Zach Musgrave

Dr. M. Standley

English 212-003

1 December 2007

Driven and Persecuted

            The days of the Old West, when America’s natives were shunted about onto smaller and smaller pieces of land, hunted, killed, forced to fight merely to survive, are in some ways still at hand. These disturbing remembrances still resonate within the United States today, such as in Simon Ortiz’s From Sand Creek, when he says “Ghosts Indian-like still driven towards Oklahoma” (Ortiz 25). It’s easy to say equality has been achieved, that a homogenous society has been rendered, but difficult to actually realize such a goal. This is because the numerous and varied atrocities that Native American peoples were subjected to during the Anglo-American settlement of the western United States not only had a great effect on their culture, society, and ways of life, but also had a great effect on the character and the cultural makeup of the United States as a whole.

            As the United States expanded from a little-known British colonial backwater to an emerging player on the world stage, it pushed at its physical and political boundaries. Prior to independence, the British imposed a law restricting settlement west of the then-remote Allegheny mountain range. But after independence, the United States did not have to rely on or listen to Britain anymore, and so they logically began looking out solely for their own interests. The success of the country was all that mattered, and for that success to occur the country needed huge amounts of land and natural resources. Due to resource seeking, industrialization, and a huge influx of immigration, America’s populace spilled far beyond the Cumberland Gap, and into the hitherto unknown lands beyond. “Manifest destiny” was at hand.

            This expansion was a wonderful event for the young country’s economy and power base, but not such a good one for its indigenous populations. Since the expansion helped the country’s government immensely due to tax revenue and added resources, it was loath to limit or restrict settlement therein, much to the chagrin of the natives. From the very start of European settlement at the Jamestown colony, treaties with Native Americans were made and then broken, with little regard given to anything but the advancement of European (and later, American) interests. This trend of false diplomacy backed up by military force continued all the way to the Pacific Ocean. As the United States grew strong, the Native Americans residing within its self-declared borders grew weak.

            Some of this downfall can be attributed to foreign diseases such as smallpox, which certainly killed off a large number of natives all by itself, and some of it can be attributed to internal strife between tribes, but most of it falls to a foreign policy on the part of the American government that ranged from mildly hostile to completely disregarding of Native Americans’ historical land domains. Throughout this history, the United States had committed many atrocities, one of the most notable of which was the massacre at Sand Creek.

            In 1861, a large number of Cheyenne Indians living in the then-territory of Colorado signed a treaty to move onto a small reservation. This move of diplomacy was spearheaded by the chief Black Kettle, a noted peacemaker whose modus operandi had been for many years to try to coexist with the Anglo-American settlers (“Who Is the Savage?”). As it so often went in the American West, the land Black Kettle’s treaty allowed the Indians was poor at best – it was small compared to their previous, more indefinite holdings and the soil was dry and bereft of the nutrients necessary to farm (Whitacre). As a result, the Cheyenne were left without their traditional livelihood of buffalo hunting or even a chance of becoming productive farmers.

            Traditionally, boys became men in the Cheyenne tribe by proving themselves: either in battle or in the hunt. When Black Kettle’s tribe was condensed onto its reservation, the younger members of his tribe were deprived of both these opportunities, as the tribe was striving for peace and the U.S. government had not provided them with the ammunition to hunt with that the treaty promised them (“Who Is the Savage?”). As a result, members of Black Kettle’s and other tribes began raiding various nearby settlements (Whitacre). Soon enough, the local Caucasian residents grew angry enough to petition for more military protection.

            One Colonel John Chivington, a former minister who just happened to be vehemently anti-Indian, headed the Third Colorado Volunteers, and though Black Kettle had been promised government protection by Abraham Lincoln himself, Chivington’s volunteers were not a U.S. government sponsored entity. They were, rather, sponsored by the territory of Colorado and therefore did not abide by any promises the federal government made to the Cheyenne. With their commission of a hundred days due to run out soon and the scorn of the local press (which dubbed them “The Bloodless Third”), Chivington’s force would have its war, whether warranted or not (“Who Is the Savage?”).

            As a result, on the morning of November 24, 1864, Chivington’s men approached Sand Creek. Most were drunk on whiskey, and all were ready for bloodshed. As soon as Black Kettle realized his encampment was under attack, he raised two flags: the flag of the United States and the all-white flag of truce (“Black Kettle…”). As Lincoln’s promise of safety fell horribly apart, between 150 and 500 Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians were murdered, in cold blood, by pseudo-military Colorado vigilantes (“Commentary on an Eyewitness Report of the Sand Creek Massacre”). This is yet one more example of the United States’ long history of racially-motivated massacres and hate crimes; though the Civil Rights-era conflicts are more well-known in the modern day, the trend extends as far back as the country does.

            Chivington’s exact orders to his men were “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians… kill and scalp all, nits make lice” (“Who Is the Savage?”). His men shot women, children, and the elderly without discrimination, and in some cases even removed the dead Indians’ genitalia to be paraded through the streets of Denver as war trophies (“Commentary…”). This behavior easily draws comparison with that of the Nazis’ “Final Solution” in which millions of Jews and Gypsies were systematically eradicated, with their wealth stolen and their bodies abused. Years later, though two government inquiries declared Chivington “extremely guilty” in the Sand Creek incident, he could not be prosecuted and went to his grave saying, “…I stand by Sand Creek” (“Who Is the Savage?”).

            In fact, the massacre of Sand Creek was just one of many examples of the Euro-American immigrant community taking advantage of, exploiting, and then reducing to rubble American Indian societies. By forcing them onto reservations (which were usually small, isolated tracts of land far from water, lacking in soil quality, and impossible to farm) the U.S. government destroyed almost all elements of traditional Native American life. In a way, reservation life was at the time the best the Indians could hope for, because the territorial governments made it very clear that the alternative to a reservation was death.

            The depressing reservation atmosphere that brought many Indians to alcohol abuse upon arrival existed (and in some places, exists) due to an inability to participate in the wars and hunts that defined pre-reservation life, and a lack of resources and cultural similarities to join the rest of the country as a unified whole. In fact, according to several scientific studies, Indians do not metabolize alcohol more slowly than other Americans, and though some Indians have bad problems with alcoholism, the majority do not drink alcohol at all (“Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health”, 236-7). In some cases, the sense of futility on reservations is such that young people see excessive drinking as “an Indian thing to do” (“Changing Numbers…” 238).

            Those Indians who do try to leave the reservation for something better often do so by enlisting in the army, which is why post-Vietnam Native Americans have the highest rate of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of all demographic groups in the country (“The Legacy of Psychological Trauma from the Vietnam War for American Indian Military Personnel”). PTSD is twice as common in Indians as in whites and Japanese (“The Legacy…”). The irony is that so many Indians gave their lives to fight for a country that fought against them for so many hundreds of years. So it can therefore be concluded that the American mismanagement of the Native American reservation system and the integration of Native Americans into the rest of American society has caused many of the Indians’ recent historical woes.

            Simon Ortiz referenced militias like Chivington’s that sprang up across Indian territory when he said “Mastery of pain / is crucial to this work” because it isn’t in any human nature to kill other humans, not even that of monstrosities like Chivington (Ortiz 29). White farmers are the same way: they wish for peace but know it will disappear as soon as conditions change for the local natives: “Talked to a farmer / about Arapaho schemes. / They knew things / were too good to last / said he” (Ortiz 31). This theme of distrust and destruction between white settlers and Indians repeats itself many times throughout From Sand Creek, because it is what the settlement of the West was based on: whoever is the strongest, gets to keep the land and survive. Of course, this philosophy does not mesh up very well with the ideals of a republic designed to serve all its people, which is why it can be said the Old West did not represent the ideals of the true American conscience; rather, it represents the bastardized, overly capitalistic greed of the first pioneers to settle the area. Even when Ortiz tries to distance himself from the repetitive cycle of violence and destruction by saying “I drift away as shadow, anonymous, not willing to be mad,” he gives light to this intrinsic division between the whites and the Indians, the invaders and the indigenous (Ortiz 39).

            Many current television commercials and print ads tell today’s populace “Hate is not innate.” It may not be, but it does often appear to be hereditary. White parents will teach their children that all Indians are undesirables, that they are drunk, violent, anarchistic, and dysfunctional. Indians do the same, teaching their children to be suspicious of the Caucasians they live by. Ortiz realizes that if this pattern continues indefinitely, further progress will in a way imitate Sand Creek, at least in the pure, unadulterated hate expressed by one or both sides ().

            Looking back to 1887, and the passage of the Dawes Act, it is obvious this hate served as a catalyst of the Ghost Dance movement. The point of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Native Americans into the greater American society, so it forced individual family groups onto small farms despite the fact that most Indians were used to communal living (“Plains Indians Resist White Encroachment”). The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement to “return the land to its pre-white state,” which certainly implies the hate the Indians felt for their oppressors (“Plains Indians…”). They hated the whites so much, they wanted them completely removed from all the land that was once theirs.

            When Ortiz “imbues his sad, spare hospital scenes… with a selective history of Native American faith, oppression, and resistance,” his goal is not to truly forget the parts he left out or erase them from all history and remembrance, but rather to emphasize the parts of the history that can serve as a strong foundation for future goodwill operations between the Indians and the whites (Jaffe). Ortiz believes that to achieve peace and advancement, both sides must forgive and forget unequivocally, because obviously all the perpetrators of the nineteenth-century atrocities are long dead (Schein). To complete this task, Ortiz believes his people must “continue… by [telling] a story”. In From Sand Creek, he calls salvation for the country a “dream,” and one that must “not be vengeful… but wealthy with love and compassion” (Ortiz 95). In other words, the continued viability of the United States as a moral entity is entirely dependent on Indians and whites finally coming to terms with their demons of the past. The hopeful echo at the end of From Sand Creek is Ortiz saying that without hope, there is no future for the country, and since “[he has] always loved America,” he wants to impress his hope upon it (Ortiz 92).

            “Ghosts Indian-like” are in some respects still being “driven towards Oklahoma,” though not in the literal sense as they were in the nineteenth century (Ortiz 25). The suffering of the United States’ Native American peoples is a result of hundreds of years of ingrained cultural marginalization and persecution. Simon Ortiz’s poetry does not just exemplify this, but also provides a possible solution: one of forgiveness. The United States would improve itself almost overnight if it would truly hear his words.

 

Works Cited

 

"Black Kettle (1803-1868)." DISCovering Multicultural America. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. 24 October 2007. <http://find.galegroup.com>.

 

“Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health”. Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (CBASSE). The National Academies Press: 1996. <http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5355&page=235>.

 

"Commentary on An Eyewitness Report of the Sand Creek Massacre." The Native American Experience. American Journey Online. Woodbridge, CT: Primary Source Microfilm, 1999. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. 24 October 2007. <http://find.galegroup.com>.

 

Jaffe, Harold. "Speaking Memory." DISCovering Authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. 24 Oct. 2007. <http://find.galegroup.com>.

 

“The Legacy of Psychological Trauma from the Vietnam War for American Indian Military Personnel”. Veterans’ Affairs National Center for PTSD. <http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_native_vets.html?opm=1&rr=rr40&srt=d&echorr=true>.

 

Ortiz, Simon J. From Sand Creek. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. 2000.

 

"Plains Indians Resist White Encroachment, 1862-1890." DISCovering U.S. History. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. 24 October 2007. <http://find.galegroup.com>.

 

Schein, Marie M. "Simon Ortiz." DISCovering Authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. 24 Oct. 2007. <http://find.galegroup.com>.

 

Whitacre, Christine. “The Search for the Site of the Sand Creek Massacre.” Prologue Magazine. Vol. 33 No. 2. The National Archives. <http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/summer/sand-creek-massacre-1.html>.

 

“Who Is the Savage?” The West, Episode Four. PBS Online. 24 Oct. 2007. <http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/four/whois.htm>.