GREAT PLAIN WAR

CHIEF BIG FOOT
CHIEF OF THE  SIOUX

The many skirmishes on the Plains were destroying the freedom of the Plain Indians and yet, as always, there was never any glory. 

The Indians learned from the Spanish how to scalp and torture which played right into the American hands. 

Indian scalps were displayed on the opera houses in the East and the Indians wore white scalps on their jackets.

One side was as bad as the other regarding retaliation.  The only difference is that the white man would not share and started to push them off their land, now nobody would accept that. 

Troops of the commander Col. Chivington attacked a Cheyenne village on their reservation at Sand Creek 1865. They attacked before dawn, knowing very well the men were away hunting and the result was133 dead, 105 women and children and 28 men. They were even disgustingly mutilated.

Cheyennes, Sioux and Arapahos joined together the following year. They slaughtered and mutilated Lieut. Fetterman's entire troop but, and there is a but, it was only men to men.

Every time the Indian had a triumph, they were attacked and defeated again. Indian people knew they had their back to the wall and tried honest dealing to save more bloodshed on both sides. They tried dishonest theft, open warfare, spying, betrayal and yet finally they had to surrender to the white man. What it must have cost them? They were such proud people.

As a final solution to defeat them, the white man killed off the buffalo, which they knew, was their main survival and their only way of life. From 1874 till 1875 there were 3.7 million buffalo killed. Even the soldiers remarked that the smell from rotten carcasses made the plains uninhabitable. The buffalo were nearly extinct and so was the Indian's way of life.

Today, the Great Plains have turned into dust and is known as the great Dust Bowl. An aeria which was covered with tall grass and supporting 3.7 million buffalo. Well done US Government. 

CHIEF BLACK KETTLE

CHIEF SITTING BULL

One by one the great tribes were almost destroyed. Black Kettle of the Cheyenne and Sitting Bull of the Sioux were not the only chiefs who met a violent death. Most of the great chiefs were killed.  Indian leaders tried so hard to end the bloodshed on both sides and restore peace. But by 1880 most Indians were on reservations or dead. The land, their land had been divided up and given to white settlers.

THE DANCE OF DEATH

A strange belief swept through the Indians tribes. I guess it came out of sheer desperation. A Paiute called Wovoka told them to dance the GHOST DANCE and their dead ancestor would rise and come to their defence. That would banish the white man from America. The result was that the tribes became hostile and aggressive but did not banish the white man.

It came to a head at Wounded Knee in Dakota 1890. The Seventh Cavalry trying to disarm a band of Sioux and their Chief Big Foot. The result was 200 dead mostly women and children which was the end. 1890 the frontier was officially declared closed and America's white man's land stretched from coast to coast.

And what have they done with it? Destroyed it and still destroying it. If the white man were not so arrogant thinking they were superior they could have learned a lot from the Indians. Indians lived on the land for thousands of years and no destruction. Admittedly there had to be a progress but not with the radical changes the white man introduced.