Elliott West in The Contested Plains approached the question this way: The 1855 Census reported only 2 men for every 3 women among the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Comanche. The situation was even worse among some eastern tribes. West concluded the cause of this ratio was death from either hunting or fighting. A family among these tribes was 3 or 4 times as likely to lose a husband or son to fighting as a white family in the bloody Civil War at a later time. In short, the Civil War carnage did not approach that of these wars.286
In 1885, Helen Hunt Jackson in A Century of Dishonor held the opinion that “the Indian has no redress but war. In these [Indian] wars ten white men were killed to one Indian.”287
To put the matter into perspective, the battle deaths in the other major wars in the history of the United States are: Revolutionary War, 6,824; War of 1812, 2,260; Mexican War, 1,733; Civil War, 140,414 (Union) and 74,524 (Confederacy), for a total of 214,938; Spanish-American War, 385; World War I, 53,513; World War II, 292,131; Korean War, 33,629; and Vietnam War, 47,393.
Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical entitled Veritas Splendor (“The Splendor of Truth”) in late 1993, which asserted that there is a basic morality that transcends all eras and cultures and absolutely forbids certain actions.288 History has given us some fundamental rules of conduct in hostile times, violation of which invokes the strong disapproval of contemporaneous and succeeding generations. Some of those rules are these: (1) Do not knowingly kill children; (2) Do not knowingly kill women unless they are showing hostility; (3) Do not torture your enemy; (4) Do not eat human flesh; (5) Do not kill your prisoner; and (6) Do not deliberately mutilate your enemy’s body. Indians violated all these rules, and settlers and soldiers violated some of them, although the author has found no white cannibalizing of Indians and few instances of their torturing Indians.
The atrocities make it is easy to understand why this time and place in our history was called the wild frontier. The cataloging of these hard-to-believe atrocities is at an end.
MOST OF US are baffled by atrocious acts. Fortunately, we do have some clues that help us analyze the motives of those who committed them. Several of the causes have been mentioned above: hatred, revenge, unauthorized conduct, Indian love of warfare and desire to torture, desperation, cannibalism, and Indian conduct during the Revolution.
Two additional causes are the atrocities themselves and sadism. An atrocity was committed, word of it spread in the offended settler or Indian community, then a counteratrocity was committed in an escalating effect that sometimes led to full-blown war. Specific examples are the Raisin River Massacre of 1813, where 80 American prisoners were tortured and killed by Indians, which increased American resolve and “morally justified more or less anything they [the settlers] might be able to do to the savages”;289 the Santee Sioux Uprising in Minnesota in 1862, which caused white goodwill to “run out,” according to S. L. A. Marshall, and which “would not be forgotten by the whites on the frontier”;290 and Sand Creek, which “the Plains Indians could neither forget nor forgive.”291
Sadism is a little-understood mental illness characterized by the obtaining of pleasure from hurting someone else. Fanny Kelly reported that the Sioux were fond of recounting their exploits of torture. They would
dwell with much satisfaction upon the number of scalps they have taken from their white foes. They would be greatly amused at the shuddering horror manifested, when, to annoy me, they would tauntingly portray the dying agonies of white men, women, and children, who had fallen into their hands; and especially would the effect of their description of the murder of [Kelly’s daughter] little Mary afford them satisfaction.292
Regardless of whether or not it was proper, the settlers frequently attempted to justify their own atrocities on the grounds that the Indians were committing atrocities. Bil Gilbert said, “Whites frequently justified their own atrocious conduct on the grounds that it was necessary to fight fire with fire, that they had to be vicious because the savages were so vicious.”293 Denis Brogan also took this view: “The early settlers long needed to acquire a craft equaling the craft of the savages and a savagery not much inferior. It is hard to remember this today…. But it has to be remembered all the same.”294
BELLIGERENTS IN any war have enemies. The enemies in this war were different. The principal enemy of the settlers, of course, was the Indians who fought them and committed many atrocities against them, but another enemy at times was the federal government, which spasmodically prevented settlers from encroaching on land occupied by Indians. One enemy of the Indians was the government that fought them and from time to time improperly assisted the settlers against them. A greater enemy was the settlers themselves, without right seizing land occupied by Indians and committing numerous atrocities against them. But paradoxically, the greatest enemy of the Indians was Indians themselves who warred ferociously with one another, weakening their ability to fight the settlers, and who refused to unite in defeating them.
*Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson was a trader and trapper who lived with and married Indians. He fought Navajo, Comanche, and Kiowa during the Civil War, and he was made a brigadier general shortly after it ended.12
* Little Crow was a hereditary chief of the Santee Sioux. He lived at the site of present South St. Paul, Minnesota. Little Crow had 6 wives and 22 children. He had good relations with settlers for a long time, and he fought the renegade band of Wahpekute Sioux who had attacked settlers at Spirit Lake in 1858.18
*The Cheyenne tribe first lived in Minnesota, then the Dakotas, and then moved westward to the banks of the Missouri River, probably pushed there by hostile bands of Sioux and Chippewa. They went into the Black Hills, but the Sioux pushed them farther south, and they settled in Wyoming and Nebraska. The Cheyenne made war against the Kiowa and Comanche, but then formed an alliance with these 2 tribes against the Crows, Pawnee, Shoshoni, Ute, and Apache.54
*At various times, the Arapaho fought the Shoshoni, Ute, Pawnee, Crows, Sioux, Comanche, and Kiowa.58
† Evans was a physician, a wealthy real-estate developer, and a good administrator, but coldblooded and mercenary, and possessed with an overwhelming ambition to be Colorado’s first United States senator.59
† John M. Chivington was a Methodist minister from Ohio who preached to settlers, Indians, and miners in the West. Evans commissioned him a major in the Colorado militia, and he had fought well in the Civil War.62
* Black Kettle fought the Ute, Delaware, and other enemies of the Cheyenne in his youth. By the time of the Civil War, he wanted peace with the settlers.64
*Edward Richard Sprigg Canby had an unusually varied military career commencing with actions against the Seminoles and the Mormons. After that, he commanded troops and Ute auxiliaries against the Navajo who had been raiding in New Mexico, where he was appointed brigadier general. With the aid of Chivington’s volunteers, he drove invading Confederate forces into Texas. Finally he served to quell draft riots in New York City.167
* George Crook fought in both the Yakima War and the Rouge River War. As a brigadier general in the Civil War, he fought in the Battles of Antietam and Chickamauga and in the Shenandoah campaign. After that war, he fought against the Northern Paiutes, the Apache (using Apache scouts), the Yavapais, and the Sioux and Cheyenne (using Pawnee scouts). He commanded 1 of the 3 prongs (using Crow and Shoshoni scouts) that were to converge on the Sioux and Cheyenne, but had to withdraw in the face of Crazy Horse’s warriors and the Chiricahua Apache under Geronimo. Crook later campaigned for Indian rights groups and successfully campaigned for the release of Geronimo and other Apache who were in military prisons. He was never an advocate of total war because he believed limited strikes would succeed. He favored diplomacy over warfare. The Indians trusted him and called him Grey Fox.185
* General Howard was a general in the Civil War. He fought in several battles, won the Congressional Medal of Honor, lost an arm, but continued to lead troops at Gettysburg and several other engagements. After the
war, he was the first president of Howard University. He later returned to service and fought the Nez Perce, the Bannocks, and other tribes. He campaigned for the Indian Rights Association together with General Crook.214
*The Ute settled in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wyoming. The name Ute means “high up” or “land of the sun.” They fought other tribes as well as the Spanish, warred intermittently with the Arapaho, and captured slaves to trade with other tribes.220
* Sioux chief Big Foot was in Ghost Dance country. The dance was especially attractive to his people, most of whom were widows who danced in the hope it would bring their husbands back. Officials tried to stop these ceremonial gatherings, but Big Foot would not agree.232
CHAPTER 9
Some Other Aspects of the War
The settlement of the United States was an invasion of European citizens on the East Coast commencing in 1607. After their War of Independence, they became one people. They then continued their invasion westward until it reached the Pacific Ocean. They were opposed by Indian tribes who did not unite to repel the invasion as urged by King Philip, Joseph Brant, Pontiac, and Tecumseh. The tribes were defeated by a united, much better armed invader.
The matter of treaties was an important subject for settlers and Indians from the beginning. Powhatan chief Opechancanough signed a peace treaty with the settlers in 1632, the first of hundreds of treaties that followed. Many problems arose because of them. The first report of the Board of Indian Commissioners established by Congress in 1869 found that “the history of the government connections with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises.”1 President Rutherford B. Hayes was of the opinion that “many, if not most, of our Indian wars have had their origin in broken promises and acts of injustice on our part.”2
Sitting Bull saw it that way too. “What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one. What treaty that the white man even made with us have they kept? Not one.”3 Peter Matthiessen charged that “the United States governments, one after another, had failed the Indian people in every moral and legal obligation.”4 Ralph K. Andrist, author of The Long Death, charged that every promise made by the government “had been cynically broken.”5
But a more considered view is given by Alan Axelrod, who observed in Chronicle of the Indian Wars that the fault lay with the Indians as well as the whites:
Treaties between whites and Indians were customarily violated almost as soon as they were signed.
It is all too easy to ascribe these violations to white perfidy. Indeed, this was often the case, as white governments, colonial or federal, sometimes entered into treaties in bad faith. More often, however, white treaty commissioners had reasonably good intentions and fully expected their side would abide by the terms of the agreement…. There were grave problems on the Indians’ side as well.6
Both sides were hindered by weak governments that could not keep their peoples acting in compliance with the treaties. The United States made 389 treaties with Indian tribes. Some treaties were made again and again with the same tribe as conditions changed. No less than 42 treaties were made with the Potawatomis and an additional 42 with the Chippewa.7
The last “treaty” with the Indians was made in 1871. Peter Matthiessen made the misleading statement that
in 1871, the government repudiated the whole concept of treaties, most of which it had already broken; since the Indians who had not been exterminated were now mostly under control, the remnants could be administered by the Department of the Interior as a “national resource.”8
The treaty concept was changed by an act of Congress because Indian advocates (called humanitarians then) did not like the treaty system and because the House of Representatives wanted to share with the Senate authority for dealing with the Indians. Under the Constitution, the House took no part in ratifying treaties.9 The 1871 act did not repudiate “the whole concept of treaties.” To the contrary, it expressly reaffirmed the validity of obligations incurred under earlier Indian treaties. The act provided “that nothing herein contained shall be construed to invalidate or impair the obligation of any treaty heretofore lawfully made and ratified with any such Indian nation or tribe.”10
No evidence supports the conclusion that the United States broke most of its Indian treaties. Only Matthiessen, Sitting Bull, and a few others make that claim. Sitting Bull in the same statement quoted above also asserted that the Indians had broken “not one” treaty. There are many examples to the contrary, and indeed the violations are sometimes admitted by the Indians.
There is also a well-established rule of law that bears on the question of treaty-breaking by the United States. That rule is that Congress has the authority to break treaties when it wishes. Two Cherokee refused to pay taxes on tobacco required by an internal revenue act on the ground that they were exempt under a Cherokee treaty. In the Cherokee Tobacco case, the Supreme Court decided in 1870 that “a treaty may supersede a prior act of Congress, and an act of Congress may supersede a prior treaty…. In the case under consideration the act of Congress must prevail as if the treaty were not an element to be considered.”11
ANGIE DEBO, in her History of the Indians of the United States, described several methods by which individual land-grabbers (and not the government) illegally obtained the land of individual Indians:
Land-grabbers then flooded the country and obtained contracts of sale. Their methods are significant, for the identical techniques were repeated many times when Indians tried to hold land by individual title: misrepresentation, the Indian not knowing what he was signing; the use of intoxicants; the misuse of notary seals on blank instruments, to be filled in at the swindler’s convenience; outright forgery and a specialized kind, the bribing of some subservient Indian to impersonate the owner and sign in his place; and rigged probate procedure in the state courts corrupted by the general dishonesty.12
Although Debo cited no specific cases to support her claim that individual land-grabbers illegally obtained land occupied by Indians, no one can doubt that this happened thousands of times. Laying aside what individuals illegally did to acquire land occupied by Indians, it is significant that no one explicitly claims the United States government illegally acquired such land. The word explicitly is used because of the nonspecific claims of some Indians or Indian advocates that someone, somehow, somewhere “stole” Indian land.
Land brought settlers to the New World, and land was the principal subject of the treaties. Despite the evidence that the federal government (sometimes state governments) had purchased very great quantities of land from the Indians under treaties, Edward H. Spicer found “the feeling was strong among Indians generally that the U.S. government owed them a great deal for taking nearly all their land and for failing to live up to the many treaties as settlers moved across the continent.”13
Indian advocate Felix Cohen was asked if the more than $800,000,000 the United States paid for lands purchased from Indians after 1790 was an honest price. He said, “The only fair answer to that question is that except in a very few cases where military duress was present, the price paid was one that satisfied the Indians.”14
Even those sympathetic to the Indians have acknowledged that the government legally obtained substantially all of the Indian land. Wilcomb E. Washburn pointed out in The Indian in America that “students of the subject as diverse as Thomas Jefferson and Felix Cohen have agreed that most of the lands acquired from the native inhabitants of the present area of the United States were acquired by purchase from their original possessors.”15 William T. Hagan, speaking of the government acquiring Indian land in American Indians, said, “Down to 1811 violence was not required and everything was done legally, if not ethically.”16 Carl Waldman’s Atlas of the North American Indian showed clearly the areas ceded and the tribe or tribes making the cessation. These areas make up almost the entirety of the United States. Ralph K. Andrist, with reluctance and after making all the arguments the Indians made a
s to why they should not have been bound by the treaties ceding land, finally concluded,
The government had always been completely correct in its relations with the Indian tribes, treating them as though they were independent nations.17
In 1946, the government set up an unprecedented judicial procedure for resolving Indian claims about land and other matters called the Indian Claims Commission Act. The act was broad and required the commission to hear almost any claim asserted by an Indian tribe or band, including
… (3) claims which would result if the treaties, contracts, and agreements between the claimant and the United States were revised on the ground of fraud, duress, unconscionable consideration, mutual or unilateral mistake, whether of law or fact, or any other ground cognizable by a court of equity; (4) claims arising from the taking by the United States, whether as the result of a treaty of cessation or otherwise, of lands owned or occupied by the claimant without the payment for such lands of compensation agreed to by the claimant; and (5) claims based upon fair and honorable dealings that are not recognized by any existing rule of law or equity. No claim accruing after the date of the approval of this Act shall be considered by the Commission.
All claims hereunder may be heard and determined by the Commission notwithstanding any statute of limitations or laches, but all other defenses shall be available to the United States.18
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