anniversary

The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that “the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves,” and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we’ll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 117th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Crossposted at Progressive Historians &
Native American Netroots

Black Kettle, his wife, and more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho had just been exterminated, and Custer’s 7th was burning the lodges and all their contents, thus stripping them of all survival means. Sheridan would wait until all their dogs had been eaten before “allowing” them into subjugation, then Custer would rape the women hostages in captivity.

Jerome A. Green. “Washita.” p. 126.
Far across the Washita Valley, warriors observed the killing of the animals, enraged by what they saw.

What did they see, feel, and think?

QUOTE SOURCE
And so, when the Chiefs gathered to decide what the people should do, Black Kettle took his usual place among them. Everyone agreed Sand Creek must be avenged. But there were questions. Why had the soldiers attacked with such viciousness? Why had they killed and mutilated women and children?

It seemed that the conflict with the whites had somehow changed. No longer was it just a war over land and buffalo. Now, the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves.

See it? Feel it?

They witnessed and felt the Sand Creek Massacre happen, again.

Consequently, a number of Cheyenne who were present at Washita helped defeat Custer at Little Bighorn.

So, let us proceed from the Sand Creek Massacre,

Why does this say Battle Ground after there was a Congressional investigation?

and from the genocide at the Washita “Battlefield” –

No, it was a massacre.

Petition to Re-name
The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site toThe Washita National Historic
Site of Genocide

AND WHERE AS:

According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

WE, the undersigned members of the Native American community and the public at large, request that this site of the attack by the United States military against 8,500 Plains Indians camped as prisoners of war along the Washita River in 1868 be designated as the Washita National Historic Site of Genocide.

- to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

Harjo: Burying the history of Wounded Knee

But Wounded Knee was 14 years after Little Bighorn. Would the soldiers have held a grudge that long and why would they take it out on Big Foot? They blamed Custer's defeat on Sitting Bull, who was killed two weeks before Wounded Knee. The Survivors Association members had the answer: ''Because Big Foot was Sitting Bull's half-brother. That's why Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa people sought sanctuary in Big Foot's Minneconjou camp.''

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890

The first intention of the U.S. Army in part was to detain Chief Big Foot under the pretext that he was a "fomenter of disturbance," remembering that Native Americans did not have equal rights at that time in the Constitution.

In addition, the real intention was doing a "roundup" to a military prison camp, which would have become an internment and concentration camp in Omaha after they were prisoners. Colonel James W. Forsyth had orders to force them into going there.

Speculating, I bet at least part of the rationalization for the massacre was so the soldiers wouldn't have to transport them to the military prison in Omaha. Murdering them would have been easier. Then, they could've had another whiskey keg, like they did the evening right before this massacre, when they celebrated the detainment of Chief Big Foot. The soldiers may have even been hung over, depending on amount consumed and tolerance levels; moreover, if the soldiers were alcoholics, tolerance levels would have been high.

massacre:

n : the wanton killing of many people [syn: mass murder] v : kill a large number of people indiscriminately;

"The Hutus massacred the Tutsis in Rwanda" [syn: slaughter, mow down]

Friday nights are hell. There is something about anniversary days, regardless of how close or far-removed they are from the actual event, that set something off in my psyche. Yesterday was only the second Friday that had passed since Y's collapse. Last Friday was the memorial service, and this Friday, well, this Friday I needed to find something to do with myself.

Wednesday night, I was driving with a friend due west. The sun was setting, and the vermilion sky cast the barns and the trees in a sort of blood-amber light. In the midst of all that redness was the palest sliver of new moon. Inanna's moon, and I was reminded of the legend that says that the sliver of new moon is Inanna's boat, carrying the souls of the worthy from the underworld to heaven.

I could not take comfort from that legend. The only thing I could think was, "When you're dead, you don't get to see these things anymore." And the idea that Y could not see what I was seeing pierced me. Death is not about the dead. It's about the living. It's about how we make meaning out of the sudden disappearance of what was once a presence.

I keep seeing his ghosts everywhere. They're private moments, and I'm collecting them all, trying to piece them together so that perhaps, if I gather enough of them up, I can glue them together and make him present again.

Ridiculous. I'm a rational, intelligent human being. And yet.