UKC

I first read this about fifteen years ago. I've been drawn back to it and am now about half way through. On the one hand I enjoy reading it for the depiction of a time, place and people which have all vanished. On the other I'm not sure I want to read on as I know how it finishes and it's just too depressing. it leaves me with a futile sense of rage but also that horrid feeling when you know how a story turns out but still desperately hope that somehow, magically, this time will be different and everyone will live happily ever after.

A side note - I've bought a copy of "The Seventh Cavalry" to read with my son in a few years. I read it so many times when I was young and hope to rediscover that pleasure with him. I'm fearful though that my pleasure will be alloyed by the knowledge of what really happened on the American Plains.

Another side note - does this generation of kids play Cowboys and Indians or has that forever died a death. If not Cowboys and Indians what do they play?

In reply to Bobling:

I read Bury my heart at wounded knee. A very good account of the tragedy of the times

In reply to Bobling:
There are no real words to describe the tragedy of the Native Americans and Canadian First Nations. The truth is that they weren't really defeated, just overwhelmed and yet the reality is that there was an inevitability about the outcome.

Had the plains indians been left alone it is highly unlikely they would still be hunting buffalo (bison) and living in teepees. If you look to the far north you see that the outcome has been much the same without the massacres. However they might have been masters of their own destiny and, more importantly, retained much of their traditional culture which was lost with the loss of their original language. Remember they had no written history so the loss of language has a major impact on oral cultures.

We must however be cautious about some things. Remember the Sioux (Lakota, Dakota and Nakota) were immigrants themselves and displaced tribes such as the Crow and Pawnee. The biggest destroyer of the indiginous populations was disease and that the Sioux took advantage of this as they moved west.

When we look at the Wounded Knee massacre I have read at least one account which states that Big Foot's band was reasonably well armed although this in no way justifies the outcome.

The tragedy continues. Most Native Americans still live in poverty, still live with prejudice and are still in shock over the massive and rapid change which took place over a relatively short period of time. Go and visit the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota to see that there is still work to be done.

I am currently reading a book called "clearing the plains" which outlines the story of the Canadian First Nations. Although the Canadians didn't break any treaties, their treatment of these people has been equally shameful.

In reply to Removed User:

Pilger's work on Aboriginal Australians also very worthwhile reading. Mans inhumanity to man makes it very difficult for me to see ourselves as 'advanced'.

In reply to Bobling:
When I read Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee I was surprised how recently these things happened and how quickly they seem to have been 'brushed away'. There's a certain sense that it happened a very long time ago, or are detached from history (maybe by too many Hollywood films), if you don't inform yourself.

In reply to joepremier:

Perhaps from a Eurpoean perspective but it is much closer to home over here. That said, there is a certain lack of sympathy which is not really surprising. It would be like an admission of guilt.

The real problem is now, with the Native American's difficulty in moving forwards and pulling themselves out of the cycle of poverty and substance abuse. I'm sure its a pattern seen all over the world in people who have been oppressed and I think it might be several generations away before we see improvement.

As a final note, my grandfather (not my great grandfather) was born before the Wounded Knee massacre. So no, not that long ago.

In reply to Removed User:

I think you're right, it's not covered in schools or (particularly) common knowledge here so I was somewhat surprised, the book opened my eyes.

Joe

In reply to joepremier:

I found out a couple of years ago that my "Spanish" great grandmother was actually Native American. I have always shied away from reading about Native American history and culture because of all the "plastic" warriors and shaman that seem to abound in the fringe of the UK alternative cultures. Being ostensibly a thoroughly white Scots-Welsh bloke living in Derbyshire it just doesn't seem right to even risk being identified with the idiots who think they are reincarnations of Pocahontas or Sitting Bull. It is still a minefield even in Europe.

In reply to joepremier:

I would recommend that if you ever get the chance, visit the Crazy Horse memorial in the Black Hills in South Dakota (there is some really good climbing here aswell if you need to justify the trip).

I have also been to the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn which is an interesting visit and to Wood Mountain where Sitting Bull took the confederation of tribes (those who stayed with him)after the battle.

In reply to joepremier:

As an aside, I chose my user name (and profile) in order to stimulate a little curiosity about the subject.

In reply to joepremier:


I first read the book many years ago, in my first year at uni, a couple of years after it came out. It was quite a well-known book back then, even in UK.

The Native American situation was relatively high profile in the UK in the early 70s as the film "Soldier Blue" (1970) made a big impact due to the graphic massacre scenes. A lot of people thought the cruelty was probably exaggerated, but anyone who took the trouble to look into the details of the Sand Creek Massacre quickly realised that it certainly wasn't.

We did discuss it in school, certainly, in our General Studies lessons, which ranged far and wide.

In reply to Rob Naylor:

It was never discussed in any school I went to. But I do remember Soldier Blue although I don't think I saw it until the '80's.

In reply to Bobling:

Its quite a good song by Buffy Sainte-Marie as well.

youtube.com/watch?v=dvplgoh6nRU&

In reply to Removed User:

Soldier Blue (the film) was actually much bigger in the UK than in the USA. As was Buffy Ste Marie's song, which got a lot of radio airplay and I believe even made the Top Ten singles chart.

I think there was a reaction against the film in the USA because it destroyed forever the image of "the good old cavalry coming to save everyone". There were also parallels drawn at the time with the My Lai massacre...I remember our General Studies discussions centred on that.

In reply to Rob Naylor:

Yes, I suspect the timing of the film and the general dismay over Vietnam might have lessened its impact in the US but there was also a much greater sense of apathy towards anything Native American until "Dances with Wolves" came along.

If you remember, Richard Harris did "A man called horse" long before dances with wolves and I don't think it had the same impact.

In reply to Bobling:

Sorry all started the thread and then b*ggered off!

Perhaps what happened to the Native Americans is not significant for mechanics of conquest and conquered - pretty much the same happened anywhere that one richer, better armed people muscled in on the territory of another poorer people who were unable to fight back successfully. So why does it affect me so? I think I'd go back to my original post - discovering that the childhood games I played and books I read were based on a much darker reality? Also I think the dignity and fatalism that comes across from the chiefs and warriors resonates very powerfully.

In reply to Bobling:

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.

Red Cloud

In reply to Bobling:

Got this on DVD: still not watched, for same reason as you struggle to read the book.

I remember going to an exhibition on the Lakota ghost shirt in Glasgow at the time of its return. Very moving.

In reply to Bobling:

I remember reading this about 30 years ago. Very informative but depressing also at the same time as you say.

Shocking also to hear that the lot of the Native American doesn't seem to have moved on very much. Did you read about the work of Alex Honnold's foundation at the Navajo reservations?
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=6274

In reply to Bobling:

I finished reading this book last night - I'd been meaning to read it for some time and only just got round to it a couple of weeks ago - I was prompted to by this thread, so thanks for posting.

It's very well-written but inevitably the subject material is unrelentingly depressing. Still very glad to have read it, however.

I hadn't appreciated the extent of the deceit of the Indians and the way in which treaties entered into by the Indians in good faith would later be completely ignored whenever it suited the whites to do so. (I had assumed that land was simply taken by force rather than under the pretence of legal process.) The compensation offered was usually paltry, and then the tribes would be told that it was take it or leave it; that if they didn't accept the offer (and thus tacitly approve of the sale), they would be left with nothing at all. Take the Utes, for example. Having previously inhabited either side of the Rocky Mountains, they were confined by treaty to the western side, to which they were guaranteed exclusive access for hunting. When white settlers began to nevertheless populate the Utes' land west of the watershed in search of precious metals and minerals, the Utes complained that the treaty was being breached, but they were told by the governing authorities that the whites couldn't be removed from the land without starting a local war, in which case all the Utes'(!) land would be lost, so they might as well accept the situation and take the minimal compensation for the land that they didn't want to sell. Before long they had lost all of their territories, east and west of the Rockies.

"The white man made many promises, but he only kept one. He promised that he would take our land and he took it." - Chief Red Cloud.

Then there was the trial of Standing Bear, in 1879, in which he was finally recognised as a "person" in the eyes of the law - previously, he had been regarded merely as an "Indian" (this more than a decade after the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery). The ruling was later effectively overturned when General Sherman interpreted it as applying only to those Indians specifically referred to in the Standing Bear trial.
I think one of the footnotes in the book points out that a federal law was later passed specifying Indians as "alien by birth"(!). As I understand it Native Americans were not granted full citizenship until 1924.

A real eye-opener. Thanks again.

In case anyone is interested:
http://www.hbo.com/movies/bury-my-heart-at-wounded-knee#/

In reply to Bobling:

The other valuable source of information about the life and times of the Native American of the Great Plains is George Bird Grinnell
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cheyenne_Indians:_Their_History_and_Lifewa...
I wrote a thesis on this topic in the mid 60's and, unlike today, it was very difficult to find such enlightened sources. I was mainly researching the Southern Cheyenne and how their whole lifestyle was based on a nomadic culture, that lasted little more than 200 years. It arrived via the horse, introduced by the Spanish, and declined with the slaughter of the bison, and their loss of grazing lands to cattle & sheep.
Why the Cheyenne? Well history generally gets it wrong and American history is no exception. “In fact, what we regard as the “Great Sioux War of 1876”’ was, as viewed by the Indians themselves, a war by the whites against the Cheyennes. The Sioux were participants simply as allies!”
The best evidence for this is the opinion of other tribes that it was a Cheyenne war in 1876 rather than "The Great Sioux War" is made more plausible by the "Body Count" of seven Cheyenne camps destroyed by the army before 1876 (Sand Creek was quite well documented at the time) -- more than those of all other tribes put together! Grinnell supports this in his book but history and Hollywood have a different agenda. The more I researched the topic the greater the wealth and depth of the Cheyenne nation emerged. Needless to say that my discertation was not well recieved at college as it was not considered a very PC subject.
As someone else has noted above, the story told in Soldier Blue was one of the first Hollywood films that attempted to redress the balance. My study also included the Cheyenne language, art, laws & ethics, and history. I did seriously consider moving from studing Art to Anthropology as a result of all this work. Later, my father travelled across to the States to meet his family (he was sent to boarding school in Dover at the age of 8 whilst the rest of the family relocated to the States and Canada!) and discovered that he was related to Native Americans from the Great Lakes area. My brother has inherited a magnificent head-dress presented to my father. It really is a very beautiful object made by highly skilled craftspeople, with very fine detailing in the beadwork.
Sorry to have gone on a bit...

In reply to Sean Kelly:

Not at all - very interesting!

In reply to Bobling:

Dee Brown's "The American West" is also good.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

I'm glad to have prompted you to read it!

As I have said above my rereading of it this time round has led my thoughts in different ways - I think the first time round the *unfairness* of it all really struck me, particularly to be disabused of any romantic notions of what happened on the American Plains. This time, perhaps more jaded with the world, I think I have realised that the treatment of the American Natives was no different from how conflicts the world over have resolved themselves since time began. "Oh really, we wrote you a treaty? About that...". Might is right sadly.

In reply to Bobling:

Another side note - does this generation of kids play Cowboys and Indians or has that forever died a death. If not Cowboys and Indians what do they play?

Grand Theft Auto ?

In reply to Sean Kelly:

That's interesting Sean. There were a number of significant conflicts throughout the history of the settlement of the US (as we know it today)and that the conflicts on the plains involved many tribes who may have formed confederations at some time. The battle of the little bighorn involved one of those confederations between the Lakota, Cheyenne (Northern) and Arapaho. The fact that the "famous" Native American characters involved were primarily Lakota (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse etc.)might have created the misconception that this series of conflicts only involved the Lakota.

In reply to Bobling:


That's about the size of it.

In reply to Bobling:

By chance last week I was driving north of Minneapolis when we came across one of those state history sites beloved of so many local history societies in the USA. It covered a Treaty signing of the South Dakota tribes with the USA govt where the Mississipi merged with another big river which flowed North.The american guy I was with knew all about the history, it was taught in the local schools.

Interestingly he felt that the Indians were now given too much these days, as the tribes are making millions and millions from the casinos that have sprung up on former Indian lands.A different perspective on the condition of the Indians in current USA.

In reply to neilh:

Something I learned from the book (well, from subsequent Googling) is that the Mississippi isn't the longest river in the USA - it's the Missouri, which features in the book quite a bit. (Ashamed to say I hadn't even realised that the Missouri is a river!)

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

Coming to this thread late - but just wanted to recommend another book on the subject. The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson continues the story of the conquest of the west and how the subjugation of the native americans continued well into the 1950's and 60's.It just adds to the outrage.

Cheers
Davie

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

Mark Twain has a lot to answer for!!!

In reply to Removed User:

Interesting. I've read a lot on this subject, as the OP said 'Cowboys and Indians' ... always a boys own topic. I also had the good fortune to live in Arizona for 3 years, and off the beaten track in the Arizona strip and 4 corners there are remnants of that culture everywhere. Now, this isn't a troll, nor, heaven forbid, an independance rant, but consider the highland clearances in Scotland, the loss of the Scottish language .. lowland and Deeside gaelic HAS disappeared, as has the clan system, and much of the peculiarly scottish culture and dialect, in fact, in Aberdeen you rarely hear doric anymore. What with the aftermath of culloden , which was particularly brutal, and as was mentioned (the Sioux were immigrants)immigration and emigration, cultures change and are lost, or destroyed. The native americans, incas, aztecs, mayans, scottish clans, even the spartans - thermopyles was their swansong from which they never recovered, etc,etc. All these stories are sad, but nevertheless captivating.

In reply to Seocan:

What's also poignant (don't know if that's the right word) is that in some cases it would have been cleared Highlanders, and/or their descendants, who were responsible for the theft of land from Indians.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:
very probably so, as with all those examples what went round came round and so it goes on. The Great British had an empire and are now in decline, as did the romans,the greeks, the mongols, the cheyenne etc in the US, the gauls were similar .. occupying huge areas but never particularly united. whose next to go and who's next to rise?

In reply to Douglas Griffin:


This point is not lost on me. Nor the similarities in response by populations to being defeated and disenfranchised.

It is worth pointing out to neilh that most Native Americans do not earn millions from Casinos and live in abject poverty. Some of this is a result of nepotism, cronyism and corruption and some of it because of alcoholism and drug dependence but most of it because they have been subjected to some of the most extreme racism ever witnessed.

In reply to Removed User:
In all of this it is worth pointing out that there are significant shades of grey in the history of the US settlement. Native Americans were not united in their struggle against the white man and many embraced the change. Both Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were betrayed by members of their own tribe (although not their own band) and neither Red Cloud nor Spotted Tail (both Sioux Chiefs) participated in the battle of the little bighorn. Many tribes were willing to act for the US army against their historical enemies and it might even surprise some that Crazy Horse had entertained the idea of fighting for the US army against the Nez Perce during that conflict.

As someone further up the thread noted, the land was not simply taken but treaties were signed and it is the breaking of these treaties which caused so much anger. Also the treaties were signed without full understanding of their contents and were often signed by those with no authority to do so. It may also be worth noting that many of these treaties are still the subject of legal action even today.

It may be difficult to understand the attitude of the white settlers but coming from their own version of poverty and depravation to then be faced with extensive tracts of land with no apparent management must have simply seemed too great an opportunity.

There was a great deal of trade with the Native Americans but this was manipulated by the use of alcohol which had a devastating effect on many cultures who simply had no experience of the stuff.

Again, as someone else said, these cultures were always in a stae of flux and the Sioux especially had only really been on the plains for perhaps 100 years, taking advantage of both their own aggression and where disease had left low levels of population, voids for them to fill.

I would urge everyone to go beyond "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" in order to balance the perspective. This in no way will justify the actions and outcomes both of the past and present but it will allow a more informed opinion.

In reply to Removed User:

If I am correct , the tribes do earn millions but not the people.I see more racism in USA with black Americans than I do with the Indians.But that is another story.USA history is not pretty.

In reply to neilh:

The distribution of the wealth created is not even. Nepotism and cronyism see to that along with outright corruption. It is only a relatively small number of tribes that have these Casinos in any case.

Within living memory, Native Americans were denied the right to speak their own language, had their children forcibly removed from them and sent to residential schools where they were often abused, were not allowed to leave their reserves without permission, were denied proper education and had limited opportunities for work. They were also given the poorest land which was unproductive to live on.

I don't doubt Black Americans have suffered similar treatment but we are a long way off seeing a Native American President. I'm not sure how many reserves or reservations you have been on to but you won't see much evidence of the millions you speak about.

In reply to Removed User:

AS I said, USA history is not pretty.I do know that black americans do not have access to the funding created by the casinos.

To imply ,if that is what you are doing, that Indians are in a worse position than blacks in USA I just do not, with the greatest respect, buy into.

The positive side of the USA is that you could in the future have a Native American President, if somebody fitted the bill. But I suspect it is more likely to be a woman in the near future and then maybe one with a Mexican background ( and that could be classified as a native).

In reply to Seocan:


Yet we are about to have the 'Empire Games' in Scotland soon. ( although the name has been politically corrected) a reason for celebration says Salmond, does he not see the irony in that with reference to your earlier observations about the highland clearances.

I will be giving them a miss, even though they are on my doorstep.

In reply to neilh:


That's a bizarre statement. The "funding" is revenue generated by Casinos that are owned and operated by the various tribes who have them on a profit/loss basis. Not sure why you think black Americans should have access to that?


With the greatest respect, I don't think you have the first clue what you are talking about. I have accepted that many black Americans are still subject to extreme racism and live in poverty but if you are implying that they are worse off than the Aboriginal populations then you are clearly misinformed. There will be certain reservations where the population have pulled themselves out of the cycle of poverty and substance abuse but not a high percentage.

Out of interest, how many reserves/reservations have you actually been on and where were these?

In reply to neilh:

This about sums it up:

The quality of life on some reservations is comparable to that in the developing world, with issues of infant mortality, life expectancy, malnutrition and poverty, and alcohol and drug abuse. The two poorest counties in the United States are Buffalo County, South Dakota, home of the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, and Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, according to data compiled by the 2000 census