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April 20, 2005
Stop saying "Go west, young man!" already
Not only is it over used, but I'm not so sure it's part of our history we really want to be embracing:
Genocide of the American Indian Peoples“I did not know how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as 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 people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream....”
—Black Elk, Oglala Holy Man, on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, December, 1890The English policy of extermination — another name for genocide — grew more insistent as settlers pushed westward:
In 1851 the Governor of California officially called for the extermination of the Indians in his state. [3, pg. 144]
On March 24, 1863, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver ran an editorial titled, “Exterminate Them.”
On April 2, 1863, the Santa Fe New Mexican advocated “extermination of the Indians.” [5, pg. 228]
In 1867, General William Tecumseh Sherman said:
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the [Lakotas, known to whites as the Sioux] even to their extermination, men, women and children.” [5, pg. 240]In 1891, Frank L. Baum (gentle author of “The Wizard Of Oz”) wrote in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (Kansas) that the army should “finish the job” by the “total annihilation” of the few remaining Indians.
Posted by Mike at April 20, 2005 01:18 AM
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