Year of the Dakota Series.
Setting the Stage for the Single Most Difficult Truth of Minnesota’s Role in Genocide
by Richard J. Hilber, J.D.
In the history of Minnesota Territory and its precursors, the Wisconsin Territory, and the old Northwest Territory, there was the slow westward expansion of European occupancy of what formerly were areas inhabited by only aboriginal peoples. This expansion was at first slight and incidental to the fur trade as European traders came into the area and brought goods to trade with Indians and over time with metis (hereafter referenced as a people as Metis) who did the trapping and skinning.
When the United States decided to exert territorial authority in these trade years, it was to push out Canadian or British traders and trade companies to the benefit of the American fur trade. Land purchased for the siting of Fort St. Anthony at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers did not represent in any way a surrender of the Indian people then or even later with the establishment of the fort, which after its establishment was renamed Fort Snelling after the U.S. Army officer who had spearheaded its completion, Josiah Snelling.
American traders wanted to exploit the Indian and Metis trappers and traders and not have to compete with foreign influence. So long as the Metis sent pelts south to American traders they were a welcome and already existent means to an ends as the Metis spoke the languages of the Indian peoples and knew how to bring in the furs. With the extension of credit many of the Indians and Metis became debtors to American traders who in turn were debtors to Eastern investors and fur trade company owners.
Clearly the Indians knew the European settlement was moving toward their hunting grounds. Game became at times scarce and hunting parties had to go much farther afield, including the Great Plains for the buffalo hunt. This led to the American exploitation of the Sioux Indians.
Eastern missionaries also came to convert the Indians and to civilize them. The nominally Catholic Metis peoples for the most part resisted the Protestant missionary proselytizing while the Sioux when faced with starvation would adapt to white culture including religion and agriculture. The Indians though were also wary of settlers and former fur traders taking Indian land for farming and especially wary of the taking of trees. Both forestry and agriculture meant game suffered loss of habitat. Often the peace treaties preserved Indian rights to fish and to hunt the lands that were sold. This right of course had its limits as white settlers had to tolerate Indians taking fish and game and being in proximity to white settlers.
Another development is that the creditors of the Indians and Metis stood in the offing at treaty negotiation time but especially at time of distribution of payments to Indians so that the debts would be settled first with the remainder (which was either non-existant or slight) soon lost to the Indians who were short of foodstuffs with the exhaustion of the game.
The fur traders, such as Henry Hastings Sibley, who saw the end of a way of life in the 1840s and 1850s who had the capacity became speculators in land for resale to settlers. The pressure of settlement led to calls for settlement of the Indian problem by resettlement of Indians on reservations away from white settlement areas. But always the whites encroached on the land reserved for the Indians. Desperation due to loss of customary hunting life style and incipient starvation led to Indian conduct by some individuals that showed the deep hurt the Indian people had suffered in dealings with the American government.
By 1862 the Dakota War started with Indian warriors seeking to drive the settlers back from their Indian lands as land payments from the governmenthad long been delayed and unequal to the task of alleviating the starvation and poverty the Indian tribes were suffering. While racism had been minimal in fur trading days, the white settlers in large numbers called for removal or, even worse, extermination of the Indians as savages, or even less than human. Missionary attempts to convert savages into converts were considered foolhardy by many and with success came regret because the success that was possible would prove misguided in conception and execution.
The new State of Minnesota had not only to provide Union troops for the Civil War, it also had to raise brigades to pursue the Sioux. The arrestees included Indians who were not participants or even sympathizers with the Indian warriors who had started the war. Eventually, by Christmas 1862, President Lincoln had reviewed the cases and provided that only a limited number of Indians should be hung for evidence sufficient to convict them of atrocities such as murder and rape of the innocent. Among those convicted was Cut Nose who had led the Indian soldiers. Not present was Chief Little Crow. Little Crow was hunted for months thereafter. Eventually, he was shot and killed by a farmer who did not know whom he was shooting other than that he was shooting an Indian. The body of Little Crow was desecrated by whites in the aftermath. The enmity between the races was fixed except for those who by the grace of God rose above the enmity and chose God and his way forward encapsulated in his message of escape from cycles of violence and revenge, oppression and rebellion, which characterize the sad history of our common humanity.
The Author. Sunday, June 17, 2012.
Revised slightly, Friday, July 27, 2012. RJH.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
American Exceptionalism and Genocide
Year of the Dakota Series.
American Exceptionalism and Genocide
by Richard J. Hilber
Recent history tracks fairly well what happens to those who participate in genocide, not in all cases though. Historically, the destruction in the 16th Century of French Protestant (Huguenot) villages and villagers is just a footnote in the history of religious persecution. The same of the continent wide genocide of aboriginal persons of the New World (1492 to present day Mexico). It is said that Adolph Hitler admired the thoroughness of the United States government in the extermination of indigenous tribes (see unexpurgated versions of Mein Kempf by Adolph Hitler).
For those who care to see excavation of burial trenches in the aftermath of Balkan wars of the 1990s, there are scant news photographs. It's unseemly afterall, these rank exposures of atrocities meant to remain buried and secret. Any comfort that Americans might take that genocide would not and could not happen in this country is really what is at issue here in this writing. One of the primary tenants of the religion which is American Exceptionalism is that we are a good and kindly nation of civilized persons. The argument is that we Americans are God's chosen people and therefore Manifest Desting even in its unseemly details is ordered by the Creator God. Scary and an atrocious defamation of those of us who find the Creator God incapable of such machinations.
Here in Minnesota this year, we are marking the one hundred fiftieth year since the Dakota War of 1862. An insurrection among reservation Dakota peoples faced with starvation and betrayal by the United States Government. Those rounded up in the aftermath of the insurrection for prosecution, execution, and removal from the State of Minnesota included even bands not participant in the insurrection and as well members of the bands who resisted inclusion as hostiles and helped White settlers escape to safety. What resulted was a war of invasion into Dakota Territory into undeeded lands of the Lakota and Dakota peoples and subsequent genocide ordered by Governor Alexander Ramsey and Major General John Pope of the United States Army. The primary event of genocide would occur in September 1863 in an area of nearby James River Valley in Dakota Territory, what is misnamed the Battle of White Stone Hill (not a battle really but rather a free fire killing zone on villagers at a rendezvous on the order of My Lai in Viet Nam in 1968).
The United States and the States of Minnesota and North Dakota have covered up official acts of genocide for now on one hundred fifty years. Why is the trench of corpse remains not as of yet excavated? The White Stone Hill battleground is not yet still. The case for American exceptionalism is not yet dead. How can we fault a civilized Germany for condoning and participating in the genocide of Jews, Gypsys, Poles, and others? We as a nation do not have the clean hands to prosecute Serbian leaders and generals that we think we have (which is why in part we need an effective United Nations and international tribunals to try war criminals)!
We Americans have no body count of those slain in the environs of White Stone Hill, Dakota Territory, September 1863. The military leader responsible for the slayings does not report the number of dead and dying in the ravine in which they were found the morning after the carnage on September 3, 1863. We have the general’s own report though of other related statistics and fair minded estimates (admittedly estimates). In so much as this general, General Alfred Sully, exaggerated his military exploits we supposedly would not mock him. After all, we all have to justify our positions of power and influence with our superiors.
The problem for General Sully is that his superior, Major John Pope, late of the Army of the Potomac, had ordered the killing and destruction which by modern parlance constitutes genocide. So had the governor of the State of Minnesota, Governor Alexander Ramsey. The adjutant general of the State of Minnesota earlier in 1863 had published a bounty for each scalp brought in for redemption of any person of the tribes then found in Minnesota, twenty-five dollars at first with a larger bounty for a scalp supplied by one not in military pursuit of the primitives. Perhaps that concession was to prevent unjust enrichment for soldiers who received soldier’s pay, as they should only receive a slight reward for doing their duty and having the proof of it to supply. No questions asked about how the scalper had come by the scalp either (as in an atrocity in killing a woman, a child, a non-belligerent even, or what would otherwise be murder even if the killing of a belligerent formerly).
The historical record available to lay persons such as myself includes General Sully’s own report to his superior officer. I did not know what to make of the numbers used in this report, but I have my reasons for making sense of them nevertheless. I do not want those who argue for American exceptionalism or for the depravities of Manifest Destiny to ever have sway in my country again. There will be those who say of me that I dwelt on the past and morbidly and for a disloyal purpose of impugning reputations of war heroes. I'd say not, rather a purpose impugning an ignoble purpose in killing off native American primitives on federal land without the State of Minnesota and in land as of yet not conceded the federal government (the Yanktonais bands had made concessions of land way south on either side of the James River in an 1858 Treaty but had retained lands to the north in Dakota Territory which was just coming into being with Minnesota statehood in 1858).
For starters, the general reports he had taken captives before the killing started as his superior indicated he should do. The number of possible hostiles among the one hundred twenty persons he captured was as low as twenty soldiers as the old chief expected he'd be considered a friendly and lacked the warriors to defend his tribe. The ratio of warrior soldiers in a healthy warlike band would suggest a higher number of warriors, as high as one to four. This will be important. Why? Because historians who venture a number of slain in the genocide at White Stone Hill settle on two hundred fifty persons (using the ratio than of about sixty warrior soldiers who died in the ravine with the elders, the pregnant, the women, the infirm, and the children). I hope for General Sully’s soul that there were sixty actual hostiles, and not just defenders of their kinfolk in that ravine. A military leader after all certainly deserves his defense if accused of atrocities in executing a just war (which begs the question of whether there was in fact a just war being conducted on non-belligerent tribes or even if belligerent in their homeland and on their hunting grounds).
As I continue this analysis, I am quite sure that there were no hostiles present whatsoever in that ravine at White Stone Hill. We know according to the general’s report that some two hundred mounted soldiers accosted his Metis scout, one named Framboise, at the approach of Sully’s army. We know that these two hundred were alive the next day as the same force encountered and killed four of the general’s mounted troopers sent out to scour the area for possible hostiles that could hamper the general’s return back down to the Missouri River Valley. So far we have accounted for three hundred and twenty Lakota and Dakota persons of the rendezvous encampment at White Stone Hill (120 prisoners and 200 mounted warriors).
Let’s say that the rendezvous villagers numbered the two hundred fifty slain additionally for a total of five hundred seventy persons. How much in foodstuffs would such a population need to survive for the one hundred eighty days of winter on the Missouri Coteau? Specious insight here is not helpful. Working backwards from the general’s own report of much dried buffalo meat he destroyed during the immediate days after the carnage, conservatively he reports over four hundred thousand pounds were destroyed. If all we have are five hundred seventy persons to feed, that would be about four pounds of meat per person per day (400,000 pounds divided by 570 persons by 180 days equals roughly 3.9 pounds of dried buffalo meat per person per day).
Assuming of course that even though dried and prepared, the meat would have to be supplemented by other kills due to degradation of the supply over time. Most modern Americans would gag at eating four pounds of meat a day. However, given the fact that the plains Indians were almost near dependent on the buffalo, it is more likely that the calculus is wrong. I believe the rendezvous was a rendezvous of Lakota and Dakota persons numbering twelve hundred persons with adequate food supplies for one hundred eighty days at two pounds per person (able body hunters eating more calories to bring in fresh kills through deepening snow being a factor in how few calories a woman or child could expect to consume).
What other evidence supports my conclusion. The general reports he destroyed three hundred lodges at White Stone Hill encampment. Using the ratio soldiers (able bodied defenders) to other persons of four to one, the number of persons who lived in those destroyed lodges would be twelve hundred persons. Where does this leave the calculus of those killed in the genocidal attack on the village?
The gross numbers are as follows: one hundred twenty prisoners (120) plus two hundred mounted soldiers reportedly threatening the general’s withdrawal from the Coteau (200) plus eight hundred eighty other persons (880) equals twelve hundred total persons in those lodges. The lodges however were likely to be tipi style lodges made out of buffalo hides and with lodge poles from the James River bottoms or perhaps the Missouri River bottoms. If one assumes that an extended family occupying a tipi is likely to be greater than four persons given the need for shelter out on the Great Plains and human warmth, the error if any here is that the lodge count should be much greater.
We do know that the general in the waning twilight called it a day. Reports of friendly fire deaths increased as his troopers moved down the ravine into a crossfire from troopers on the other side. Supposedly, able bodied warriors and women without children made it out of the ravine in the cover of the dark. We also know that the travois left abandoned on the surrounding plains about White Stone Hill suggest an earlier exodus of persons from the encampment. Is it possible that some families would have decamped to some extent and fled before the arrival of the general’s main force which had to march some ten miles to disrupt decampment then in progress in time to destroy the persons there?
I believe those least motivated to trust in the civilized conduct of invading troopers would be the eastern Dakota people as have been said to have encamped at White Stone Hill with Great Plains Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota bands. Their families had been decimated and relatives marched off on a death march from Fort Release to Fort Snelling and captured innocent soldiers prosecuted in drum head trials with some five hundred sentenced to death (assuming of course that some of those convicted were in fact criminals in conduct). These relatives included bands like the Sissiston and Wahpeton who had in large measure objected to the Mdewaketon and Wahpecute insurrection and even aided the settlers in seeking refuge from capture by the hostiles under Little Crow and Cut Nose.
Back in December 1862, Abraham Lincoln after review of the 498 individual trial transcripts and 303 convictions, settled on about thirty nine or forty whose criminality had been sufficienty asserted (not proven) to warrant death by hanging during the extremities of the national crisis which was the Civil War. Using Lincoln’s calculus, that would be about one in twelve deserved the death penalty and for reasons other than actual proof of guilt (as a lawyer like Lincoln could easily assume should happen here given the volatility on the frontier from insurrections of tribal band members). Interestingly, decimating the war prisoners in retribution is almost ritualistic killing (here 40 of 498 is 1 in 12, while 40 of 303 is 1 in 8).
Does Lincoln's calculus aid us in understanding what hostiles might have been included among the Dakota at White Stone Hill in September 1863? It may have been the plan of the encampment that those eastern Dakota in flight from Minnesota's scalp hunters were being hosted in this encampment at White Stone Hill. Makes sense that some of these refugees included at least some actual hostiles. If so, were these guests encouraged and helped to make their escape first as the likely target of the military expedition now bent on execution of a mandate against those same Dakota refugees from retaliation back in Minnesota? I think it likely although it gives the benefit of a doubt that Sully and Sibley and Pope actually cared that actually fugitives from justice were being pursued. The orders to kill indigenous tribes was to safeguard the frontier from a repeat of the 1862 Minnesota Uprising. But here in Dakota Territory, the land was not as yet by treaty yielded by the tribes that lived and hunted there, and so "uprising" seems to be the wrong nomenclature.
Using that Lincoln ratio (of one purported murder/rapist per twelve Dakota prisoners placed on drum head trial, about one to two hundred soldier warrior and possible other persons took flight from the encampment to safeguard the host bands from any violence that may result from harboring fugitives. Some might say that I attribute to the Lakota and Dakota leaders a nobility of spirit, both host leaders and guest leaders thinking for their own people. Lacking any other meaningful ratio, I conservatively estimate that one thousand non-fugitives were at this rendezvous encampment leaving eight hundred eighty persons in that ravine (120 prisoners taken before the onslaught according to the general's report). We know from the military report that some persons fled in the dark in the confusion created by troopers' crossfire.
I believe that an honest seach for the bones of these victims of genocide should be officially conducted by the federal government and respective States. The results I predict will neighbor in the area of seven hundred victims of genocide. On my prejudice for honorable conduct on the part of the non-fugitives, one fourth hopefully were warrior soldiers who stayed to defend their women, children, and elders and if short of one fourth, then survivors crawled off into the brush to hopefully live and die another day.
Author’s Note. The numbers above are derived from the military report of General Alfred Sully except for the reports of the results of the drum head trials conducted by General Henry Hastings Sibley in 1862 and the thirty eight Dakota hung at Mankato, December 1862. See historical report on the Battle of Whitestone Hill written by George Kingsbury in History of Dakota Territory vol 1 pt 1 (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915), pgs. 289-290 and the same which contains General Alfred Sully’s actual words found at pgs. 293-294 of the same.
American Exceptionalism and Genocide
by Richard J. Hilber
Recent history tracks fairly well what happens to those who participate in genocide, not in all cases though. Historically, the destruction in the 16th Century of French Protestant (Huguenot) villages and villagers is just a footnote in the history of religious persecution. The same of the continent wide genocide of aboriginal persons of the New World (1492 to present day Mexico). It is said that Adolph Hitler admired the thoroughness of the United States government in the extermination of indigenous tribes (see unexpurgated versions of Mein Kempf by Adolph Hitler).
For those who care to see excavation of burial trenches in the aftermath of Balkan wars of the 1990s, there are scant news photographs. It's unseemly afterall, these rank exposures of atrocities meant to remain buried and secret. Any comfort that Americans might take that genocide would not and could not happen in this country is really what is at issue here in this writing. One of the primary tenants of the religion which is American Exceptionalism is that we are a good and kindly nation of civilized persons. The argument is that we Americans are God's chosen people and therefore Manifest Desting even in its unseemly details is ordered by the Creator God. Scary and an atrocious defamation of those of us who find the Creator God incapable of such machinations.
Here in Minnesota this year, we are marking the one hundred fiftieth year since the Dakota War of 1862. An insurrection among reservation Dakota peoples faced with starvation and betrayal by the United States Government. Those rounded up in the aftermath of the insurrection for prosecution, execution, and removal from the State of Minnesota included even bands not participant in the insurrection and as well members of the bands who resisted inclusion as hostiles and helped White settlers escape to safety. What resulted was a war of invasion into Dakota Territory into undeeded lands of the Lakota and Dakota peoples and subsequent genocide ordered by Governor Alexander Ramsey and Major General John Pope of the United States Army. The primary event of genocide would occur in September 1863 in an area of nearby James River Valley in Dakota Territory, what is misnamed the Battle of White Stone Hill (not a battle really but rather a free fire killing zone on villagers at a rendezvous on the order of My Lai in Viet Nam in 1968).
The United States and the States of Minnesota and North Dakota have covered up official acts of genocide for now on one hundred fifty years. Why is the trench of corpse remains not as of yet excavated? The White Stone Hill battleground is not yet still. The case for American exceptionalism is not yet dead. How can we fault a civilized Germany for condoning and participating in the genocide of Jews, Gypsys, Poles, and others? We as a nation do not have the clean hands to prosecute Serbian leaders and generals that we think we have (which is why in part we need an effective United Nations and international tribunals to try war criminals)!
We Americans have no body count of those slain in the environs of White Stone Hill, Dakota Territory, September 1863. The military leader responsible for the slayings does not report the number of dead and dying in the ravine in which they were found the morning after the carnage on September 3, 1863. We have the general’s own report though of other related statistics and fair minded estimates (admittedly estimates). In so much as this general, General Alfred Sully, exaggerated his military exploits we supposedly would not mock him. After all, we all have to justify our positions of power and influence with our superiors.
The problem for General Sully is that his superior, Major John Pope, late of the Army of the Potomac, had ordered the killing and destruction which by modern parlance constitutes genocide. So had the governor of the State of Minnesota, Governor Alexander Ramsey. The adjutant general of the State of Minnesota earlier in 1863 had published a bounty for each scalp brought in for redemption of any person of the tribes then found in Minnesota, twenty-five dollars at first with a larger bounty for a scalp supplied by one not in military pursuit of the primitives. Perhaps that concession was to prevent unjust enrichment for soldiers who received soldier’s pay, as they should only receive a slight reward for doing their duty and having the proof of it to supply. No questions asked about how the scalper had come by the scalp either (as in an atrocity in killing a woman, a child, a non-belligerent even, or what would otherwise be murder even if the killing of a belligerent formerly).
The historical record available to lay persons such as myself includes General Sully’s own report to his superior officer. I did not know what to make of the numbers used in this report, but I have my reasons for making sense of them nevertheless. I do not want those who argue for American exceptionalism or for the depravities of Manifest Destiny to ever have sway in my country again. There will be those who say of me that I dwelt on the past and morbidly and for a disloyal purpose of impugning reputations of war heroes. I'd say not, rather a purpose impugning an ignoble purpose in killing off native American primitives on federal land without the State of Minnesota and in land as of yet not conceded the federal government (the Yanktonais bands had made concessions of land way south on either side of the James River in an 1858 Treaty but had retained lands to the north in Dakota Territory which was just coming into being with Minnesota statehood in 1858).
For starters, the general reports he had taken captives before the killing started as his superior indicated he should do. The number of possible hostiles among the one hundred twenty persons he captured was as low as twenty soldiers as the old chief expected he'd be considered a friendly and lacked the warriors to defend his tribe. The ratio of warrior soldiers in a healthy warlike band would suggest a higher number of warriors, as high as one to four. This will be important. Why? Because historians who venture a number of slain in the genocide at White Stone Hill settle on two hundred fifty persons (using the ratio than of about sixty warrior soldiers who died in the ravine with the elders, the pregnant, the women, the infirm, and the children). I hope for General Sully’s soul that there were sixty actual hostiles, and not just defenders of their kinfolk in that ravine. A military leader after all certainly deserves his defense if accused of atrocities in executing a just war (which begs the question of whether there was in fact a just war being conducted on non-belligerent tribes or even if belligerent in their homeland and on their hunting grounds).
As I continue this analysis, I am quite sure that there were no hostiles present whatsoever in that ravine at White Stone Hill. We know according to the general’s report that some two hundred mounted soldiers accosted his Metis scout, one named Framboise, at the approach of Sully’s army. We know that these two hundred were alive the next day as the same force encountered and killed four of the general’s mounted troopers sent out to scour the area for possible hostiles that could hamper the general’s return back down to the Missouri River Valley. So far we have accounted for three hundred and twenty Lakota and Dakota persons of the rendezvous encampment at White Stone Hill (120 prisoners and 200 mounted warriors).
Let’s say that the rendezvous villagers numbered the two hundred fifty slain additionally for a total of five hundred seventy persons. How much in foodstuffs would such a population need to survive for the one hundred eighty days of winter on the Missouri Coteau? Specious insight here is not helpful. Working backwards from the general’s own report of much dried buffalo meat he destroyed during the immediate days after the carnage, conservatively he reports over four hundred thousand pounds were destroyed. If all we have are five hundred seventy persons to feed, that would be about four pounds of meat per person per day (400,000 pounds divided by 570 persons by 180 days equals roughly 3.9 pounds of dried buffalo meat per person per day).
Assuming of course that even though dried and prepared, the meat would have to be supplemented by other kills due to degradation of the supply over time. Most modern Americans would gag at eating four pounds of meat a day. However, given the fact that the plains Indians were almost near dependent on the buffalo, it is more likely that the calculus is wrong. I believe the rendezvous was a rendezvous of Lakota and Dakota persons numbering twelve hundred persons with adequate food supplies for one hundred eighty days at two pounds per person (able body hunters eating more calories to bring in fresh kills through deepening snow being a factor in how few calories a woman or child could expect to consume).
What other evidence supports my conclusion. The general reports he destroyed three hundred lodges at White Stone Hill encampment. Using the ratio soldiers (able bodied defenders) to other persons of four to one, the number of persons who lived in those destroyed lodges would be twelve hundred persons. Where does this leave the calculus of those killed in the genocidal attack on the village?
The gross numbers are as follows: one hundred twenty prisoners (120) plus two hundred mounted soldiers reportedly threatening the general’s withdrawal from the Coteau (200) plus eight hundred eighty other persons (880) equals twelve hundred total persons in those lodges. The lodges however were likely to be tipi style lodges made out of buffalo hides and with lodge poles from the James River bottoms or perhaps the Missouri River bottoms. If one assumes that an extended family occupying a tipi is likely to be greater than four persons given the need for shelter out on the Great Plains and human warmth, the error if any here is that the lodge count should be much greater.
We do know that the general in the waning twilight called it a day. Reports of friendly fire deaths increased as his troopers moved down the ravine into a crossfire from troopers on the other side. Supposedly, able bodied warriors and women without children made it out of the ravine in the cover of the dark. We also know that the travois left abandoned on the surrounding plains about White Stone Hill suggest an earlier exodus of persons from the encampment. Is it possible that some families would have decamped to some extent and fled before the arrival of the general’s main force which had to march some ten miles to disrupt decampment then in progress in time to destroy the persons there?
I believe those least motivated to trust in the civilized conduct of invading troopers would be the eastern Dakota people as have been said to have encamped at White Stone Hill with Great Plains Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota bands. Their families had been decimated and relatives marched off on a death march from Fort Release to Fort Snelling and captured innocent soldiers prosecuted in drum head trials with some five hundred sentenced to death (assuming of course that some of those convicted were in fact criminals in conduct). These relatives included bands like the Sissiston and Wahpeton who had in large measure objected to the Mdewaketon and Wahpecute insurrection and even aided the settlers in seeking refuge from capture by the hostiles under Little Crow and Cut Nose.
Back in December 1862, Abraham Lincoln after review of the 498 individual trial transcripts and 303 convictions, settled on about thirty nine or forty whose criminality had been sufficienty asserted (not proven) to warrant death by hanging during the extremities of the national crisis which was the Civil War. Using Lincoln’s calculus, that would be about one in twelve deserved the death penalty and for reasons other than actual proof of guilt (as a lawyer like Lincoln could easily assume should happen here given the volatility on the frontier from insurrections of tribal band members). Interestingly, decimating the war prisoners in retribution is almost ritualistic killing (here 40 of 498 is 1 in 12, while 40 of 303 is 1 in 8).
Does Lincoln's calculus aid us in understanding what hostiles might have been included among the Dakota at White Stone Hill in September 1863? It may have been the plan of the encampment that those eastern Dakota in flight from Minnesota's scalp hunters were being hosted in this encampment at White Stone Hill. Makes sense that some of these refugees included at least some actual hostiles. If so, were these guests encouraged and helped to make their escape first as the likely target of the military expedition now bent on execution of a mandate against those same Dakota refugees from retaliation back in Minnesota? I think it likely although it gives the benefit of a doubt that Sully and Sibley and Pope actually cared that actually fugitives from justice were being pursued. The orders to kill indigenous tribes was to safeguard the frontier from a repeat of the 1862 Minnesota Uprising. But here in Dakota Territory, the land was not as yet by treaty yielded by the tribes that lived and hunted there, and so "uprising" seems to be the wrong nomenclature.
Using that Lincoln ratio (of one purported murder/rapist per twelve Dakota prisoners placed on drum head trial, about one to two hundred soldier warrior and possible other persons took flight from the encampment to safeguard the host bands from any violence that may result from harboring fugitives. Some might say that I attribute to the Lakota and Dakota leaders a nobility of spirit, both host leaders and guest leaders thinking for their own people. Lacking any other meaningful ratio, I conservatively estimate that one thousand non-fugitives were at this rendezvous encampment leaving eight hundred eighty persons in that ravine (120 prisoners taken before the onslaught according to the general's report). We know from the military report that some persons fled in the dark in the confusion created by troopers' crossfire.
I believe that an honest seach for the bones of these victims of genocide should be officially conducted by the federal government and respective States. The results I predict will neighbor in the area of seven hundred victims of genocide. On my prejudice for honorable conduct on the part of the non-fugitives, one fourth hopefully were warrior soldiers who stayed to defend their women, children, and elders and if short of one fourth, then survivors crawled off into the brush to hopefully live and die another day.
Author’s Note. The numbers above are derived from the military report of General Alfred Sully except for the reports of the results of the drum head trials conducted by General Henry Hastings Sibley in 1862 and the thirty eight Dakota hung at Mankato, December 1862. See historical report on the Battle of Whitestone Hill written by George Kingsbury in History of Dakota Territory vol 1 pt 1 (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915), pgs. 289-290 and the same which contains General Alfred Sully’s actual words found at pgs. 293-294 of the same.
Friday, July 6, 2012
My Vote is for a Second Term for Peace and True Economic Recovery
Will the Arab Spring which is yet fast apace in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria be allowed to degenerate into either Taliban style regimes or Iranian type clergy controlled states? It's a new day in which the United States government presumably is busy behind the scenes procuring outcomes that are both secular and democratic (as opposed to radical and Islamic with proponents of sharia law in control).
I believe that the true Arab Spring would be the return of legitimate government and avoid decay into either despotism or chaos. In so far as new regimes succeed, the regard for the people as the first concern of those who come to power will be an essential marker of legitimacy. Such governments as reach maturity in their legitimacy and its limits will not necessarily be puppets of U.S. interests, but the U.S. will always serve its own interests well that is a respector of legitimate governments.
For an Obama Administration permitted a second term, the temptation will be to forward the interests of international corporations and property rights in Arab lands. For a Republican Administration, it will mean war for any Arab majority state which does not understand it must put minutes on the clock to establish its legitimacy by honoring contracts and continued exploitation of national wealth by international corporations.
The tough part for liberals like myself, is that the United States Government today is the handmaiden of an international economy controlled really by international corporations with little regard for world peace because of the play of the military-industrial complex in not just the United States, but the entire Western world.
A Democratic President by the way slows the growth of Red China's military ascendancy, while a Republican President will cultivate Red China as the enemy and procurer of yet new generations of armaments afforded by the middle class of America, the sleeping giant. The new arms race is underway, and the nuclear armageddon looms again. The armageddon is a fear the military industrial complex needs to put the middle class of America back in the manacles of false prosperity and strident unionism. The task of all war mongers is to put the sleeping middle class back to work.
The task of those who have a new envisioning would be to continue to demilitarize the world before it heats up again. As the United States persists as the major beneficiary of arms sales, this vision will be billed as a pipe dream, especially by those with an income derivative of the military industrial complex. The really creative resouceful administration for the United States would be the one that finds a new way forward.
Keep this nation strong, but do it by building an economy which is not premised on war, but on peace, and then keep the military capable and strong and responsive. Build treaty obligations for all nations and share the wealth of the planet with all the peoples of the Earth, our common home. I've never thought of myself as a Clintonian Democrat, but during William J. Clinton's Presidency, he proved the benefits of a growing the peace economy (although I do not want to get into all that he did foster).
War and its speeded up degradation of the environment should be avoided. What we need is a growth economy predicated on stopping the planet's degradation for the short term benefit of the wealthy of this earth (most of the wealthy being found in despots and capitalists in the extreme with no regard for high ethics which wealth requires of its possessors). I call on the middle class and the youth of this country to foster true economic growth which regards the environment and people of the earth as the new predictor of the success of the United States of America as it continues to proclaim hope for all, and most especially a government of, by, and for the People.
I believe that the true Arab Spring would be the return of legitimate government and avoid decay into either despotism or chaos. In so far as new regimes succeed, the regard for the people as the first concern of those who come to power will be an essential marker of legitimacy. Such governments as reach maturity in their legitimacy and its limits will not necessarily be puppets of U.S. interests, but the U.S. will always serve its own interests well that is a respector of legitimate governments.
For an Obama Administration permitted a second term, the temptation will be to forward the interests of international corporations and property rights in Arab lands. For a Republican Administration, it will mean war for any Arab majority state which does not understand it must put minutes on the clock to establish its legitimacy by honoring contracts and continued exploitation of national wealth by international corporations.
The tough part for liberals like myself, is that the United States Government today is the handmaiden of an international economy controlled really by international corporations with little regard for world peace because of the play of the military-industrial complex in not just the United States, but the entire Western world.
A Democratic President by the way slows the growth of Red China's military ascendancy, while a Republican President will cultivate Red China as the enemy and procurer of yet new generations of armaments afforded by the middle class of America, the sleeping giant. The new arms race is underway, and the nuclear armageddon looms again. The armageddon is a fear the military industrial complex needs to put the middle class of America back in the manacles of false prosperity and strident unionism. The task of all war mongers is to put the sleeping middle class back to work.
The task of those who have a new envisioning would be to continue to demilitarize the world before it heats up again. As the United States persists as the major beneficiary of arms sales, this vision will be billed as a pipe dream, especially by those with an income derivative of the military industrial complex. The really creative resouceful administration for the United States would be the one that finds a new way forward.
Keep this nation strong, but do it by building an economy which is not premised on war, but on peace, and then keep the military capable and strong and responsive. Build treaty obligations for all nations and share the wealth of the planet with all the peoples of the Earth, our common home. I've never thought of myself as a Clintonian Democrat, but during William J. Clinton's Presidency, he proved the benefits of a growing the peace economy (although I do not want to get into all that he did foster).
War and its speeded up degradation of the environment should be avoided. What we need is a growth economy predicated on stopping the planet's degradation for the short term benefit of the wealthy of this earth (most of the wealthy being found in despots and capitalists in the extreme with no regard for high ethics which wealth requires of its possessors). I call on the middle class and the youth of this country to foster true economic growth which regards the environment and people of the earth as the new predictor of the success of the United States of America as it continues to proclaim hope for all, and most especially a government of, by, and for the People.
Consequence of Violent Dissent for the Dakota.
Year of the Dakota Series.
Osama Bin Laden and Little Crow and the Consequence of Violent Dissent
[Originally published to this blog on May 2, 2011. Slight alteration is provided to update the original essay and the changes are not noted.]
by Richard J. Hilber
Basic history for Minnesota starts with one published work. I've read this excellent history of Minnesota's frontier and settlement days entitled North Country by Mary Wingert, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010. She writes of the pre-inception, inception, and infancy of Minnesota when its first inhabitants did as yet not think of themselves as Minnesotans. As I read this history I began to realize the focus on one seminal character in the basic conflict between aboriginal populations and the European settlers who would supplant them in the State.
This character was not one of the first to find himself in conflict with the Europeans who came into tribal regions to take possession and to remove native populations. He just happened to be a chief of the Mdewauketon band of the Dakota people, a chief who was manipulated by the agents of the United States who wanted concessions of his band during the pre-Civil War period.
With time and consequence of unfulfilled treaty obligations, Little Crow learned by experience the betrayal of his own people by his own hand because he had furthered relations with the United States and its agents. Faced with a crisis in his band for leadership of his people, he resolved to die if die he must. He took up a forsaken role as warrior and accepted that death was his lot as the leader of consequence of his people. He is remembered by history as the person who started the Dakota War of 1862, sometimes referred to as Little Crow's War.
I find that Little Crow is an important exemplar of the "lightness of being" I find in those who take responsibility for the community and its welfare. They expend all energies in doing what they regard as right for them to do in support of that community, and then when they realize the futility of their efforts resolve to trust in God to finish the unfinished work or in other words trust in the work being finished by other hands than his or her own hands.
As I have written earlier in this blog, the best example of this "lightness of being" is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The two leaders are each of a different age and culture. Because Little Crow trusted in his earlier conditioning as a warrior, he wanted to die fighting the military forces that he had come to believe were about the work of a race war against his Dakota people by ouster, starvation, and slaughter. The higher order conduct of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., is of course the true change agent, but not all leaders have seen this pathway to justice and progress (nor a timely and honest modern media to publicize the racism and injustice of the oppressor).
The purity of the warrior is that in killing another warrior one accepts the groundrules that his opponent is bound by the same code of kill or be killed. Viewed in this light warriors are locked not only in mortal combat but in acceptance of the outcome as not determined by one's personal fate, but rather one is open to the outcome of trial by combat by putting oneself at risk of death by the sword.
In the course of human conduct, the course of warfare is that non-combatants are victimized by warriors who fail to live by chivalry's higher course of conduct. Because Little Crow in starting the Dakota War in Minnesota in 1852 (not causing it just starting it) can not wash his hands of either the fate of his own people or the fate of innocents in a time of war, he has to be viewed as a tragic character (by which I mean both noble and flawed).
The really fine point on this is made by Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Metaphorically, Black Kettle wrapped himself in the American Flag. He trusted in the Great White Father in Washington and he and his wife were slaughtered by the U.S. Cavalry at Washita Massacre (General George Armstrong Custer in his glory as an Indian fighter). Had Little Crow the same fate as Black Kettle, then it really did not matter what posture the Native American took, the Europeans were about removal and destruction of Native Peoples.
These European Americans spoke of Manifest Destiny and the white man's civilization as the wave of the future for world domination. It's a terrible, terrible legacy for this country, and it lives with us yet as the imperial mindset which is capable of "justice" for others, but lastly for itself and its own criminal acts.
Today, the day [May 2, 2011] I learned of the death of Osama Bin Laden, I fear my own country's capacity to hunt down and kill the dissenter's to capitalism and neo-colonialism as a new world order. If Osama had been brought to trial for his misdeeds on which evidence substantiated his criminality, it would have at least tracked a civilized response to terrorism by an extremist.
The War on Terror is ultimately about our own practices of terrorism by smart bombs and satellite imagery and interrogation by torture. War is not pretty. Little Crow oddly stands a little taller in my perceptions today not because he chose like Osama to take the war to his enemies, but because his dissent was premised on nobility, not hatred of his enemies. I do not agree with the perceptions of Little Crow or Osama, I just believe that the U.S. is no different than these two who can be termed paranoid, or realists, depending on one's point of view. The United States in its War on Terrorism can never prevail when its internal compass is predicated on paranoia, specifically fear of the victims of capitalism and neo-colonialism.
Without an adequate system of justice, victims, driven by the anger of the victim, take the law into their own hands (which is what Osama, and Little Crow, and the U.S. did in seeking military retribution). Osama started the War on Terror its true, but we can not be so glib as to conclude that he caused it! Our demand for oil has made the strangest of bedfellows: western democracies in bed with oligarch's and dictators! As long as these do our bidding we label them friend, and when they dissent we label them evil! Go figure.
In a truly ordered society a trial would have put Osama's conduct up for examination as well as the conduct of those who claimed clean hands before prosecuting him for his misdeeds. The reason trial by the sword works for us is that we won. Osama is dead! Osama is ennobled because he had to know that in taking up the sword he would die by the sword. We have made a hero for the disenfranchised Muslims of the world. Again, go figure! But now we stare in the face the Muslim world across Asia and Africa in which our "friends" are dictators, oligarchs, and butchers. The causes of Osama taking up the sword and having martyre supporters is with us yet.
Note on preferred use of Dakota: Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people are known to most of America as the Sioux people but that name Sioux is used by competitors of of the woodland Dakota peoples, the Anishabe (Chippewa or Ojibway), to whom Sioux means "enemy."
Osama Bin Laden and Little Crow and the Consequence of Violent Dissent
[Originally published to this blog on May 2, 2011. Slight alteration is provided to update the original essay and the changes are not noted.]
by Richard J. Hilber
Basic history for Minnesota starts with one published work. I've read this excellent history of Minnesota's frontier and settlement days entitled North Country by Mary Wingert, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010. She writes of the pre-inception, inception, and infancy of Minnesota when its first inhabitants did as yet not think of themselves as Minnesotans. As I read this history I began to realize the focus on one seminal character in the basic conflict between aboriginal populations and the European settlers who would supplant them in the State.
This character was not one of the first to find himself in conflict with the Europeans who came into tribal regions to take possession and to remove native populations. He just happened to be a chief of the Mdewauketon band of the Dakota people, a chief who was manipulated by the agents of the United States who wanted concessions of his band during the pre-Civil War period.
With time and consequence of unfulfilled treaty obligations, Little Crow learned by experience the betrayal of his own people by his own hand because he had furthered relations with the United States and its agents. Faced with a crisis in his band for leadership of his people, he resolved to die if die he must. He took up a forsaken role as warrior and accepted that death was his lot as the leader of consequence of his people. He is remembered by history as the person who started the Dakota War of 1862, sometimes referred to as Little Crow's War.
I find that Little Crow is an important exemplar of the "lightness of being" I find in those who take responsibility for the community and its welfare. They expend all energies in doing what they regard as right for them to do in support of that community, and then when they realize the futility of their efforts resolve to trust in God to finish the unfinished work or in other words trust in the work being finished by other hands than his or her own hands.
As I have written earlier in this blog, the best example of this "lightness of being" is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The two leaders are each of a different age and culture. Because Little Crow trusted in his earlier conditioning as a warrior, he wanted to die fighting the military forces that he had come to believe were about the work of a race war against his Dakota people by ouster, starvation, and slaughter. The higher order conduct of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., is of course the true change agent, but not all leaders have seen this pathway to justice and progress (nor a timely and honest modern media to publicize the racism and injustice of the oppressor).
The purity of the warrior is that in killing another warrior one accepts the groundrules that his opponent is bound by the same code of kill or be killed. Viewed in this light warriors are locked not only in mortal combat but in acceptance of the outcome as not determined by one's personal fate, but rather one is open to the outcome of trial by combat by putting oneself at risk of death by the sword.
In the course of human conduct, the course of warfare is that non-combatants are victimized by warriors who fail to live by chivalry's higher course of conduct. Because Little Crow in starting the Dakota War in Minnesota in 1852 (not causing it just starting it) can not wash his hands of either the fate of his own people or the fate of innocents in a time of war, he has to be viewed as a tragic character (by which I mean both noble and flawed).
The really fine point on this is made by Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Metaphorically, Black Kettle wrapped himself in the American Flag. He trusted in the Great White Father in Washington and he and his wife were slaughtered by the U.S. Cavalry at Washita Massacre (General George Armstrong Custer in his glory as an Indian fighter). Had Little Crow the same fate as Black Kettle, then it really did not matter what posture the Native American took, the Europeans were about removal and destruction of Native Peoples.
These European Americans spoke of Manifest Destiny and the white man's civilization as the wave of the future for world domination. It's a terrible, terrible legacy for this country, and it lives with us yet as the imperial mindset which is capable of "justice" for others, but lastly for itself and its own criminal acts.
Today, the day [May 2, 2011] I learned of the death of Osama Bin Laden, I fear my own country's capacity to hunt down and kill the dissenter's to capitalism and neo-colonialism as a new world order. If Osama had been brought to trial for his misdeeds on which evidence substantiated his criminality, it would have at least tracked a civilized response to terrorism by an extremist.
The War on Terror is ultimately about our own practices of terrorism by smart bombs and satellite imagery and interrogation by torture. War is not pretty. Little Crow oddly stands a little taller in my perceptions today not because he chose like Osama to take the war to his enemies, but because his dissent was premised on nobility, not hatred of his enemies. I do not agree with the perceptions of Little Crow or Osama, I just believe that the U.S. is no different than these two who can be termed paranoid, or realists, depending on one's point of view. The United States in its War on Terrorism can never prevail when its internal compass is predicated on paranoia, specifically fear of the victims of capitalism and neo-colonialism.
Without an adequate system of justice, victims, driven by the anger of the victim, take the law into their own hands (which is what Osama, and Little Crow, and the U.S. did in seeking military retribution). Osama started the War on Terror its true, but we can not be so glib as to conclude that he caused it! Our demand for oil has made the strangest of bedfellows: western democracies in bed with oligarch's and dictators! As long as these do our bidding we label them friend, and when they dissent we label them evil! Go figure.
In a truly ordered society a trial would have put Osama's conduct up for examination as well as the conduct of those who claimed clean hands before prosecuting him for his misdeeds. The reason trial by the sword works for us is that we won. Osama is dead! Osama is ennobled because he had to know that in taking up the sword he would die by the sword. We have made a hero for the disenfranchised Muslims of the world. Again, go figure! But now we stare in the face the Muslim world across Asia and Africa in which our "friends" are dictators, oligarchs, and butchers. The causes of Osama taking up the sword and having martyre supporters is with us yet.
Note on preferred use of Dakota: Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people are known to most of America as the Sioux people but that name Sioux is used by competitors of of the woodland Dakota peoples, the Anishabe (Chippewa or Ojibway), to whom Sioux means "enemy."
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