c.1868 108 George Porter, whose family was killed by Indians, claimed he murdered Indians in retaliation
1868 1 Army scout Lem Wilson killed Indian in a fight, then scalped him
1869 2+ Indians in Montana killed in a fight; soldiers be-headed them, pickled their ears, and boiled flesh from their skulls
1869 1 Army scout Welch killed Cheyenne chief Pretty Bear in the Battle of Summit Springs, then scalped him
1870 173 The army attacked a Blackfoot camp, killing 90 women and 50 children
1871 30 Settlers in California chased Indians into a cave and shot them
1871 21 Settlers, Mexicans, and Indians attacked sleeping Apache, killing women and children
1873 17 Modoc prisoners, including women and children, attacked by Oregon volunteers and killed
1873 4 The heads of the hanged killers of General Canby were sent to the army museum in Washington
1873 4 A settler was taking warriors in his wagon to surrender, but other settlers killed them
1874 12 After the Battle of Adobe Walls in Texas, soldiers be-headed Comanche and Cheyenne Indians and put their heads on posts
1874 2 General Crook demanded the head of Apache chief Delshay; 2 were brought in by another group of Apache, and Crook displayed both
1876 1 Buffalo Bill killed Cheyenne chief Yellow Hair in battle, then scalped him
1876 1 Sioux chief American Horse was badly wounded in South Dakota. After he died, soldiers scalped him
1878 1 Indians scalped Paiute chief Egan and gave the scalp to Colonel Miles; his surgeon brought back the head
1890 63 Sioux women and children gunned down by soldiers at the Battle of Wounded Knee
Total 7,193, or 44 percent of all atrocity deaths
Notes
Introduction
1. Coward, John M., The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press, 1820-90 (1999), 233, notes that the cultural gap between white Americans and Indians was fundamental and wide.
2. Hughes, Robert, Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America (1993), 121.
3. Commager, Henry Steele (ed.), The West: An Illustrated History (1976), 267.
4. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1992), 46.
5. Nash, Gary B., Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (1992), introductory page.
6. Marshall, S. L. A., Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars (1972), xiii.
7. Waldman, Carl, Who Was Who in Native American History (1990), v-vi.
8. Quoted in Josephy, Alvin M., Jr., The Indian Heritage of America (1991), 7.
9. Bordewich, Fergus M., Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century (1996), 18.
10. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 280.
11. Waldman, Carl, Atlas of the North American Indian (1985), 109.
12. “Who Were the First Americans?” Newsweek, April 26, 1999, 57.
13. Ibid., 52.
14. New York Times, October 26, 1999.
15. World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 10 (1973), 108.
16. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 144.
17. Wissler, Clark, Indians of the United States (1940), 85.
18. Axelrod, Alan, Chronicle of the Indian Wars from Colonial Times to Wounded Knee (1993), 169.
19. Quoted in Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1991), 78.
20. Axelrod, Chronicle of the Indian Wars, vii.
21. Marshall, Crimsoned Prairie, 2.
22. Tebbel, John, and Keith Jennison, The American Indian Wars (1961), 261.
Chapter 1: Settler and Other American Attitudes About the Indians
1. Coward, The Newspaper Indian, 160.
2. Hays, Robert G. (ed.), A Race at Bay: New York Times Editorials on “The Indian Problem;’ 1860-1890 (1997), 3.
3. The military shared the wrath of the Times. General Sherman wired General Sheridan in 1876 stating that he hoped that General Miles would “crown his success by capturing or killing Sitting Bull and his remnant of outlaws.” Robinson, Charles M., III, A Good Year to Die (1995), 280.
4. Dippie, Brian W., The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (1991), 133.
5. Quoted in Hays, A Race at Bay, 5-6.
6. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 281.
7. Nash, Red, White, and Black, 37.
8. Kraus, Michael, The United States to 1865 (1959), 35.
9. Smith, Page, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (1976), 108.
10. Quoted in Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian, 35.
11. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr., 500 Nations (1994), 204.
12. Pearce, Roy Harvey, The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization (1965), 12.
13. Sheehan, Bernard W., Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (1973), 205.
14. Quoted in Axelrod, Chronicle of the Indian Wars, 11-12.
15. Gilbert, Bil, God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War (1989), 2.
16. Waldman, Who Was Who, 40.
17. Quoted in Nash, Red, White, and Black, 76.
18. Waldman, Who Was Who, 223.
19. Quoted in Nash, Red, White, and Black, 84.
20. Smith, A New Age Now Begins, 1155.
21. Ibid., 1155.
22. Quoted in Prucha, Francis Paul, Documents of United States Indian Policy (1990), 2.
23. Waldman, Who Was Who, 187.
24. Quoted in Dippie, The Vanishing American, 122.
25. Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, 13.
26. Waldman, Atlas, 114-15.
27. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 5.
28. Waldman, Who Was Who, 373.
29. Ibid., 167.
30. Quoted in Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 224.
31. Quoted in Dippie, The Vanishing American, 6.
32. Dippie, 6.
33. Quoted in Dippie, 5-6.
34. Dippie, 6.
35. Ibid., 9.
36. Quoted in Dippie, 7.
37. Quoted in Washburn, Wilcomb E., The Indian in America (1975), 19.
38. Jackson, Helen Hunt, A Century of Dishonor (1885), 254-55.
39. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 123.
40. Quoted in Dippie, 8.
41. Waldman, Who Was Who, 52-53.
42. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 30.
43. Ibid., 62-63.
44. Quoted in Dippie, 52.
45. Ibid., 58.
46. Washburn, The Indian in America, 209.
47. Quoted in Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 206.
48. Brinkley, Douglas, American Heritage History of the United States (1998), 154.
49. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 142.
50. Hays, A Race at Bay, 3.
51. Quoted in Coward, The Newspaper Indian, 2.
52. Quoted in Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian, 51.
53. Marshall, Crimsoned Prairie, 28.
54. Quoted in Coward, The Newspaper Indian, 118.
55. Ibid., 107.
56. Quoted in Hays, A Race at Bay, 52.
57. Hays, 132.
58. Quoted in Hays, 1.
59. Hays, 51.
60. Ibid., 234-35.
61. Coward, The Newspaper Indian, 201.
62. Debo, Angie, A History of the Indians of the United States (1989), 234.
63. Hays, A Race at Bay, 215.
64. Quoted in Hays, 178.
65. Ibid., 298.
66. Ibid., 26.
67. Hays, 27.
68. Quoted in Hays, 28.
69. Waldman, Who Was Who, 136.
70. Berkhofer, Robert E., Jr., The White Man’s Indian (1978), 168.
71. Quoted in Coward, The Newspaper Indian, 198.
72. Hays, A Race at Bay, 327.
73. Quoted in Hays, 93.
74. Ibid., 33.
&
nbsp; 75. Lazarus, Edward, Black Hills/White justice (1991), 89.
76. Hays, A Race at Bay, 141.
77. Coward, The Newspaper Indian, 170.
78. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 127.
79. Jackson, A Century of Dishonor, 198.
80. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 156; Hays, A Race at Bay, 21.
81. Hays, 37.
82. Brandon, William, Indians (1987), 348.
83. Hays, A Race at Bay, 283-84.
84. Ibid., 251.
85. Quoted in Dippie, The Vanishing American, 120.
86. Quoted in Hays, A Race at Bay, 227-28.
87. Quoted in Wilson, James, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native Americans (1998), 235.
88. Quoted in Hays, A Race at Bay, 322.
89. Quoted in Dippie, The Vanishing American, 183.
90. Ibid., 183.
91. Ibid., 184.
92. Ibid., 184
93. Ibid., 250.
94. Waldman, Atlas, 204.
95. Matthiessen, Peter, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1991), 34-35.
96. Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep, 396, 405.
97. Wilson, p. 400, criticized the government in connection with this occupation because it “failed either to provide decent accommodations for them [the occupiers] or … [to] arrange meetings with the President and other high-ranking leaders.”
98. Lazarus, Black Hills/White Justice, 300-1.
99. Waldman, Atlas, 205.
100. Hagan, William T., American Indians (1979), 171-72.
101. Lazarus, Black Hills/White Justice, 301.
102. Quoted in Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep, 401.
103. Washburn, The Indian in America, 273-74.
104. Hays, A Race at Bay, xx.
105. Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep, xvii-xviii.
106. Leo, John, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, January 31, 1995.
Chapter 2: Some Indian Cultural Characteristics
1. Bordewich, in Killing the White Man’s Indian, commented that “in the film Dances with Wolves [described as a New Age Western on p. 29], which is a virtual compendium of currently popular attitudes about Indians, Euro-Americans are portrayed almost without exception as sadists, thugs, or lost souls” (p. 211). Gary L. Ebersole, in Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity (1995), 255-56, similarly said, “Few whites come off well in the film—most are portrayed as ignorant, prejudiced, and brutal, while the Sioux are wise, open-minded, and humane. Whites are largely written off as incorrigibly corrupt.” Two realistic fictional motion pictures about Indians and settlers on the frontier are The Unconquered and The Last of the Mohicans.
2. Spicer, Edward H., The American Indians (1980), 19.
3. Debo, A History of the Indians, 3.
4. Wissler, Indians of the United States, 298.
5. Catlin, George, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians Written During Eight Years’ Travel (1832-1839) Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians of North America (1841), 463.
6. Ibid., 6.
7. Tebbel and Jennison, The American Indian Wars, 1.
8. Marshall, Crimsoned Prairie, 2.
9. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 193, paraphrasing James Adair.
10. Carey, Larry Lee, “A Study of the Indian Captivity Narratives as a Popular Literary Genre, ca. 1675-1875” (1978), Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 30.
11. Collier, John, The Indians of the Americas (1947), 174.
12. Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep, 27.
13. Ibid., 55.
14. Ibid., 260.
15. Smith, A New Age Now Begins, 107-8.
16. Quoted in Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian, 8.
17. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 93. To about the same effect Wissler said, “The Algonkin were not merely at war with the Iroquois but often with each other. There were about a hundred Algonkin tribes, all independent like tiny nations, all sooner or later quarreling and starting feuds—little vicious circles impossible to break. In revenge for past injuries a few members of one tribe would stealthily approach the camp of a hostile tribe, take a scalp or two and escape if they could.” Wissler, Indians of the United States, 70.
The relationship between “Algonquian” and “Iroquois” is complex. Algonquian was a major Indian language spoken by several tribes with different dialects, and Indians speaking one dialect might not be able to understand those speaking another. Iroquoian is also an Indian dialect. The Iroquois are also the most widespread Indian tribe in upper New York and the Lake Ontario region of Canada. The Iroquois Confederacy (later the Iroquois League) eventually consisted of several tribes. Complexity is compounded by the fact that Algonquian is often spelled Algonkin, sometimes refers to a small Canadian tribe, and sometimes the names are misspelled. Waldman, Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (1988), 6, 103.
18. Waldman, Atlas, 93.
19. Nash, Red, White, and Black, 25.
20. Waldman, Encyclopedia, 105-6.
21. Axelrod, Chronicle of the Indian Wars, 41.
22. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 96.
23. Wissler, Indians of the United States, 131-32.
24. Ibid., 145.
25. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 196.
26. Esarey, Logan, A History of Indiana (1970), 10-11.
27. Quoted in Tebbel and Jennison, The American Indian Wars, 53.
28. Waldman, Atlas, 110.
29. Waldman, Who Was Who, 128-29.
30. Quoted in Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 194.
31. Catlin, Letters and Notes, 50.
32. Ibid., 94.
33. Ibid., 98.
34. Waldman, Encyclopedia, 78-79.
35. Catlin, Letters and Notes, 369.
36. Quoted in Jackson, A Century of Dishonor, 68.
37. Drimmer, Frederick, Captured by the Indians (1961), 277-79, 299-300.
38. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 280.
39. Axelrod, Chronicle of the Indian Wars, vii.
40. Driver, Harold E., Indians of North America (1969), 320.
41. World Book, vol. 10, 144.
42. Spicer, The American Indians, 104. The author spoke of the northern Plains Indians, but this language applies to all tribes.
43. Gilbert, God Gave Us This Country, 6-7.
44. Waldman, Atlas, 87.
45. Schultz, Duane, Month of the Freezing Moon: The Sand Creek Massacre, November, 1864 (1990), 13.
46. Waldman, Encyclopedia, 223.
47. Quoted in Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, 440.
48. Quoted in Utley, Robert M., and Wilcomb E. Washburn, Indian Wars (1977), 144.
49. Driver, Indians of North America, 309.
50. Quoted in Loudon, Archibald, A Selection of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives, of Outrages, Committed by the Indians, in Their Wars, with the White People, vol. 2 (1908), 220.
51. Dippie, The Vanishing American, 54.
52. Ibid., 234.
53. Wissler, Indians of the United States, xiv.
54. Waldman, Encyclopedia, 211.
55. Waldman, Atlas, 167.
56. Utley and Washburn, Indian Wars, 144.
57. Quoted in Robinson, A Good Year to Die, 134.
58. Robinson, 313.
59. Schultz, Month of the Freezing Moon, 16.
60. The Appendix counts as several wars those between more than 2 tribes. For example, when the Iroquois fought the Beaver Wars against 13 other tribes, those wars are considered 13 intertribal wars, not just one.
61. Utley and Washburn, Indian Wars, 15.
62. Marshall, Crimsoned Prairie, 212.
63. Brady, Cyrus Townsend, Indian Fights and Fighters (1971), 313.
64. Waldman, Atlas, 87-88.
65. Brandon, Indians, 176.
66. Pearce, The Savages of America, 93.
67. Driver, Indians of North America, 309.
68. Smith, A New Age Now Begins, 1174-75.
69. Kelly, Fanny, Narrative of My Cap
tivity Among the Sioux Indians (1871), 78.
70. Quoted in Commager, The West, 237.
71. Quoted in Journal of the Indian Wars, 1 (1): 1999, 9.
72. Axelrod, Chronicle of the Indian Wars, 180.
73. Brady, Indian Fights and Fighters, 185.
74. Ibid., 90.
75. Andrist, Ralph K., The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indian (1964), 136.
76. Ibid., 131.
77. Robinson, A Good Year to Die, xxix.
78. Waldman, Who Was Who, 293-94.
79. Marshall, Crimsoned Prairie, 84.
80. Quoted in Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 195.
81. Catlin, Letters and Notes, 469.
82. Quoted in Pearce, The Savages of America, 116.
83. Catlin, Letters and Notes, 146.
84. Waldman, Who Was Who, 167-68.
85. Quoted in Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 200.
86. Quoted in Kelly, My Captivity Among the Sioux, 188.
87. Kelly, 143.
88. Josephy, Indian Heritage, 96.
89. Drimmer, Captured by the Indians, 18.
90. Axelrod, Chronicle of the Indian Wars, 56. Indians were not alone in imposing the punishment of running the gauntlet. As noted in Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (1996), 159, Private Moses B. Reed in the Lewis and Clark Expedition did so after he was convicted of desertion and theft.
91. Driver, Indians of North America, 324.
92. Quoted in Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 197.
93. Brandon, Indians, 181-82.
94. Ebersole, Captured by Texts, 196.
95. Quoted in Goodrich, Thomas, Scalp Dance: Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865-1879 (1997), 43.
96. Catlin, Letters and Notes, 444.
97. Driver, Indians of North America, 324-25.
98. Catlin, Letters and Notes, 167-74.
99. Waldman, Who Was Who, 328-30.
100. Ibid., 291-92.
101. Lazarus, Black Hills/White Justice, 87. To basically the same effect, it is said that “Sitting Bull, after permitting fifty pieces of flesh to be cut from his arms and chest and undergoing other tests of fortitude, had had a vision of soldiers falling into the Indian camp.” Andrist, Long Death, 262.
The Wild Frontier Page 40