[2012] Native Americans
‘slaughtered, sacrificed, fenced in reservations’ in US According to
the US data, when Europeans came here, there were around 12 million Indians
across 48 states. By the early 20th century, only 250,000 Native Americans
survived. About 70% of Indians are refugees in their own country; they have been
displaced from their own land. The US carried out an unparalleled genocide: they
killed 99.6% Indians.
Holocausts A deluge of words was written on this topic. Hundreds of facets
of this issue can be argued, but no amount of words can obscure the glacial
reality of the fact that among the countless atrocities of the last centuries,
by far the greatest were the genocide of the native Americans (magnitude of this
holocaust is estimated by David Stannard in his American Holocaust, 1992, pp.
74-75, p.151) to be 100 million people for the hemisphere and 18 million for
the area north of Mexico), deaths associated with the slavery trade
(estimated to be 28 million people, cf., Stannard, p. 151) , and the holocaust
of the Jewish people (estimated to be 6 million people). According to 1909
Census, the number of Cherokees was 369,035, Navajo 225,298, Sioux 107,321,
Apache 53,330, Cheyenne 11,809 and Comanche 11,437. In the 1910, the total
population of North American Indians was about 400,000, down from about 18 -19
million in 1492
http://www.visualstatistics.net/east-west/genocide/genocide.htm
“The Sioux (aka Lakota) Indians of Minnesota must be
exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” – Minnesota
Governor Alexander Ramsey in a genocidal declaration made on Sept. 9, 1862.
Ramsey had made a fortune in real estate because of his dealings selling
property to white settlers and businessmen after he himself had negotiated
US-Dakota treaties that cheated the Dakota tribes out of their land.
http://sites.mnhs.org/historic-sites/alexander-ramsey-house/history
“I shall do full justice, but no more. I do not propose to
murder any man, even a savage, who is shown to be innocent.” ”I shall probably
approve them (the executions of the 303 Dakota warriors) and hang the villains”
– Ex-Minnesota Governor, Colonel Henry H. Sibley, whose troops had defeated
Chief Little Crow in the Battle of Wood Lake on August 23. Sibley had appointed
the five member military tribunal that tried, convicted and sentenced, via death
by hanging, 303 Dakota warriors that had been captured in the battle that ended
the 6 week US-Dakota War of 1862.. Sibley was commenting on the fate of the
convicted warriors, all but 38 of whom had their death sentences commuted by
President Lincoln. Many warriors were imprisoned at Camp McClellan, near
Davenport, Iowa and more than 1,600 non-combatants were imprisoned at a
concentration camp at Fort Snelling over the winter of 1862 – 63. Those that
survived the cold, the starvation diets and the diseases were then deported to
concentration camps in Nebraska and South Dakota (Pine Ridge).
http://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-history/2012/09/150-years-ago-us-dakota-war-ends-battle-wood-lake
“The 38 Indians and half-breeds ordered by you for
execution were hung yesterday at 10 am. Everything went off quietly.” – Henry
Sibley, in a December 27, 1862 telegraph message to President Lincoln.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/sibley.html
“There will be no peace in this region by virtue of
treaties and Indian faith. It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux
(aka the Dakota) if I have the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign
lasting the whole of next year. Destroy everything belonging to them and force
them out to the plains, unless, as I suggest, you can capture them. They are to
be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom
treaties or compromises can be made.” – Civil war Major General John Pope, in a
letter to Colonel Sibley, urging an all-out effort to totally exterminate the
Dakota, (letter was dated September 28, 1862): The punitive 40 year-old Pope was
infamous for his abrasiveness, conceit and loud mouth, with which he alienated
his colleagues, his officer staff and his soldiers. Significantly, Pope had
recently been summarily relieved of his command of the Union Army of Virginia
and demoted to Minnesota after his humiliating defeat by Robert E. Lee at the
Second Battle of Manassas just a month earlier (August 31, 1862).
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/secondmanassas/second-manassas-history-articles/second-battle-of-manassas.html
and
http://usdakotawar.org/history/aftermath#sthash.XxnK8yhx.dpuf )
“As Europeans settled the East coast, they displaced
eastern tribes who then migrated to get away from the White civilization, and
they, in their turn, displaced weaker local tribes they encountered, and pushed
many of those tribes farther from their homelands, as they took over their
homelands.
“Westward moving Europeans would give the displaced eastern
tribes … guns and gun powder and they would then instigate fights between the
newly arrived tribes and the long established tribes in order to force the long
established tribes from their homelands; and in doing so, extinguish the long
established tribes’ ancestral ties that they had with the land, their ancestors
and the spirit world. Evidence of this practice has shown itself time and time
again throughout the Americas.
“Around 1750, a displaced East coast band of Ojibwe were
pushed into the Dakota’s homeland and they then used French guns and gun powder
to force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs Lake homeland
“This was the strategy the European colonists used to
greatly diminish the number of Dakota in their Mille Lacs homeland, which
encouraged and made it possible for a French weapons armed, alcohol manipulated
band of Ojibwe to violently force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs homeland.”
“Grieved by the loss of their lands, dissatisfied with
reservation (aka, concentration camp) life, and ultimately brought to a
condition of near starvation, the Dakota people appealed to US Indian agencies
(involving ex-Minnesota governors Sibley and Ramsey) without success. The murder
of five whites by four young Dakota Indians ignited a bloody uprising in which
more than 300 whites and an unknown number of Indians were killed. In the
aftermath, 38 Dakota captives were hanged in Mankato (the day after Christmas
Day 1862) for ‘voluntary participation in murders and massacres,’ and the Dakota
remaining in Minnesota were removed to reservations in Nebraska. Meanwhile, the
Ojibwa were relegated to reservations on remnants of their former lands.
“What happened to the Dakota in 1862 and afterward was a
grievous crime against humanity. If it had occurred in this present day and age
the United Nations and the international community would condemn it and declare
it to be ethnocide and genocide. A United Nations world court indictment would
be issued and the perpetrators of this ethnocide and genocide would be rounded
up, tried, convicted and punished for crimes against humanity.” – Thomas
Dahlheimer from his long essay, entitled, A History Of The Dakota People In The
Mille Lacs Area (http://www.towahkon.org/Dakotahistory.html)
Gov. Ramsey’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of November 3,
1862:
“WHEREAS, it is meet and in accordance with good and
cherished custom of our fathers worthy to be “a statute forever in all our
dwellings,” that the people “when they have gathered the fruit of the land,”
should “keep a feast unto the Lord,” in commemoration of His goodness, and by a
public act of Christian worship, acknowledge their dependence as a community
upon Him in whose hands the kingdoms of the earth are but as dust in the
balance.
“Therefore I, Alexander Ramsey, Governor of the State of
Minnesota, do hereby set apart the twenty-seventh day of the present month of
November, as a Day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God for his wonderful mercy
towards us–for all the good gifts of His providence–for health and restored
domestic peace–and the measure of general prosperity which we enjoy.
“Especially let us recognize His mercy in that He has
delivered our borders from the savage enemies who rose up against us, and cast
them into the pit they had privily dug for us; that our friends have been
rescued from the horrors of captivity, and that our homes and household
treasures are now safe from the violence of Indian robbers and assassins.
“And let us praise Him for the continued preservation of
the Government of our Fathers, from the assaults of traitors and rebels; for the
sublime spirit of patriotism, and courage, and constancy with which He has
filled the hearts of its defenders; for the victories won by the valor of our
troops; for the glorious share of Minnesota in the struggles and triumphs of the
Union cause; for the safety of her sons who have passed through the fire of
battle unscathed, and the honorable fame of the gallant dead; for the alacrity
and devotion with which our citizens have rushed from their unharvested fields
to the standard of the nation; and, above all, for the assurance that their
toils, and perils, and wounds, and self-devotion, are not in vain; for the
tokens, now manifest, of His will, that, through the blood and sweat of
suffering and sacrifice, the nation is to be saved from its great calamity, and
the great crime of which it is at once the effect and punishment; and that
behind the thunders, and lightnings, and clouds of the tempest, the awful form
of Jehovah is visible, descending in fire upon the mount, to renew the broken
tablets of the Constitution, and proclaim FREEDOM as the condition and the law
of a restored and regenerated Union.
“Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State, at
the City of St. Paul, this third day of November, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-two”.– Alexander Ramsey, Governor of the State
of Minnesota
“Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on
Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US
Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the
Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of
the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the
relentless assault on their culture. Participants in a National Day of Mourning
honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It
is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the
racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.” – Text of
a plaque on Cole’s Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock, Plymouth, MA
References
Barlowe, A. (1584) In Quinn, D. B. The Roanoke Voyages: 1584-1590. London:
Haklyut Society, 1955.
Brando, M. (1994) Songs My Mother Taught Me. New York: Random House.
North, G. (1989) Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. Tyler, Tx:
Institute for Christian Economics.
Stannard, D. E. (1992) The Conquest of the New World: American Holocaust. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Wiesel, E. (1985, Vol. 1, p.33) in Abrahamson, (Ed.) Against Silence: The Voice
and Vision of Elie Wiesel. New York: Holocaust Library
To put things in perspective, this is how Indian land
disappeared between 1775 and 1992 in the United States of America, where over
100 million men, women and children were slaughtered, in what amounts to the
largest case of willful genocide in human history. When we read about terrorism
and homefront security, we need to look at this what real terrorism has looked
like right here at home. You could also
realize that the extermination of N. Americans was in full swing during this
period, 1775 -1875, and 100 Million Indians were killed, resulting in the worst
holocaust suffered by any race of people in the history of the world!
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