On this day, January 8, 1877, General Miles found Crazy Horse's camp along Montana's Tongue River. The soldiers opened fire with their big wagon-mounted guns, driving the Indians from their warm tents out into a raging blizzard. Crazy Horse and his warriors managed to regroup on a ridge and return fire, but most of their ammunition was gone, and they were reduced to fighting with bows and arrows. They managed to hold off the soldiers long enough for the women and children to escape under cover of the blinding blizzard before they turned to follow them.
Later in the year faced by odds that stagger the mind he lead 1,100 hundred Indian to Fort Robinson to surrender. This was the last great battle that the Lakota, Sioux and Cheyenne fought together.
How we treated the natives of this great land has been a dark spot in our American history. I write this not because my heritage is part Indian, but because we as a nation never truly upheld the treaties we made with them. Was there wrong deeds perpetrated by both parties? Yes. But who is truly to blame? This will be a question that will always haunts us.
God Bless:
BluesMan
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I agree, for the most part. But one must understand there were atrocities inflected by, and on both sides. As to who got the proverbial “bad end of the stick” that is fairly evident, unless you were one of the casualties, but I digress.
When we review our American history in regards to our relationship with the Native American Indian we failed on almost every aspect. We made treaties, and then we broke them just as easily.
You might ask, is this not the history of man? Does not history record that man basically made treaties, and then break them with the same ease?
Yes, man had been doing a “great” of it for decades upon decades upon decades. But you see, our Nation was based one a Bill of Rights, a Constitution, and even our currency stated “One Nation under God”.
Why then did we, as Americans treat the Native American Indian worse than the British treated us? Oh, was it because we were civilized and they were not? Please, there is one word that sums most of all the broken treaties, and that word is “GREED”. I place for you review, “The "Trial of Tears".
I have pictured us in the worst of lights, but I would venture to guess we have for the most part, deserved it. But not all of our ancestors were as black-hearted as this. Many got along with them, made pacts with them. Even my family, the Campbell’s got along with them and my great grandfather helped them whenever possible. He eventually married a Cherokee bride. Though I am more “white” than Indian I still greave for us both.
BluesMan
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