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| 5/24 |
| 2007/4/16-18 [Politics/Domestic/Crime, Politics/Domestic/Immigration] UID:46322 Activity:nil |
4/16 Why are the VT shootings being described as "worst in US history"
by the media? This seems like useless hyperbole where none is needed,
and besides:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
\_ well, wikipedia says worst "civilian" shooting in U.S. history
\_ The TV news says it's the worst "school shooting" in US history. |
| 5/24 |
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| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre The commander of the 7th had been ordered to disarm the Lakota before proceeding and placed his men in too close proximity to the Lakota, alarming them. Shooting broke out near the end of the disarmament, and accounts differ regarding who fired first and why. This was done to accommodate homesteaders from the east and was in accordance with the government's clearly stated "policy of breaking up tribal relationships" and "conforming Indians to the white man's ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must." The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty Sioux farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the semi-arid region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government's patience with supporting the so-called "lazy Indians" ran out. Ghost Dance religious ceremony ensued, frightening the supervising agents of the BIA, who requested and were granted thousands more troops deployed to the reservation. The Lakota were overwhelmed by the flood of settlers onto their lands. If the Lakota had sold the Black Hills, this would have allowed whites to mine there legally, but the Lakota were not interested in doing so. In 1876, frustrated by the refusal of the Lakota to give up the Black Hills, the government ordered the Lakota to be confined to their reservation; Indians found off the reservation were to be returned by force. By 1889, the situation on the reservations was getting desperate. The US failed to honor its promise to increase the amount of food and other necessities for the Lakota after reducing their land area. buffalo, and their deceased loved ones would live again. Wovoka preached peace, saying that God asked Indians not to fight each other or the white man. ") Tribal leaders met with Wovoka and took the message to their tribes. In October 1890, the Lakota of Pine Ridge and Rosebud defied their agents and continued to hold dance rituals. They also reinterpreted Wovoka's message to suggest that the whites would disappear and that the renewed earth would be for Indians alone. They wore ghost shirts, specially consecrated garments which they believed rendered them impervious to harm. Devotees were dancing to pitches of excitement that frightened the government employees, setting off a panic among white settlers. Pine Ridge agent Daniel F Royer was fearful of an uprising; he then called for military help to restore order and subdue the frenzy among white settlers. Although Ghost Dancing was a spiritual ceremony, the agents may have misinterpreted it as an Indian Warrior Dance. Sitting Bull was killed at his cabin on the Standing Rock Reservation by Indian police who were trying to arrest him on government orders. Sitting Bull was one of the Lakota's Tribal Leaders, and after his death, refugees from Sitting Bull's tribe fled in fear. December 29, the Lakota were informed that it was necessary to turn in any weapons they possessed to prevent violence. A Medicine Man called Yellow Bird began to do the ghost dance, reminding the Lakota that the ghost shirts were bullet-proof. As tension mounted, a scuffle broke out between a soldier trying to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. He had not heard the order to turn in his gun and assumed he was being charged with theft. At that moment, a firearm discharged, and at the same moment Yellow Bird threw some dust into the air. Indian bystanders said he meant it as a ceremonial gesture but the hairtriggered soldiers took it for a signal to attack. The silence of the morning was broken by the guns echoing near the river bed. By the end of fighting, which lasted less than an hour, 153 Lakota had been killed and 50 wounded. In comparison, army casualties numbered 25 dead and 39 wounded. Forsyth was later charged with the killing of innocents but was exonerated. After the shooting stopped, US army officials gathered up their dead and wounded soldiers, some of whom died later. Soldiers stripped the bodies of the dead Lakota, keeping their ghost shirts and other clothing and equipment as souvenirs. edit Aftermath The military hired civilians to bury the dead Lakota after an intervening snowstorm had abated. Arriving at the battleground, the burial party found the deceased frozen in contorted positions by the freezing weather. It was reported that four infants were found still alive, wrapped in their deceased mothers' shawls. Colonel Forsyth was immediately denounced by General Nelson Miles and relieved of command. Army Court of Inquiry convened by Miles criticized Forsyth for his tactical dispositions but otherwise exonerated him of responsibility. The Court of Inquiry, however--while it did include several cases of personal testimony pointing toward misconduct--was flawed. It was not conducted as a formal court-martial, and without the legal boundaries of that format, several of the witnesses minimized their comments and statements to protect themselves or peers. Secretary of War concurred and reinstated Forsyth to command of the 7th. Testimony before the court indicated that for the most part troopers attempted to avoid non-combatant casualties. Nevertheless Miles ignored the results of the Court of Inquiry and continued to criticize Forsyth, whom he believed had deliberately disobeyed orders. The concept of Wounded Knee as a deliberate massacre rather than a tragedy caused by poor decisions stems from Miles. Public reaction to the battle among Americans was at the time generally favorable. A decade later when these were reviewed, Miles saw that they were retained. Currently, Native Americans are urgently seeking the recall of what they refer to as "Medals of Dis-Honor". Many non-Lakota living near the reservations interpreted the battle as a defeat of a murderous cult, though some confused Ghost Dancers with Native Americans in general. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past." Indian Wars, the collective multi-century series of conflicts between colonial and US forces and American Indian peoples. It was also responsible for the subsequent severe decline in the Ghost Dance movement. Wounded Knee hill Wounded Knee hill However, it was not the last armed conflict between Native Americans and the United States. A related skirmish took place at Drexel Mission the day after the Battle of Wounded Knee that resulted in the death of one trooper and the wounding of six others from K Troop, 7th Cavalry, with an unknown number of Lakota casualties. Lakota Ghost Dancers from the bands which had been persuaded to surrender had fled after news of Wounded Knee reached them, and they burned several buildings at the mission. Johnny Cash wrote and released a song entitled "Big Foot" describing the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Like many of Cash's songs about Native Americans, it describes their poor treatment and victimization. Redbone, which was formed by two Native Americans, released the politically oriented song "We were all wounded at Wounded Knee", recalling the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. The song ends with the subtly altered sentence "We were all wounded by Wounded Knee". The lyrics in the first 2 verses portray the persecution of fictitious native peoples of an "island in the sun" and a "village in the trees" after the arrival of the "white man". The theme in the chorus is that this is a repetition of what happened at Wounded Knee: "Oh no, not a Wounded Knee again". The final verse refers back to the plight of Native American Indians: "We were pow-wowing to our hearts content; Frontier Regulars The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891, MacMillan Publishing (1973). Indian Wars: The Campaign for the American West, Westholme (2005). |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre John D Lee, on Friday morning, he went to the immigrants and convinced them to surrender their weapons and accept an armed one-on-one escort by the Mormon militia to safety from the siege, which the Mormon negotiators claimed was solely the doing of out of control Paiutes. Once the escort was underway in single file, a call of "Do your duty!" The women and older children were then killed by Indians and/or Mormons, depending on what source is to be believed. At least one Mormon man, who was traveling with the party through Utah, was killed in the incident. The party's extensive property was never fully accounted for, but it is widely believed to have been stolen by those who took part in the massacre. On one stone were carved the words: 'Here lie the bones of one hundred and twenty men, women and children, from Arkansas, murdered on the 10th (sic) day of September, 1857." In the same confession, we find the statement, "I have always believed, since that day, that General George A Smith was then visiting Southern Utah to prepare the people for the work of exterminating Captain Fancher's train of emigrants, and I now believe that he was sent for that purpose by the direct command of Brigham Young." edit Survivors Seventeen young children were taken away in a wagon, and distributed to local Mormon homes for care. All but one of the children were later returned to their families in the east by the US Army. This child was possibly raised in a Mormon family as an adopted child. Maj Carleton's report gave the names of the children taken and the manner of their release. Of the families who took in the children he said, "Murders of the parents and despoilers of their property, these Mormons... dared even to come forward and claim payment for having kept these little ones barely alive; these helpless orphans whom they themselves had already robbed of their natural protectors and support. Has there ever been an act which at all equaled this devilish hardihood in more than devilish effrontery? But Carleton goes on to give credit to Mrs Hamblin for care of the children, despite reports that members of her family, including her son, had taken part in the massacre. "Mrs Hamblin is a simple minded person of about 45, and evidently looks with the eyes of her husband at everything. She may really have been taught by the Mormons to believe it is no great sin to kill gentiles (the Latter-day Saint term for non-Saints) and enjoy their property. Of the shooting of the emigrants, which she had herself heard, and knew at the time what was going on, she seemed to speak without a shudder, or any very great feeling; but when she told of the 17 orphan children who were brought by such a crowd to her house of one small room there in the darkness of night, two of the children cruelly mangled and the most of them with their parents' blood still wet upon their clothes, and all of them shrieking with terror and grief and anguish, her own mother heart was touched. She at least deserves kind consideration for her care and nourishment of the three sisters, and for all she did for the little girl, "about one year old who had been shot through one of her arms, below the elbow, by a large ball, breaking both bones and cutting the arm half off." He asserts that the children were well-cared for: "when I obtained the children they were in a better condition than children generally in the settlements in which they lived." Mountain Meadows massacre Reliable history requires accurate data. In the case of Mountain Meadows, we have a record irrevocably colored by dubious folklore and corrupted by perjury, false memory, and the destruction of key documents. Almost every acknowledged fact' about the fate of these murdered people is open to question. Mountain Meadows massacre The only survivors were young children. Although their accounts were useful, they were not able to provide the context that adult witnesses would have provided. Accounts from the participants were given years later and are often contradictory and self-serving. Lee, however, said that he received orders from Lieutenant Colonel Isaac C Haight, delivered by Major John M Higbee, "to decoy the emigrants from their position, and kill all of them that could talk. Bagley suggests that after a first trial of Lee resulted in a hung jury, the prosecutor may have struck an implicit agreement with the leaders of the church to allow Lee to be convicted at the second trial if charges against the other suspects would be dropped. Affidavits taken from several participants after Lee's trial also indicate that the orders to massacre the party came from Colonel William Dame, commander of the Iron County militia, and Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Haight, the militia's second-in-command. Juanita Brooks notes that during the siege messengers made frequent trips between Mountain Meadows and militia headquarters in Cedar City and Parowan, providing ample opportunity for Dame and Haight to issue orders. Researchers have disagreed on whether Young may have ordered the massacre. Brooks concludes that Young "did not order the massacre, and would have prevented it if he could." Mountain Meadows massacre In regard to the emigration trains passing through our settlements, we must not interfere with them until they are first notified to keep away. The Indians we expect will do as they please but you should try and preserve good feelings with them. If those that are there will leave, let them go in peace. Brooks, however, faults Young and George A Smith for preaching militant sermons that set the conditions for the massacre and also for participating in the cover-up. Bagley also quotes Lee's Confessions, describing a late August conversation with George A Smith, who was touring the settlements in southern Utah, in which Smith suggested that emigrant trains that made "threats against our people" should be attacked. Mountain Meadows massacre The complete--the absolute--truth of the affair can probably never be evaluated by any human being; attempts to understand the forces which culminated in it and those which were set into motion by it are all very inadequate at best. Mountain Meadows massacre Brooks asserted that both historic events and emotional responses between Mormons and emigrants contributed to the tragedy. The massacre occurred in the context of a larger conflict between the LDS church and the United States. US troops were marching on the Utah Territory in the summer of 1857. Brigham Young, the federally appointed territorial governor, had not been informed by the President or government officials of the army's purpose. He believed this army could renew the persecution the Latter-day Saints had experienced in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois prior to their arduous journey west. These statements have been called into question by various historians due to conflicting accounts of the settlers' journey south through Utah. But relations between Mormons and all non-Mormon emigrants were at best strained, in part because of tension caused by the anticipated war between Utah and the US government. Mormon War of 1838 in Missouri, in which Governor Lillburn Boggs had ordered all Mormons to be exterminated or driven from that state, led Mormon settlers to be antagonistic and on alert. Mountain Meadows massacre You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation. Those in attendance at this dedication were both members of the community and descendants of those killed and those that survived. It is maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Mountain Meadows Association. The 1990 Monument stands on Dan Sill Hill, overlooking the site of the Massacre in the Mountain Meadows Valley below. Gordon B Hinckley, in conjunction with the Mountain Meadows Association, dedicated a new Monument at the original Mountain Meadows gravesite. In 1859, two years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the original monument ... |