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To: kms61
Killings there were on both sides, yes, but depredations? Read this first hand account from Rachael Pratt, aged 15 when captured by the Comanches in Texas. She describes what happened to her new born baby. " He was about 6 weeks old, when I supposed they thought he was too much trouble, five or 6 sturdy Indian men came where I was suckling my infant; one of them caught it by the throat and choked it till it was black in the face and while doing so the rest of the men were holding me from trying to relieve my child. At length they pulled it from my arms by force, threw it up in the air and let it fall upon the frozen ground until life was, to all appearances, entirely gone.I tried to recover it, and as soon as they saw that it had recovered a little, they treated it as before several times, then they tied a thong around it's neck and threw it into the large hedges of prickly pears, which are 10 or 12 feet high, they would pull it down through the pears... several times , then they tied the end of the rope to their saddles, and would drag it round to me." This is not a rare account, there were others and worse from this book: Mary Donoho, first LAdy of the Santa Fe Trail. Check out the first hand accounts of the first Jesuits among the tribes of the NE ( A Few Acres of Snow is a book that describes some of these). They were tortured in the most terrible ways imaginable, by men, women and children. I guess one could make the arguement that the destruction of their cultures were equally henious, and perhaps they were, but in all my reading of American history, I have yet to read an account of pure torture, often done apparently for the pure enjoyment of it, done to Indians by whites.Killings, yes, torture, no. Yet unfortunate as it may be, there are lots of such accounts of such treatment to settlers by Indians. IMO, this was a clash of cultures between which there could be no reconciliation.
28 posted on 06/25/2003 4:39:16 PM PDT by Red Boots
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To: Red Boots
Read the accounts of the Sand Creek Massacre. Chivington's men went on an orgy of butchery that would have made the SS cringe. Depredations on Indians by whites? Absolutely and in spades.

"Ours" was a civilized, Christian culture, or at least we like to think so. We should have done better.
29 posted on 06/25/2003 4:43:23 PM PDT by kms61
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