment for the burden of slavery put on their ancestors
generations ago. The
country’s guilt complex probably won’t reach far enough to accept
inherited pain. There is enough social guilt in American history to go around for everyone who has suffered because of race, religion or national origin. But the Indians were the first and the most abused. It the government opened the vaults of Fort Knox to repay them, it wouldn’t be enough. We would have to give all the land back. Come to think of it, they did do a better job of taking of each other and the land.
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