Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee [Red Indians]
President Abraham Lincoln, to General Phillip "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" Sheridan.
OPERATION CLEANUP AMERICAN STYLE:
According to the Colorado Daily, for Indians and their supporters Peltier has become a figure as important for the United States as Nelson Mandela is for South Africa. It explains that Peltier's legal problems began in Pine Ridge, the site of an infamous massacre of Native Americans by federal troops. This is one of the bloodiest pages of U.S. history, and not a very old history, that leaders in that country prefer to ignore. In 1876, General George Custer, commanding the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry, was defeated in Pine Ridge by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians commanded by the legendary Sitting Bull. Fourteen years later, government troops encircled Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock reservation, captured him and killed him for "resisting arrest." Many Sioux warriors fled toward Pine Ridge, but the federal troops caught up with them in Wounded Knee, where they mercilessly killed several hundred men, women and children. While the soldiers were covered with medals for their criminal "feat," the Native Americans were left to a miserable existence on the reservations. As per other noted American Historians the tone of the so-called Democratic American Leaders was like;
President Abraham Lincoln, to General Phillip "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" Sheridan.
The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 (which was originally referred to by the United States army as the Battle of Wounded Knee -- a descriptive moniker that remains highly contested by the Native American community) is known as the event that ended the last of the Indian wars in America. As the year came to a close, the Seventh Cavalry of the United States Army brought a horrific end to the century-long U.S. government-Indian armed conflicts. On the bone-chilling morning of December 29, devotees of the newly created Ghost Dance religion made a lengthy trek to the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota to seek protection from military apprehension. Members of the Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) tribe led by Chief Big Foot and the Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota) followers of the recently slain charismatic leader, Sitting Bull, attempted to escape arrest by fleeing south through the rugged terrain of the Badlands. There, on the snowy banks of Wounded Knee Creek (Cankpe Opi Wakpala), nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and children -- old and young -- were massacred in a highly charged, violent encounter with U.S. soldiers. The memory of that day still evokes passionate emotional and politicized responses from present-day Native Americans and their supporters. The Wounded Knee Massacre, according to scholars, symbolizes not only a culmination of a clash of cultures and the
failure of governmental Indian policies, but also the end of the American frontier. It is a cold December day in South Dakota. Dead and injured Indians are being laid to rest along the straw covered floor of an Episcopalian church. A banner over the pulpit reads,
According to the Colorado Daily, for Indians and their supporters Peltier has become a figure as important for the United States as Nelson Mandela is for South Africa. It explains that Peltier's legal problems began in Pine Ridge, the site of an infamous massacre of Native Americans by federal troops. This is one of the bloodiest pages of U.S. history, and not a very old history, that leaders in that country prefer to ignore. In 1876, General George Custer, commanding the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry, was defeated in Pine Ridge by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians commanded by the legendary Sitting Bull. Fourteen years later, government troops encircled Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock reservation, captured him and killed him for "resisting arrest." Many Sioux warriors fled toward Pine Ridge, but the federal troops caught up with them in Wounded Knee, where they mercilessly killed several hundred men, women and children. While the soldiers were covered with medals for their criminal "feat," the Native Americans were left to a miserable existence on the reservations. As per other noted American Historians the tone of the so-called Democratic American Leaders was like;
President Abraham Lincoln, to General Phillip "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" Sheridan.
The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 (which was originally referred to by the United States army as the Battle of Wounded Knee -- a descriptive moniker that remains highly contested by the Native American community) is known as the event that ended the last of the Indian wars in America. As the year came to a close, the Seventh Cavalry of the United States Army brought a horrific end to the century-long U.S. government-Indian armed conflicts. On the bone-chilling morning of December 29, devotees of the newly created Ghost Dance religion made a lengthy trek to the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota to seek protection from military apprehension. Members of the Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) tribe led by Chief Big Foot and the Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota) followers of the recently slain charismatic leader, Sitting Bull, attempted to escape arrest by fleeing south through the rugged terrain of the Badlands. There, on the snowy banks of Wounded Knee Creek (Cankpe Opi Wakpala), nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and children -- old and young -- were massacred in a highly charged, violent encounter with U.S. soldiers. The memory of that day still evokes passionate emotional and politicized responses from present-day Native Americans and their supporters. The Wounded Knee Massacre, according to scholars, symbolizes not only a culmination of a clash of cultures and the
failure of governmental Indian policies, but also the end of the American frontier. It is a cold December day in South Dakota. Dead and injured Indians are being laid to rest along the straw covered floor of an Episcopalian church. A banner over the pulpit reads,
PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.
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