Posted on 12/27/2005 9:07:46 AM PST by Rakkasan1
MANKATO, Minn. -- More than 20 American Indians rode into downtown Mankato on horseback while dozens more completed a relay run that began at Fort Snelling to commemorate the 144th anniversary of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. On Monday, the riders, who had set out from the Lower Sioux reservation near Morton four days earlier, formed a circle around four drummers on the site of the execution. Tribal leaders delivered a message of hope, The Free Press reported. "This is not about the chaos of a war,'' said Sheldon Peters Wolfchild, chairman of the Lower Sioux Community. "It's about who these men were before the war. It's about their honor, dignity, respect, courage and love of their families and their people.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
and btw, where were these rules/regs published for all to see?
and lived according to the rules and regs in place by those who lived here first
There were innocent people on both sides. Settler and Indian. To blanket label them all as invaders or barbarians is not fair/true/accurate.
The American Indian, or "Native American" were a stone age people when discovered by the Europeans. They had not domesticated animals, they had no written language and they had not even invented the wheel.
However, their lack of technology did not prevent them warring among themselves, practicing genocide (Iroquois, Mahegan), slavery (Choctaws, Chickasaws) and cannibalism (Navajo, Anasazi).
Let's look at the history from a broader scope:
1675 - 1676 -- King Philip's War -- a larger percentage of the American population was lost in this war than in any other American war. The Indians burned down/destroyed twelve of ninety Puritan towns and attacked forty others (including Providence). Yet, the Indians lost the war.
Most Indians Tribes sided with the French in the French And Indian War (1753). The Indians lost the war.
Most Indians Tribes sided with the British in the American Revolution. The Indians lost the war.
Most Indians sided with the British again in the War of 1812. The Indians lost the war.
As the Americans moved west, fighting was constant on both sides. The Indians lost everytime.
The judgement of history is merciless.
"-- Had the europeans moved into an area and assimilated and lived according to the rules and regs in place by those who lived here first, I don't think they would have been seen as invaders.
The fact is that they barged into someone else's real estate, set up their own governments and rules, and then DEMANDED that the native folks comply with these changes. --"
Al, you have to remember that the native folks had no 'rules & regs'.. The Santee Sioux and the Chippewa had been fighting over land in Minnesota ever since the mound builders had abandoned it..
Europeans in effect won the land by joining in the battle.
Not a very fair battle, but one won on the 'square'.. - By the standards of the time.
Kind of a sobering subject and giggling is the last thing it inspires in me.
There were plenty of settlers and tribes that learned to live together. Not all settlers were an invading enemy."
Yep that's right if you were moved off your land and made to walk in the dead of winter for weeks while your children and elders were dying of smallpox and starvation you were allowed to live in peace with white settlers. I speak of the trail of tears which there can be NO EXCUSE for!
Oh well, I can't help that!
To each his own.
I read somewhere he's not really even native
He finally did admit to it....Shortly after his southern Illinois farmboy roots were exposed.
He's moved off to claiming he's African American, I think....;^)
What happened at Acton is here in great factual detail.
http://www.isd77.k12.mn.us/schools/dakota/conflict/acton.htm
I dont get what your point is in saying all that stuff but whatever.
Thanks for the link.
Sheesh, talk about having to be the "smartest in the room"...
Are you a lonely person?
Interesting. I've never heard that story.
I did see a picture of a supposed ghost in a wedding photograph taken at the Landmark Center. The picture was in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
The alleged ghost was that of a gangster. Can't recall the gangster's name though.
Besides, the poor Indians would have had less reason to complain that the English took away their land, if they had received it by way of portion with their daughters. Had such affinities been contracted in the beginning, how much bloodshed had been prevented, and how populous would the country have been, and, consequently, how considerable? Nor would the shade of the skin have been any reproach at this day; for if a Moor may be washed white in three generations, surely an Indian might have been blanched in two.
Interesting, to say the least.
He was point on about how to integrate the two races. In many instances, the guy was thinking far beyond his time.
Today we debate clearing old growth dead fall and controlled burning to prevent major forest fires. He observed it as being the correct thing to do almost 300 years ago.
So the genocidal Lincoln had the chance to hang 303 men but he didn't? How do you explain that? He also said if he lived to see the end of the Civil War he would change the way that America treated the Indians. Lincoln sent a secretary to MN to make sure they did not hang all the Indian men against his orders.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/mnstatehistory/thedakotaconflict.html
"Military trials of 425 pure and mixed-blood Dakota took on a farcical air, with many trials lasting only a few minutes each. Many convictions relied upon testimony of other accused who plea-bargained in return for leniency. When 321 men were convicted and all but 18 sentenced to die, a Catholic bishop who had worked with the Dakota, Bishop Whipple, convinced President Abraham Lincoln to intervene. Upon examining the convictions, Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but convicted rapists and murderers to prison. On December 26, 1862, three thousand people gathered to watch the hanging of these thirty-eight Dakota in Mankato, MN. It is the largest mass execution in United States history. Life was not easy for the survivors. The government declared the various land treaties negotiated with the Dakota as null and void due to the conflict. No Dakota were permitted to live in Minnesota and the bounty on Dakota scalps was raised. Indian annuities were ended and given to settlers to help them rebuild their shattered lives. 1700 Dakota were rounded up and marched to Fort Snelling where they lived in cramped conditions. Various epidemics took the lives of many. These Dakota were eventually repatriated by force to Crow Creek in the Dakota Territory."
"Exaggerated figures abounded immediately after the conflict but the true count of war dead was 77 soldiers, 413 white civilians, and 71 Indians (38 of which were those executed in Mankato). Both sides suffered greatly. Unfortunately the suffering would only continue as the frontier of the United States pushed farther and farther west without any significant improvements in United States Indian policy or Indian - settler relations. A memorial to the memory of the dead, both white and Indian, now stands in downtown Mankato at Reconciliation Park."
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