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Post by conz on Jul 23, 2009 19:05:44 GMT -6
From Rickey's Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay:"Company officers were not always in firm control of their men in close combat situations, even when troops had been formed according to plan. When gunfire suddenly erupted from Big Foot's surrounded Sioux camp at Wounded Knee, officers and men alike were taken by surprise. 'We were not expecting any trouble [in disarming the Indians] until it really started,' wrote Private Jesse G. Harris.... "...As soon as we got off [our horses], we immediately laid down as quickly as we could and got a shot in. In the meantime, the two troops that had formed the hollow, dismounted, square [around the Indians] dropped, ran - did anything they could to get away."
"Private Harris added that '...Captain Godfrey was telling us not to shoot the women and kids...things were getting pretty hot, and our 1st Sergeant said - 'to hell with the women,' and Captain Godfrey gave the command to open fire.' In such combats, commented Private Robert C.O.Norman, 'everyone was trying to look out for himself." |
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Post by conz on Jul 28, 2009 19:45:38 GMT -6
"Western soldiers collected all manner of beaded and quill-worked articles, ornaments, pipes, war bonnets, weapons, and other loot. After the battle of Wounded Knee, said Seventh Cavalryman Jesse G. Harris, 'I wanted to go out and get one of them ghost shirts [from a dead Sioux], but my officers wouldn't let me.'
"Eighth Infantry Sergeant William N. Taylor's assignment to search the Wounded Knee field the day after the fight gave him a better opportunity to obtain a souvenir than Private Harris had back at Pine Ridge Agency. Taylor did not find a ghost shirt, but he did take a pair of beaded mocassins from the feet of a dead brave."
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Post by conz on Jul 28, 2009 19:50:20 GMT -6
"Many acts of kindness and humanity shown to wounded and captured Indians by enlisted regulars, partly offset the savage lapses from civilized conduct of some of their comrades. Seventh Cavalry litter bearers brought in some wounded Sioux, along with their own casualties, following the Battle of Wounded Knee."
"Allen also said that he gave first aid to an Indian boy, bandaging the youth's bullet-pierced thigh. The day after the battle, Eighth Infantryman August Hettinger stated that five wounded but still living Sioux were found on the snow-covered battlefield. The helpless Indians were placed in a nearby deserted cabin and given the water they craved, but all were dead when visited the next morning."
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Post by conz on Jul 28, 2009 19:53:51 GMT -6
"Although a few brutal enlisted men may have killed Indian women and children in cold blood, most such deaths probably were accidental accompaniments of attacks on hostile villages. Indian women sometimes took an active part in such fighting themselves, and a bullet directed at a soldier could be just as deadly when fired by a woman as it could if shot by a warrior.
"Still,' said Major Mauck, 'soldiers dislike to kill squaws. I have known them to take care of Indian babies whose mothers were killed, for days together, and keep them alive on sugar and water until they got to camp."
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Post by wolfgang911 on Aug 9, 2009 15:39:05 GMT -6
Is the evidence more clear that it was the Native Americans at Wounded Knee that committed a war crime, rather than the Army, who was just reacting to a premeditated ambush? Clair |
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Post by wolfgang911 on Aug 9, 2009 15:41:44 GMT -6
I lay all the deaths, morally, at Wounded Knee on the Native tribesmen. If anyone is immoral here, it is in the party who said they would not offer resistance, but betrayed their word and did. Hard to ask for any understanding, after that. Clair |
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