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Show THE ZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2005-JANUARY WESTWARD 2006 "CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS" 1848-1890 HO! How Christianity "Won the West"6 Devastated a Way of Life..A Century later, has ANYTHING changed? By Jim Stiles the continent.” What was about to be lost by the Native American tribes of the Great Plains was, as historian Stephen Ambrose described, “a freedom the likes of which the world has never known.” The horse, first brought to North America by the Spaniards and later abandoned by them, changed the lives of the Plains Indians. They were able to hunt the buffalo with unprecedented efficiency, so that the basic needs of the people were always met. The Pl it d with with th d at will. The horse and Indian formed a partnership that would go unchallenged for little more thana century. Ten years after gold was discovered, more than half a million white Americans had moved to When the world watched in collective horror on September 11, 2001, as jet liners piloted by Islamic terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, viewers could scarcely comprehend the human disaster unfolding ‘live’ before them. In the days and weeks after the towers collapsed, and the Pentagon fires were extinguished, and the wreckage of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania was removed, after the sheer enormity of the attacks was absorbed by unwilling minds and the numbers of dead, more than 3000, were confirmed, the shock and grief of that day gave way to an angry national mood that demanded quick and total revenge and retribution. Calls for retaliation came sooner for some than others. During the first days, most of the news ge dealt with the di itself and the stunning loss of life. When Mayor Giulliani told reporters that the death toll “would be more than any of us can bear,” he was not yet prepared to re-focus his attention on the attackers—his heart and his tears remained with his city and with the victims. But elsewhere, retaliation lread y Or he mi fmany. FOX News was the first of the networks shi to suggest, as early as2 pmon9/11, p y targ d urged swift and brutal attach those responsible. That evening, President Bush warned other nations that a full military response was imminent and that nations harboring terrorists would be just as much at risk as the terrorists themselves. And rightly so. The United States had an absolute right to protect itself from further assaults and when it launched retaliatory strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, two months after 9/11, the world community stood behind it. But it is undeniable that many Americans view the conflict between Islamic extremists and the United States as something much broader than a War on Terror. They see it just as fervently and natrowly as their enemies—it is a war between the Christian and Islamic worlds, with both California. San Francisco grew from less than 500 to 20,000 in a year. Thousands : . 8 L i Pp 1 j a ev : pe a p 1 that . that we sir 1 1 41 into Soon there will come from the rising sun a man, different from any you have ever seen. They will bring a book that will teach you everything... Then, the world will fall to piece sides longing for another “crusade” and a definitive outcome. In fact, both sides in this struggle have far more in common than either would admit. We Americans tend to view the world in very stark black & white terms and in fact we know little of other world cultures. There is an assumption by most Americans that goes far beyond arrogance, that interprets ti-A more swarmed the “Great American Desert,” stunned at the extraordinary fertility of the soil. News of more gold strikes in Colorad ted more human stampedes from the east. Tensions between Plains tribes and the whites increased dramatically. As early as 1851, the U.S. government attempted to resolve the problem by encouraging Indians to move onto reservations, but their efforts were strongly resisted by most Native Americans. Why would they trade rich hunting grounds for barren tracts of worthless land? In Colorado, the government pushed for war. When Cheyennes refused to move onto just such a place, Governor John Evans ordered the Colorado militia, led by a former Methodist preacher named John Chivington, to burn villages and kill Cheyennes until resistance to the reservation collapsed, or they’d all been killed. But Evans’ plan began to fall apart when Black Kettle, the leader of the tribe, rode to Denver himself and asked for peace, the last thing Evans had wanted. He ordered Black Kettle and anyone else and the less blessed members of the world community resent our affluence. It never occurs to us that other countries and other cultures might preferto choose a different lifestyle. But Americans, a self-proclaimed Christian Nation, have been making that Pp for centuries now, and few of us are willing to admit it. The record is there, for all of us to examine, but rarely do we take the time, or have the incentive, and when we do, what we find is too disturbing to repeat. Native American prophesy In the early years of the 21 Century we condemn the violent and extreme practices of Islamic warriors, but our long history in America shows that Christians have been just as brutal. Just as cruel. And just as blind to the core principles of our faith... We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and women? Rum and trinkets. And a grave. —Tecumseh In 1845, fewer than 20,000 white Americans lived west of the Mississippi River. The vast wilderness that stretched from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast was home to a million Native Americans and a hundred tribes. By mid-Century whites had already driven the original occupants of eastern tribes from their ancestral homes. Now many Indians hoped that they might be left alone to live their lives as they chose to, “for as long as the grass grew and the rivers ran.” But as white Americans expanded west, conflict was inevitable. Two incredibly different cultures would soon compete for the same space. Charlotte Black Elk, a Lakota Sioux writer and CHIEF BIG FOOT, - shot dead where he lay ill. Wounded Knee. December 29, 1890 historian, observes the clash most clearly. “With Judaeo-Christian people, you have an origin legend that says, ‘Adam and Even were banished to Earth and Earth is an enemy,’ and you have Native American people who say, ‘The Earth is my mother and we all have to live together as a family.’ Those are very opposing viewpoints, from one that says ‘this is my mother’ to ‘this is a place of banishment, and you don’t really have to care for it because you're going back to Paradise after you finish your banishment.’” When the first settlers to North America landed at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, more than 10 million Indians occupied the North American population would be decimated by their original numbers by 90%. continent. whi 4 In the next three centuries, Famine 7 i d the Native war would his people to a place called Sand Creek, 75 miles southeast of Denver and told them to wait. On the cold morning of November 29, 1964, Chivington and his militia of 700 men surrounded the camp at Sand Creek. Black Kettle had hoisted the Stars and Stripes and a white flag of peace as signs of good faith, but Chivington ordered his men to attack. A junior officer protested, arguing that Black Kettle’s people hadd thing top ke the attack. Chivington replied, “Ihave come to kill Indians American reduce thei The most shameful episode in American history began almost as soon as the Jamestown colony and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians.” stepped from the boat. Within years, Indians were stripped of their property and regarded as subhuman by most of the Christian colonizers. When the Cherokee Nation represented itself before the United States Supreme Court, in defense of its land and its right to live side-by-side with whites, and when the Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee, the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, _ defied the court order and shipped thousands of Native Americans west to “Indian Territory.” As the soldiers swarmed over the camp, Black Kettle could not believe what was happening and did not think they would harm his people. The soldiers killed women and children and the elderly. Some of the soldiers refused to fight. Captain Silas Souleigh said, “It looked too hard for me to see little children on their knees, begging for their lives and having their brains beaten out like dogs.” Most of the dead were Still, the western United States was so vast and so unlimited, that conflict over that d like a distant problem, for another time. When Lewis & Clark reported to President Jefferson on their voyage of discovery to the Pacific, he could barely comprehend the vastness of continent that sprawled to the west.. He concluded, based on their report, that it would take 1000 years to settle the continent from Atlantic to Pacific. Except for Lewis & Clark, and the trappers, little was known of the Great Plains and the land beyond it. Cartographers called that land “the Great American Desert,” convinced of its lack of value and therefore certain that Native Americans would never be asked to give it up. All that would change in the coming decade of the 1850s. explorer named John C. Fremont published a book, one of America’s first travel guides, in fact, that offered tantalizing information about a route west, through South Pass in Wyoming. South Pass allowed travelers to bypass the nearly insurmountable Rocky Mountains; news of this revelation spread like a prairie fire. Two years later, when gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in California, and news of it reached the east, the reaction was unprecedented. Tens of thousands of white Americans left their homes and families, in search of quick riches in California. Thousands more, encouraged by Fremont’s maps, went west as well, hoping for land and a fresh start. None of them gave more than a passing thought to the Native Americans who had occupied these lands for thousands of years. If anything, the Indians were nothing but an obstacle to be overcome. As historian Robert Utley observed, “They considered it their destiny to overspread the continent and make it blossom, as commanded by the scriptures, and I don’t think ‘tight’ ever played any part in the decision to move west. It was a natural and inevitable thing in the minds of westering Americans. Morality lay in making the wilderness bloom. ‘Right’ was conquering “I heard of numerous By the late 1860s, Native Americans Soon there will come from the rising sun a man different from any you have ever seen. They will bring a book that will teach you everything. Then the world will fall to pieces. —Native American Prophesy Sometimes the flow of events, unconnected by time and space, can conspire to change history. In the late 1840s, America and the world was transformed in such a way. Travel from the east to the Pacific was almost an impossible task, and only the most rugged attempted it. But in 1846, an American mutilated. instances,” recalled Lieutenant James Connor, “in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over their saddle horns or worn them over their hats, while riding in the ranks.” Black Kettle managed to escape the massacre, but by noon, 28 men and 105 women and children lay dead. Chivington reported his victory to the governor. “All did nobly,” he said. The Rocky Mountain News reported that, “Colorado soldiers h d tl Ives in glory,” and Cheyenne scalps were strung across the stage of the Denver Opera House. Frederick Douglass, the former slave who became the conscience of the abolition movement said, “The most terrible reproach that can be hurled at the head of American Christianity and civilization, is the fact that there is a general consensus all over this country that the aboriginal inhabitants should die out in the presence of that Christianity and civilization.” Douglass had spent a lifetime in defense of his own people. Now he witnessed the only atrocity more horrendous than slavery— extermination, in the name of Jesus Christ. Jackson wrote, “These tribes cannot exist, surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement. They must necessarily yield to the force of circumstance and before long, disappear.” More than half of the exiles died on the bitter journey. It is still called “The Trail of Tears.” } on the Great Plains and across the West, sensed the life and death struggle that lay ahead. General John Pope could sense their newfound fury: “The Indian in truth has no longer a country. His lands everywhere, pervaded by white men, his means of subsistence, destroyed., and the homes of his tribe, violently taken from him. The Indians have everywhere commenced hostilities against the whites and are carrying them on with a fury and courage unknown to them hitherto.” Even among military leaders, those committed to the very task of exterminating Native Americans, there was always the reluctant realization that their own cause was wrong, and the Indians’ resistance as just. We behold him now, on the verge of extinction, standing on his last foothold, clutching his rifle, resolved to die amidst the horrors of slaughter. And soon he will be talked of as a noble race who once existed but who has now passed away.” George Armstrong Custer said that. William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general who, a few years before, broke the back of the Confederacy and who understood better than any military man in the 19" Century the concept of total war, now planned his strategy of Indian conquest. Sherman could be called the first modern day military terrorist. His march from Atlanta to the Atlantic targeted civilian populations and their property. Livestock was slaughtered and left to rot, the crops burned, the homes pillaged, and the women raped and murdered by Union troops. A hundred years later, the mere mention of Sherman’s PAGEI2 |