And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: http://www.dickshovel.com/study.html Who cares about this stuff? As a high school student I was always annoyed by students who would ask: Why do we have to learn this stuff [history] anyway? We learn history so we don't repeat our mistakes. This is the common answer that my teachers, my father, and just about any other adult would give. This answer made perfect sense to me then, and I easily accepted it. In high school, students learn about the Nazi-Holocaust, and rightfully so. Information abounds regarding this topic. However, my teachers never taught me that our country has a Holocaust of its own (actually there are two; one killing 40 to 60,000,000 Africans, and one killing 100,000,000 Native Red Peoples). Hitler himself often expressed his admiration for the expediency in which the American Christians removed the Native Americans and gave them mass graves like the one in Wounded Knee, South Dakota. WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE: http://www.dickshovel.com/WKmasscre.html <SNIPPED> Custer was illegally trespassing on Sioux territory in 1876 in blatant violation of the Treaty of 1868 when his well-armed men were attacked by Indians from all directions. The Indians wanted soldiers out of their home, much like the colonists wanted the British out of their homes. Needless to say, the long haired Indian killer, Custer, and all his men, would not see another dawn. This absolute defeat enraged and embarrassed whites across the country into a crazed frenzy. Years after Custers defeat, his wife would painfully admit that Custer was in the wrong saying: "There was a time after the Battle of the Little Big Horn when I could not have said this, but as the years have passed I have become convinced that the Indians were deeply wronged." (Gessner pp. 7). In 1887, The General Allotment Act gave reservation Indian males 160 acres of the worst land to make farms. The land surplus created by giving Indians only 160 acres, reduced the size of reservations by 10s of millions of acres, angering the dispossessed Indians. The white land claims that followed were romanticized by recent movies like "Far and Away." Nowhere in this movie were dispossessed Indians noted. To have an understanding of what led up to the Wounded Knee Massacre, one must at least read Dee Brown's book. A greatly shortened version will be presented here. Fourteen years after the Little Bighorn Battle, and after many wars between whites and Indians, the evil Massacre at Chankpe Opi Wakpala, or Wounded Knee Creek, took place. On December 28, Big Foot and his band of Minneconjous were sighted by US soldiers. They agreed to follow the soldiers to Pine Ridge near Wounded Knee, as they were headed there for protection anyway. Of the Great Sioux Chiefs, only Red Cloud, in his old age, was still alive. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were already slain, and the Ghost Dance Religion (which promised an end to obliteration of the land by whites) kept the people from complete destitution. On a bitter cold December morning, captured Indians, who had already been disarmed, were gathered in a shallow valley of Wounded Knee Creek. Soldiers, many still hungry for avenging Custers defeat, were positioned all around the surrounding bluffs. The soldiers had positioned four Hotchkiss guns around the encampment (Hotchkiss guns could hurl shells and shrapnel for a distance of two miles). When the disarmament process was nearing an end, a misunderstanding occurred. Brown reports that a young Indian named Black Coyote, who was deaf, did not know what was going on, and the soldiers harassed him. It is unclear who fired the first shot, many say it was Black Coyote. The 1998 Encyclopedia Americana says a medicine man incited a young man to resist, and that firing broke out. These things aside, it is clear who was ready to execute a massacre. Gessner reports that 12 drunk soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry staggered to the ailing Chiefs tent during the disarmament and beckoned him to come outside; when he crept to the teepee entrance, 12 bullets entered his body. At that point, the Indians, 230 women and children and 120 men, fled in terror. The Hotchkiss guns and the soldiers opened up on the Indians indiscriminately. The huge Hotchkiss guns were firing almost a shell a second (Brown pp. 444), raking and shelling all of them. Their teepees were torn to pieces, and to be sure, so were many women and children. Nearly 300 of the original 350 men, women, and children, lay dead. Some accounts put the number at exactly 308 dead, and everyone else, wounded. The soldiers lost 25 dead and 39 wounded, most of them struck by their own bullets or shrapnel (Brown pp.444). The dead Indians were left scattered on the ground. A blizzard was blowing in, so those soldiers who were collecting the bodies of the dead and wounded, left to return after the blizzard. When the soldiers returned, the bodies were frozen into grotesque shapes (Brown pp. 445). The dead were buried in one mass grave. Today, in 1998, 20 Medals of Honor, are recognized by the U.S. government for soldiers who took part in killing 300 unarmed people. Black Elk would later say: "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A peoples dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. . . the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."...(Brown after page 445) Today, in 1998, the US recognizes 20 Medals of Honor for soldiers who took part in the massacre of 300 unarmed people at Chankpe Opi Wakpala. Today, these medals are known as the 20 Medals of (Dis)Honor among Indians and others. A movement has been underway for some time to have the medals rescinded, but with no success. MEDALS: http://www.dickshovel.com/RescindMedals.html <<<<=-=-=FREE LEONARD PELTIER=-=-=>>>> If you think you are too small to make a difference; try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.... African Proverb <<<<=-=http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ =-=>>>> IF it says: "PASS THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW...." Please Check it before you send it at: http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm
