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Post by crzhrs on Jul 6, 2012 8:38:08 GMT -6
The can of worms here involves the Treaty:
1. were the signatory people empowered to sign it?
2. did the Sioux actually own the Black Hills, given within memory at the time of the signing the Crows had it and the Cheyenne/Shoshone/Kiowa as well?
3. elsewhere Indians claim they don't own land; it belongs to everyone by Great Spirit
4. if the Sioux are granted ownership because it was in their possession, why can't the American government claim the same for the same reason?
5. under Indians ways, it belonged to the U.S.; under U.S. ways and laws, it might not.
Answers Treaty of 1868 (a convaluted mess even for a lawyer) 1: The US thought so 2:The US thought so 3: True, but if the US believed the Sioux owned it then the Sioux accepted that as fact 4: Apparently the US didn't believe they owned the land if they were willing to buy it. 5: Treaty stated Sioux ownership and rights of the land (but there was all kinds of "fine print" that no one told the Indians about)
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 6, 2012 10:09:47 GMT -6
Treaty of 1868 (a convaluted mess even for a lawyer)
1: The US thought so - did the Sioux? were 'chiefs' empowered to sign away land?
2: The US thought so
3: True, but if the US believed the Sioux owned it then the Sioux accepted that as fact - the Sioux? or those few chiefs?
4: Apparently the US didn't believe they owned the land if they were willing to buy it. - Fine, but did the Sioux think they owned it? If they knowingly sold land they didn't own because they could not..........
5: Treaty stated Sioux ownership and rights of the land (but there was all kinds of "fine print" that no one told the Indians about) - so if they can't read it, how is it legal?
The US was, as usual, scum in their dealings. My point is the Sioux cannot have it both ways. Can descendents of those who didn't sign or agree sue the descendents of those who did sign, because they had no right to give away another man's property of any sort.
The whole sovereign nation/reservation routine is not rational nor sustainable, so something must be done.
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Post by crzhrs on Jul 6, 2012 10:54:09 GMT -6
The main problem here was the US not knowing (or caring?) about the culture of the Native Americans. The US felt any leader was the "main man" of the entire tribe and accepted any leader who was ready to wheel & deal for something that may have benefited him or his own group/band/clan rather than the entire tribe.
We are going by today's laws rather than what was the accepted way of dealing with Indigneous People back then.
1. If we go by today's legal laws no. How can you sell something "legally" if you don't "legally" own it. However, the US at that time was willing to negotiate with whatever leader was compliant enough to terms and that seemed "legal" enough for the the US. 2. Agree 3. Same answer as 1 4. Pulled a fast one on the US 5. They touched the pen . . . and apparently that was good enough for the US (of course the gov only told the Indians the good stuff and not the stuff contained in the fine print) by then it was too late and the Indians were held accountable by a "legal" document.
Some of the recent rulings about treatment of Slaves, Native American Farmers/Ranchers, have benefitted them. The Black Hills is a huge area with vast resources that will never be returned by the "original" owners because of the monetary value there.
This issue is very similar to the Holocast with current survivors and/or descendants being paid for past crimes.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 6, 2012 12:13:39 GMT -6
Not remotely like the Holocaust. Hitler never set up reservations except as staging for extermination camps, didn't name states, armies, sports teams with Jewish names, did not revel in romantic novels about the Hebrews in the olde days, wanted them all dead. In no way does this compare with the U.S. and native Americans, extreme individuals with limited power, if any, aside.
The Native Americans did not care about the culture of other Native Americans either. By today's laws, the treaties are dubious at best, just like they were back then but for different popular reasons.
The Sioux were not the original owners of the Black Hills and don't want any compensation to go to the original owners, which undermines their legal standing and point. Nobody, of course, knows who the original owners were and, in any case, tribes were as likely to absorb conquered groups as wipe them out so far as we, and they, know.
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Post by elkslayer on Jul 6, 2012 22:07:57 GMT -6
As for Wounded Knee it was the military's responsibility to ensure a peaceful surrender . . . instead they manhandled Indian women/children in the search for weapons resulting in an outcome that should have been obvious, especially after years of intolerable conditions on the reservation. Ok, I will bite... YOU are in charge and you KNOW the Indians are lying to you since you saw their repeaters the day before. Now HOW EXACTLY are YOU going to ensure a peaceful surrender with the Indians having bulletproof ghost shirts and Winchesters hidden under their blankets...but you don't know these things....yet! Jim
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Post by jamessimon500 on Jul 7, 2012 4:57:52 GMT -6
In appendix B of the book, American Indian Mafia, there is a short summary of the Congressional report on Wounded Knee, 1890, and this conclusion about the battle from historian Robert Utley:
"... a regrettable tragic accident of war that neither side intended and that called forth behavior for which some individuals on both sides, in unemotional retrospect, may be judged culpable, but for which neither side as a whole may be properly condemned."
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Post by starman on Jul 7, 2012 10:52:58 GMT -6
Perhaps the US didn't quite behave like the Nazis, but they still tried to exterminate a race of people. Like the Naziz with the Jews they considered the Lakota subhuman. So there is a parallel in history there.
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Post by elkslayer on Jul 7, 2012 12:55:35 GMT -6
Perhaps the US didn't quite behave like the Nazis, but they still tried to exterminate a race of people. Like the Naziz with the Jews they considered the Lakota subhuman. So there is a parallel in history there. Where do you get that the US tried to exterminate a race of people? Or that they thought the Sioux were subhuman? If the US tried to exterminate the Sioux, they would have for what would have stopped them? Subhuman? If they thought they were subhuman, why try to buy the Black Hills and not just take it as the Sioux had done generations before? Why give food and goods, like firearms, to the Sioux on reservations? No, the US obviously didn't not think the Sioux as being subhuman. Backwards and savage due to cultural differences, yes, but not subhuman. Jim
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Post by starman on Jul 8, 2012 2:43:03 GMT -6
What do you think Sheridan meant when he said "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead"? He obviously wanted them out of the way of the glorious Manifest Destiny and didn't care how it was done. Subhuman is perhaps too strong a word but the Lakota were certainly considered inferior by the vast majority of the whites, hence very little qualms about shooting women and children.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 8, 2012 9:26:13 GMT -6
The Indians spent 400 years betraying each other and centuries previous enslaving and slaughtering each other, just like everyone, everywhere. You can dig up dubious quotes just like I can. But you need to know that from the beginning, even from Columbus, there were powers at work to 'save', reform, civilize the Indian.....and coincidently use him to work the mines and till the fields. Cough. The Europeans thought them human and some thought them the Noble Savage and some thought them the people of Eden. From the start, there was much money and influence to protect the Indians. There was never a desire for extermination, although many thought it was happening anyway by disease and loss of game.
The whites treated the Indians no worse than they treated each other often enough. It's the hypocrisy of the Christians, though, that damns us. We professed one thing, did another. Indians were less hypocritical but no less brutal.
The only good Indian is a dead Indian motif, sometimes put in quotes, was no different than Sheridan and Sherman's views of war against the Confederates: you destroy the civilian morale, they surrender, and whatever horror was used to speed that up was good, because it meant no drawn out war where animosities that could not be washed away in a generation were installed. They never said it like that, but that was the fueling observation.
No Sioux hated the white federals more than southerners waving goodbye to Sherman heading east. The North treated the South just like they treated the Indians, in large part, and that realization and shame - while cruel - passed, and the nation reunited about as well as could be done. The example I use is that Lincoln wanted Dixie played at the White House when the South collapsed because it's a good song and he liked it. That's not a tyrant at heart. Let 'em up easy.
Despite recent events, it'll be a while before the Windsors sing Rising of the Moon with the Irish. When that happens, it's really over.
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Post by elkslayer on Jul 8, 2012 23:08:08 GMT -6
What do you think Sheridan meant when he said "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead"? He obviously wanted them out of the way of the glorious Manifest Destiny and didn't care how it was done. Subhuman is perhaps too strong a word but the Lakota were certainly considered inferior by the vast majority of the whites, hence very little qualms about shooting women and children. When Comanche chief Toch-a-way was introduced to Sheridan at the conference, the Indian said, "Me Toch-a-way, me good Indian." Sheridan reportedly smirked and replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." As you see, Sheridan's actual quote is quite different than what you stated, if you think about it. As for your "very little qualms about shooting women and children," I will disagree with you. As you probably know, when attacking a village, both women and children would fight to defend it. By doing so, they are now COMBATANTS. A woman or a ten-year-old can shoot you with a rifle just as dead as a twenty-something warrior. If there was no qualms, why did Custer harass Benteen about shooting that child at Washita? That kid took a few shots at Benteen until Benteen finally killed him. But here's a question for you.... Since the Sioux targeted women and children...a favorite method of killing small children was by holding them by their feet and bashing their heads into a tree trunk, why should we judge soldiers more harshly for doing the same thing? Jim
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Post by starman on Jul 9, 2012 6:40:55 GMT -6
For the simple reason that most of the soldiers would consider themselves "Christians". They considered themselves "civilized". They would never think of themselves as savages, yet in many cases they were every bid as savage as any Indian.
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Post by Yan Taylor on Jul 9, 2012 8:30:36 GMT -6
People have not changed, over 130 years later and we still see civilians killed in cold blood in various places on this earth, I bet when I watch tonight’s news, someone somewhere has been killed being a civilian or not, it seems like being an unarmed man, woman or child makes no difference anymore and basic rules of engagement have gone out of the window, unfortunately.
Ian.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 9, 2012 10:21:31 GMT -6
When did it ever make any difference? Civilians have always been killed. To pretend to a fictional time when "basic rules of engagement" protected civilians and Our Heroes only killed each other for the enjoyment of the safe masses is an illusion, and a ridiculous one. It allows us to staple our wrists to the forehead and publicly pretend to Higher Values in a Golden Time, now lost, but it's reflective of a great deal of ignorance, not a past superior morality.
Further, it assumes civilians are innocent, another ignorance, and it assumes that uniform alone bespeaks target. This is a very juvenile view of the world, Ian.
This is the crap that allowed the supposed Greatest Generation to look down their nose at My Lai and other abominations as solely indicative of the Vietnam era. The ignorant civvies got to castigate soldiers for doing what the civilians had asked them to do - after being kidnapped by the Draft - and feel innocent and ever so superior, morality wise, to these shell shocked kids. Civilians need to feel more guilt and, having experienced it, be not so hasty to throw away the lives of soldiers and the 'innocents' that will inevitably die with them.
The US in particular - but western civilians in general - has to grow up.
When the fifty years were up and WWII records went public, the Greatest don't look that great. Vietnam was not an exception, it was just another one. We won the battles, we lost the war, we've won the peace. Let's ignore that and do it again. Re-enact it.
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Post by plainsman on Jul 9, 2012 11:08:49 GMT -6
I'm in my middle 70s and I can attest that the hatred of Southerners for the "Yankees" did not abate very much over the years. I grew up among grandmothers (including one great-grandma), great aunts and uncles, and aunts and uncles who bore extreme malice for the hated "federals." I've also spent a good chunk of my life in Ireland and among the older generation (50s or older, young people not so much) the feelings for the Brits run bright and hot. I guess you need to be three generations, maybe more, away from it for things to cool down.
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