We've heard it too many times:
“the worst shooting in US history…”
With saddened respect to all those who are mourning victims of various public outrages, these may also be teachable moments for the US about her own history.
For it is an insult to the native people of this hemisphere to overlook their collective slaughter with mass shootings by the US cavalry ending barely 100 years ago.
How hyped 9/11 was as the worst bloodshed in the US people since the Civil War. Which is an outrageous truncation of history - the total negation of the war against the plains Indian tribes. The US’ common incapacity to understand her own history becomes her collective blindness towards current and future circumstance.
As to seldom learned US history, consider the massacre of Wounded Knee.
December 29, 1890
Briefly, depending on who does the counting (and numbers are hotly contested between “official“ sources and the Lakota people), between around 350 to over 500 people were shot down in a mass slaughter on that date. Most of the people were sick, starved, and exhausted from being pursued by the US cavalry. They were attacked at dawn. A great number of those slain that day were elderly, very sick, or infants. Nursing mothers were shot in the back, babies were tossed into the air as targets. Corpses lay frozen in the snow for days afterwards. A mass slaughter by gunfire.
Maybe it wasn’t the worst of the Indian shootings, although some say it was. For there were many such instances. Again, by the late 1880’s the US Cavalry was employing genocidal tactics (supplying trading posts with smallpox-infected blankets, etc.) to slaughter the remaining Indians who did not want to live in those prison camps we now call reservations.
Ironically, the massacre at Wounded Knee occurred in response to a native American interpretation of the Christian gospel:
By the late 1880s, many Indian tribes, desperate and facing a dire existence of poverty, hunger and disease, sought a means of salvation to revitalize their traditional culture. The evolution of a new religion, the Ghost Dance, was a reaction to the Indians being forced to submit to government authority and reservation life. In early 1889, a Paiute shaman, Wovoka, (son of the mystic, Tavibo, whose teachings influenced the new religion) had a vision during an eclipse of the sun in which he saw the second coming of Christ and received a warning about the evils of the white man… Knowledge of the vision spread quickly through the Indian camps across the country. Word began to circulate among the people on the reservations that a great new Indian Messiah had come to liberate them, and investigative parties were sent out to discover the nature of these claims. On one of the excursions, it is said that the messiah appeared to an Arapaho hunting party, crowned with thorns. They believed him to be the incarnation of Jesus, returned to save the Indian nations from the scourge of white people. Delegations were sent to visit Wovoka in western Nevada and returned to their camps disciples, preaching a new religion that promised renewal and revitalization of the Indian nations. Among those who met with Wovoka, Good Thunder, Short Bull, and Kicking Bear became prominent leaders of the new religion which was called the Ghost Dance by white people because of its precepts of resurrection and reunion with the dead. [source].
Their belief:
Kicking Bear (quoting Wovoka):
"The earth is getting old, and I will make it new for my chosen people, the Indians, who are to inhabit it, and among them will be all those of their ancestors who have died... I will cover the earth with new soil to a depth of five times the height of a man, and under this new soil will be buried the whites...The new lands will be covered with sweet-grass and running water and trees, and herds of buffalo and ponies will stray over it, that my red children may eat and drink, hunt and rejoice." [source]
This is US Christian history - or will some deny that the illiterate can experience legitimate faith?
By August of 1890, the U.S. government was fearful that the Ghost Dance was actually a war dance and, in time, the dancers would turn to rioting. By November, the War Department sent troops to occupy the Lakota camps at Pine Ridge and Rosebud, convinced that the dancers were preparing to do battle against the government. In reality, the Indians were bracing themselves to defend their rights to continue performing the sacred ceremonies. In reaction to the military encampment, the Lakotas planned various strategies to avoid confrontation with the soldiers, but the military was under orders to isolate Ghost Dance leaders from their devotees[source].
The US Cavalry saw women doing the Ghost Dance, and failed to realize that women never participate in war dances.
The misunderstandings multiplied. Here is one account of all that happened (you will notice wildly differing numbers of those assassinated going from one website to another).
Wovoka's gospel of salvation was filled with Christian as well as Indian elements. Men and women were first to purify themselves and forswear alcohol and violence. Then they were to dance in a large circle, chanting and appealing to the spirits of their ancestors. When they did, Wovoka promised, the whites would vanish, the buffalo would cover the earth again.
"The Ghost Dance, I think, was a desperate prayer. They thought that, well, it may be possible that all of this has been a bad dream, or all of this is passing and there will be the restoration of the world we knew and loved." - N. Scott Momaday
The people, wearing the sacred shirts and feathers, now formed a ring. We boys were in it. All joined hands. Everyone was respectful and quiet, expecting something wonderful to happen... The leaders beat time and sang as the people danced, going round to the left in a sidewise step. Occasionally, someone... fell unconscious into the center... As each one came to, she, or he slowly sat up and looked about, bewildered, and then began wailing inconsolably.
Pine Ridge Agency
November 12th, 1890
We need protection and we need it now. Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy... The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once.
Daniel F. Royer
Responding to the pleas of a frightened Indian agent, Washington dispatched General Nelson A. Miles with 5,000 troops, including the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old command. At Pine Ridge and Rosebud in South Dakota, the ghost dancers feared that the soldiers had come to attack them, and fled to a remote plateau surrounded by cliffs which nervous whites soon began calling "the Stronghold."
The presence of the great warrior Sitting Bull alarmed the Calvary, who expressed concern that the Ghost Dance would turn to violence. Therefore the military was ordered to arrest those imagined to be the agitators including the Sioux Chiefs Sitting Bull and Big Foot.
On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull and eight of his warriors were slain at the Standing Rock reservation by agency police sent to arrest him, who claimed Sitting Bull had resisted arrest. Some of Sitting Bull's followers escaped to Big Foot’s camp of Miniconjou Sioux, many of whom were Ghost Dancers.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/28/931914/-
“the worst shooting in US history…”
With saddened respect to all those who are mourning victims of various public outrages, these may also be teachable moments for the US about her own history.
For it is an insult to the native people of this hemisphere to overlook their collective slaughter with mass shootings by the US cavalry ending barely 100 years ago.
How hyped 9/11 was as the worst bloodshed in the US people since the Civil War. Which is an outrageous truncation of history - the total negation of the war against the plains Indian tribes. The US’ common incapacity to understand her own history becomes her collective blindness towards current and future circumstance.
As to seldom learned US history, consider the massacre of Wounded Knee.
December 29, 1890
Briefly, depending on who does the counting (and numbers are hotly contested between “official“ sources and the Lakota people), between around 350 to over 500 people were shot down in a mass slaughter on that date. Most of the people were sick, starved, and exhausted from being pursued by the US cavalry. They were attacked at dawn. A great number of those slain that day were elderly, very sick, or infants. Nursing mothers were shot in the back, babies were tossed into the air as targets. Corpses lay frozen in the snow for days afterwards. A mass slaughter by gunfire.
Maybe it wasn’t the worst of the Indian shootings, although some say it was. For there were many such instances. Again, by the late 1880’s the US Cavalry was employing genocidal tactics (supplying trading posts with smallpox-infected blankets, etc.) to slaughter the remaining Indians who did not want to live in those prison camps we now call reservations.
Ironically, the massacre at Wounded Knee occurred in response to a native American interpretation of the Christian gospel:
By the late 1880s, many Indian tribes, desperate and facing a dire existence of poverty, hunger and disease, sought a means of salvation to revitalize their traditional culture. The evolution of a new religion, the Ghost Dance, was a reaction to the Indians being forced to submit to government authority and reservation life. In early 1889, a Paiute shaman, Wovoka, (son of the mystic, Tavibo, whose teachings influenced the new religion) had a vision during an eclipse of the sun in which he saw the second coming of Christ and received a warning about the evils of the white man… Knowledge of the vision spread quickly through the Indian camps across the country. Word began to circulate among the people on the reservations that a great new Indian Messiah had come to liberate them, and investigative parties were sent out to discover the nature of these claims. On one of the excursions, it is said that the messiah appeared to an Arapaho hunting party, crowned with thorns. They believed him to be the incarnation of Jesus, returned to save the Indian nations from the scourge of white people. Delegations were sent to visit Wovoka in western Nevada and returned to their camps disciples, preaching a new religion that promised renewal and revitalization of the Indian nations. Among those who met with Wovoka, Good Thunder, Short Bull, and Kicking Bear became prominent leaders of the new religion which was called the Ghost Dance by white people because of its precepts of resurrection and reunion with the dead. [source].
Their belief:
Kicking Bear (quoting Wovoka):
"The earth is getting old, and I will make it new for my chosen people, the Indians, who are to inhabit it, and among them will be all those of their ancestors who have died... I will cover the earth with new soil to a depth of five times the height of a man, and under this new soil will be buried the whites...The new lands will be covered with sweet-grass and running water and trees, and herds of buffalo and ponies will stray over it, that my red children may eat and drink, hunt and rejoice." [source]
This is US Christian history - or will some deny that the illiterate can experience legitimate faith?
By August of 1890, the U.S. government was fearful that the Ghost Dance was actually a war dance and, in time, the dancers would turn to rioting. By November, the War Department sent troops to occupy the Lakota camps at Pine Ridge and Rosebud, convinced that the dancers were preparing to do battle against the government. In reality, the Indians were bracing themselves to defend their rights to continue performing the sacred ceremonies. In reaction to the military encampment, the Lakotas planned various strategies to avoid confrontation with the soldiers, but the military was under orders to isolate Ghost Dance leaders from their devotees[source].
The US Cavalry saw women doing the Ghost Dance, and failed to realize that women never participate in war dances.
The misunderstandings multiplied. Here is one account of all that happened (you will notice wildly differing numbers of those assassinated going from one website to another).
Wovoka's gospel of salvation was filled with Christian as well as Indian elements. Men and women were first to purify themselves and forswear alcohol and violence. Then they were to dance in a large circle, chanting and appealing to the spirits of their ancestors. When they did, Wovoka promised, the whites would vanish, the buffalo would cover the earth again.
"The Ghost Dance, I think, was a desperate prayer. They thought that, well, it may be possible that all of this has been a bad dream, or all of this is passing and there will be the restoration of the world we knew and loved." - N. Scott Momaday
The people, wearing the sacred shirts and feathers, now formed a ring. We boys were in it. All joined hands. Everyone was respectful and quiet, expecting something wonderful to happen... The leaders beat time and sang as the people danced, going round to the left in a sidewise step. Occasionally, someone... fell unconscious into the center... As each one came to, she, or he slowly sat up and looked about, bewildered, and then began wailing inconsolably.
Pine Ridge Agency
November 12th, 1890
We need protection and we need it now. Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy... The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once.
Daniel F. Royer
Responding to the pleas of a frightened Indian agent, Washington dispatched General Nelson A. Miles with 5,000 troops, including the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old command. At Pine Ridge and Rosebud in South Dakota, the ghost dancers feared that the soldiers had come to attack them, and fled to a remote plateau surrounded by cliffs which nervous whites soon began calling "the Stronghold."
The presence of the great warrior Sitting Bull alarmed the Calvary, who expressed concern that the Ghost Dance would turn to violence. Therefore the military was ordered to arrest those imagined to be the agitators including the Sioux Chiefs Sitting Bull and Big Foot.
On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull and eight of his warriors were slain at the Standing Rock reservation by agency police sent to arrest him, who claimed Sitting Bull had resisted arrest. Some of Sitting Bull's followers escaped to Big Foot’s camp of Miniconjou Sioux, many of whom were Ghost Dancers.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/28/931914/-
