I Am He Who Speaks the Truth.
Schools seldom teach the truth about America’s mistreatment of Native Americans. The story presented is very one-sided: the White Europeans are nearly always the “good guys” while the indigenous population is represented as “primitive savages” . . . The fact is, U.S. History is usually taught this way, whether K-12 or college:
- The colonists came to America for religious freedom and opportunity. Their motives were therefor lofty and admirable.
- In Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Pilgrims and Indians were friends. They celebrated the First Thanksgiving together. This shows the Europeans were friendly and nicely and any subsequent trouble was the fault of the Indians.
- In Virginia in 1607 the colonists began the town of Jamestown, named for King James of England. John Smith was among them and he traded with the Indians. Because he cheated them, they were going to kill him when he was saved by the great chief Powhatan’s princess daughter, Pocahontas (later Lady Rebecca, made a lady of the royal court by the Queen of England, the first American woman so honored). John Smith must have been a remarkable man to be saved in such a manner.
- In both Massachusetts and Virginia, fighting eventually broke out between the two sides and gradually increased in frequency and intensity. The Native Americans fought bravely (when they weren’t acting like savages) but they had a primitive culture and so were no match for the “Advanced Europeans”.
- The colonists were attacked first and only fought to defend themselves. If they coveted Indian lands just a little bit, it was only to bring the “Red Savages” to Christianity and to civilize them.
- The acquisition of this glorious continent was done almost as an afterthought and mainly by treaty and purchase. The Dutch paid the Indians living on Manhattan Island the grand sum of $24 dollars’ worth of jewelry (baubles and beads) for the island.
That’s the usual narrative, pro-European in the extreme; typically there is no attempt at presenting a genuine Native American perspective, at least until relatively recently.
Most writers today can admit great injustices were done to the Native Americans but in colonial days—when the contest was joined–a much different attitude prevailed. Native Americans—“Indians”—were seen as the colonists’ sworn enemy as warfare began in earnest.
Native Americans as Military Strategists
Usually left out of the textbook is the bravery and skill of the Indian resistance leaders. They were proud, strong, and often brilliant strategists. The Native American warriors frequently out-maneuvered settlers and soldiers. They were fighting on their own land and defending their own homes; they brought all of this great knowledge and moral determination to good use in outsmarting the Europeans–the invading Europeans as they saw it, and rightly so.
Now the list of notable Native American leaders is too long to give here in full. The brave, good, and honorable Indian warriors who died fighting the invading aggressors are too many to count; it would be like counting the grains of sand on a beach.
Nearly every tribe had its warrior society composed of braves most noted for their skill and courage. The secret warrior societies were a powerful war mechanism within the larger tribal nation. These warriors could withstand great hardship in defense of their homeland. Some fought while wounded; some fought against overwhelming odds; some tied a sash around their waists and drove a stake through the other end of the sash into the ground: they would not retreat. They would fight until victory or die where they stood.
It is told of the great warrior chief Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux, that he rode his horse up and down in front of the lines of enemy soldiers armed with their long sticks, the rifles, and yet none could hit him. He had great power, “great magic”, and his courage defending his people became legendary.
Had he been a white man he would have been celebrated as the greatest of all heroes, greater than Washington. There were few like Crazy Horse among the warriors who risked their lives in the belief that they had the right to live in a manner as they chose as a free people–
Let us remember a few of them:
Metacomet, King Phillip, who fought with brilliance and tenacity equaling or surpassing the best military generals and was compared favorably to George Washington. This observation was made by Washington Irving, an early biographer of Washington. One of the few American writers able to free himself of the prejudices blinding his fellow countrymen, Washington Irving found sympathy in his heart to write a stirring portrait of Metacomet, son of Massasoit, the Indian leader who made a pact of peace and friendship with the Thanksgiving Pilgrims.
Despite the many injustices suffered by the Native Americans in violation of the treaty, Massasoit kept his word to live peacefully for fifty years. Not so his second son, after his father passed.
“King Phillip” (Metacomet) died fighting in his own homeland trying to save it from European settlers wishing to expand their land holdings by claiming his people’s land as their own: the land of their fathers and mothers, of their grandparents, of their ancestors!
“Never give up the land which holds the bones of your mother and father”. More than one “chief” passed on this pledge to their sons as the most important words of wisdom they could provide them. And yet the Europeans kept coming in numbers too great to count. Deaths in battles, gratuitous murders, and disease steadily reduced Indian populations.
Despite Indian bravery and some brilliant strategies, Indian tribes began to suffered losses and defeats, with the invading army or settlers spreading ever farther into Indian lands never ceded. Along the way these events became part of American history:
- The Pequot Massacre of 1637:
The colonists attacked a stockade-like defensive structure of the Pequot and set it afire. Hundreds of Indians had sought refuge there and hundreds perished–men, women, children—screaming, burned alive, or killed trying to escape: shot, knifed, butchered. Did you not know?
- The Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1795, in Ohio: the people still mourn.
- The Sand Creek Massacre, 1864: Cheyenne living in peace were slaughtered until the creek ran red with their blood.
- The Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890: a party of Sioux under Bigfoot, attempting to surrender, were massacred. The soldiers who died were killed by their own crossfire. Many received medals to honor them for this senseless slaughter.
- The Trail of Tears of the Cherokees and the Long Walk of the Navajo. Forced marches under terrible conditions during which many perished. Many tribes have such tales of woe and misery, enough to overflow the human heart.
The list is long and brings only sad memories. It is the sadness that cannot be escaped in Native American history when the truth is told, and not cleverly crafted fictitious American history to make palatable the unthinkable. The Holocaust of Hitler was already known in the Americas.
Demeaning Terms: Tribe Instead of Nation
Before the conquest, many so-called “tribes” were better described as nations, especially the Iroquois Confederacy, the Seven Branches of the Great Sioux Nation, and the Five Civilized Tribes (Nations), among others. Pocahontas’ father was the head of the Powhatan confederation, considered quite powerful. The student of history must look quickly. As soon as smallpox and other diseases decimated native peoples and the population plunged, the Europeans would soon shift from treating with independent Indian Nations to subduing “tribes” and tribal fragments.
Military Conflict and Strategy
In the early years, Indian attacks were so well-coordinated as to give them numerous advantages and victories. These victories are seldom mentioned in the textbooks. Cultural racism rears its ugly head, yes, even in the domain of books, schools, teachers, and writers.
- Indians don’t “win battles”; only Europeans do.
- Indians commit massacres; the Europeans, never.
- The winning side gets to write the history of the battles.
- If it means turning the truth upside down to make themselves “look good”, the victors take to telling lies like a duck takes to water. The art of the lie becomes its own excuse.
Many of the great warriors were legendary figures among their own people long before there were any battles with the Europeans or Americans. These men had earned a reputation for bravery; they did not know fear. To give one’s life in battle was an honor for the Indian warrior.
Some Indian warriors had a special death song which they sang the evening before a fight, knowing they would be killed in the coming battle. General Armstrong Custer had two Indian scouts with him who sang their death chant the day before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, during which General Custer was killed along with all of his command.
It is said they tried to warn him but he did not listen. They say no one with Custer survived but that is not true: they forget his Indian Scouts who removed their soldiers’ jacket and played dead. At least one, possibly two, survived. Since it was “only an Indian” who survived, no one in the history books pays him much attention.
Sitting Bull, the great Sioux leader, was responsible for this last great victory against the US Army. He did not fight but his spirit inspired and guided the Native American resistance.
It was Crazy Horse who stopped the relief columns, headed by Capt. Reno, coming to Custer’s aid. Custer and all his men (some say 210, others give a different number), believed they were on the verge of an early morning massacre of women, children, and old men.
He had pulled this coward’s trick before, on the banks of the Washita. Now, in June 1876, choosing to disobey orders, Custer pushed on too fast; his column thought they had found a large Sioux encampment while the warriors were away, but they were deceived.
Suddenly they saw the land, the hills, the trees transformed into a landscape like nothing they had ever witnessed. From every hill and ravine came hundreds of Indians; on foot or mounted upon beautiful horses of many colors and hues, banners and streamers floating in the air from the warriors’ hair or braided into the manes and tails of their horses.
Banners and feathers streamed from the war lances held by the most important chiefs. Under them were one hundred sub-chiefs, each with his group of ten warriors. Many warriors came from tribes which had already witnessed massacres of their women and children. From the Indians’ perspective, many of the Blue Coats were rapists and murderers who deserved to die. Some 3,000 warriors, perhaps more, took part in this last great battle where the Indians made a statement for all people for all time, one whose meaning could never be twisted or lost:
This is our land, this is our home, and we will continue to fight for as long as we have warriors with which to fight! Justice and truth does not allow anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear to ever forget the stand we make this day. We have a right to defend our homeland! We have a sacred obligation to defend our homeland!
These events occurred in June 1876.
Surrendering to a Cruel Enemy
Despite the victory, Chief Joseph’s famous surrender speech was only eleven years away: “Hear me, my chiefs! I am sick and tired. My people are all scattered. They have no food, no blankets. Some are in the mountains, freezing to death. I need time to look for my children . . . Hear me my chiefs! From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more, forever.”
And so another great Native American leader, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce of the Wallowa Valley, representing an intelligent and proud people, had to face the bitterness of defeat and sue for peace, accepting whatever fate befell his people at the hands of the U.S. Army, government, corrupt Indian Agents, and rushing-forward settlers.
Some of those early treaties in American history promised wonderful things, like good land for the Indians, but by the time the conquest reached the western states–Idaho, Washington, Oregon–the chiefs knew that the fine-sounding treaty words were just that: dishonest words making false promises no one intended to keep.
There is a long history of broken treaties. Always it was the US Government, the U.S. Army, and the settlers who broke the treaties first. This is an indisputable part of the actual history of our country and anyone who says differently is a fool. As Red Cloud said:
“They promised us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.”
Captain Jack, a brave Modoc who fought from inaccessible volcanic lava ledges, endured great hardships for his Modoc people. He hardly bears a mention in the history books for his courage and loyalty to his people! Against impossible odds, he fought to defend his land. He was captured and hung like a dog for his daring resistance. And yet, was he not doing on the West Coast the same thing the American colonists once did on the East Coast when they said “no” to being ruled by the British soldiers sent by King George III?
Democracy and Self-Government among Native Americans
Native Americans governed themselves well and did not need help from greedy, dishonest, and violence-prone Americans.
Captain Jack, Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and their peoples practiced and understood self-government. They did not need an arbitrary tyranny imposed upon them by American soldiers and armed settlers who believed killing Indians was a fine sport.
Chief Joseph, Chief Seattle, Geronimo, Cochise, Mangus Colorado, and Quanah Parker, the great Comanche leader: where are they now?
Black Hawk, who led his people back across the river to their ancestral homeland . . . named for the hawk seen circling his teepee at the time of his birth in a prairie teepee . . . and the spirit of Black Hawk ran with Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympics as his grandson amazed the world with the greatest display of athletic prowess ever recorded.
For Thorpe, ahead was the loss of his gold medals;
For Black Hawk, the loss of his sacred land and ancestral home, everything that gave his people life and their existence meaning as free human beings.
Where Are Their Voices Today
Where are they now? Chief Pontiac, Cornstalker, Black Fish, Blue Jacket: where are they?
Osceola, of the Seminoles in Florida: where is your brave heart, you who drew your hunting knife and aimed it at the hated treaty with its lies and duplicitous “promises” and drove your knife through the center of the paper and deep into the table?
Where are the Shawnee prophet and his brother? Where is Tecumseh, the legendary one, who understood the need for tribal unity and worked tirelessly to build the first strong pan-Indian alliance against the ever-encroaching invaders? Tecumseh, my friend, you who were guided by prophecy and visions, where are you? Brother, we miss you!
Chief Logan, the peaceful one, who always befriended the white man . . . until every living relative of his was killed in a senseless slaughter . . . only then did he take to the warpath and glut his thirst for revenge—he who said “Not a drop of Logan’s blood runs in the veins of any living person. Who will mourn for Logan? Not one!” And it is said that soldiers stationed on picket duty sometimes asked, during the quiet hours of their night watch, this same question. One soldier would ask “Who will mourn for Logan?” and the reply, “not one”, would be whispered softly by another. “Not one”.
The Great Leaders and Their Legacy
In the northeast regions controlled by the Iroquois and Algonquian tribes, the great chiefs and warriors are long gone and yet the story of Hiawatha and the Iroquois Tree of Peace–and their peaceful democratic influence on the Founding Fathers and our constitution—remains and should always be remembered.
In every one of the 13 colonies, brave and determined resistance took place. Many heroic names are known. Many more are unknown and lost to history forever. That is why we must be so careful to study and preserve the few stories that survived. The names we know must stand for the others: the unnamed warriors who said “Today is a good day to die!” They died proudly, fighting bravely to save their land and their people from their enemy. Do we still begrudge them this right of self-defense, this right of heroism with moral righteousness on their side?
When the right to defend one’s family, one’s home, one’s people—when that becomes wrong, when that becomes a crime, then all of humanity might as well pack up a suitcase marked “human race” and go to the Golden Gate Bridge and take a flying leap. When lies become more appealing than truth, mankind loses its birthright. The human race will be without hope and without possibility of redemption if it ever forgets that all people have the basic right to defend themselves and their homes from invaders.
Moral Questions That Never Die
Morally, this issue was never in question, at least among honest and honorable people who put conscience and principle before greed and conquest. The Indians were brutally and horribly wronged. To say anything else would be to make a joke out of honest academic scholarship.
We are devoted to historical truth here but there is another truth, and a deeper truth, we also find. The stories of the great chiefs and warriors, when we learn them, inspire us to learn more about their tribes and people.
When next we meet our Native American brothers and sisters face to face, we will all be in for a pleasant surprise. The quiet dignity is still there. The virtues remain: honesty, loyalty, honor, compassion, kindness, patience, gentleness, love, wisdom.
All the virtues are there, as in any other people, but somewhat more highly refined in ways unique to the Native Americans’ standards of belief and conduct.
The ancient pride is there, the warrior’s fire, as well as respect for family, grandparents, relatives, ancestors, “all living things.” This pride, this fire bespeak of countless generations, of vast oral traditions too grand to do justice in a short essay such as this one.
How do we acknowledge Indian oral historians who knew the whole history of their peoples? How do we find the right superlatives to describe the oratory of spell-binding Native American speakers held in highest esteem by their tribes, where speech and debate were taken to the highest levels of reason and wisdom?
How do we cry adequate tears when we learn of these wise people and their elders, whose minds were clear and purposeful, when their bodies became susceptible to microscopic organisms called germs and viruses and bacteria?
Whether we read of warriors killed in battle or treasured lights of the tribe taken away by smallpox, cholera, malaria, and diphtheria, the staggering large loss of life is mind-numbing: how do we handle the pain of this tragedy? Pledged to fight to the death, the warrior societies were decimated by war and disease until there were only a few left. Geronimo with a handful of warriors kept much larger American armies at bay!
Look at what the warrior leaders were facing: besides actual fighting (with bloodshed and wounded) they had to take care of the women and children, many hungry and freezing . . . Village shelters and winter granaries were often burned by the soldiers . . .
Herds of ponies were massacred, as with the Navajo, and their bright lovely peach orchards destroyed in Canyon de Cheilly and other places . . .
A genocide against the buffalo, first lord of the land, was initiated to drive the Plains Indians into submission through starvation . . . 30-60 million buffalo were slaughtered!
And so the conditions of the women and children and old men became increasingly hopeless; it would only get worse, more would freeze to death . . . and thus the last great warriors gave up their right to die in battle (something very dear to them) and chose surrender so that the few remaining survivors of their once great tribes could live, yes, even on a prison reservation awaiting government food . . . which often turned out to be spoiled, rotten, or “disappeared”, sold on the black market for profit to enrich the pockets of corrupt Indian Agents . . . . disease, starvation, and despair took a huge toll as the death count climbed ever higher.
Even here, in forts and on reservations, after surrendering, great chiefs met their doom: Cornstalker, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull. Today, the stories of these men take on new meaning. Now we can look back on their lives and admire them and begin to understand–like little babies with eyes just opening–how great they truly were under the most impossible of circumstances.
I Get Involved in Searching for the Truth
I started to read about Indians, Native Americans, as a young boy and have never stopped. I try to place myself in their shoes (or moccasins!) and ask myself one simple question: what would I have done?
You should try this yourself. Ask the same question: what would you have done?
Sitting Bull was a great warrior as he rose to prominence among the Sioux, a mighty nation with a long history of outstanding leaders and warriors. Called the greatest American statesman, Sitting Bull had to choose between peace and war. He helped organize resistance and, later, when the sad fateful moment came, he had to know how and when to surrender.
He united many tribes and showed Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were equal to the US Army. But the buffalo slaughter was well advanced by then and the many tribes and nations that peopled the northern plains and depended on the buffalo were given an impossible choice: starve and freeze to death and face tribal extinction, or surrender.
That fearful saying, “the handwriting on the wall”, meant defeat for those not yet defeated. The Shoshone, the Pawnee, the Ute, the Crow, the Arikara, the Mandan, the Kiowa, the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne, the Comanche, the Dakota, all prepared for battle hoping their bravery and loyalty would carry the day as it had so many times before . . . and all were forced to sue for peace, realizing after years of heartbreaking bloodshed that they could not defeat the endless stream of invaders and their ever more lethal weapons with which they kept on killing, without mercy.
Unequal in Weapons, Unequal in Fortune
From blunderbuss to musket, from musket to rifle, the contest in weaponry was always out of balance from the very start. Still to come were powerful new weapons like the Hotchkiss cannon and Gatling gun. Soldiers and settlers with Winchester and Sharpshooter rifles proved they could kill Indians with deadly accuracy at longer and longer ranges.
The range and destructive power of the new weaponry ran deep: with artillery shells and cannon ball and grapeshot, with repeating rifles and carbines, the onslaught was endless.
The warriors fought bravely but against overwhelming odds. Across the continent, the story was repeated with sickening regularity:
- tribes decimated by disease
- animal herds decimated and game made scarce (millions of buffalo slaughtered)
- villages and granaries burned to the ground
- herds of ponies and horses slaughtered
And all the while new settlers kept coming in wave after wave without end, with soldiers arriving in unimaginably large numbers possessing weapons of frightening death and destruction.
The onslaught was like an avalanche that could not be stopped. Surrender or fight to extinction?
Today, we are left with this historical reality, this “choice” forced upon the first citizens of our precious land we call America: once their homeland, now their graveyard and prison.
We must all face the tragedy, each in his or her own way. We must each deal with it the best way we can. I decided to commit my life to defending Indian peoples.
Even as a young boy I knew in my heart I could do no less. What happened to them was sadistically brutal, violently criminal, and morally wrong!
Are Indians Human Beings?
What any American, with any spark of decency left, must do is to speak out and take a stand. What any American with a sense of fair play must do, is to help fix past wrongs and champion justice for the downtrodden and the oppressed. I decided to become a teacher and a writer. I chose American History to study and teach . . . and now Native American Studies.
Who are we to study, if not ourselves? When we say we study Native Americans . . . from their virtues to their historical tragedies, it comes back round to our own sense of virtue, our own conscience, our own opinion of what defines human character and makes us moral human beings–and whether the virtues we esteem most dearly are found among Indian peoples as well.
We know the answer to that question now, don’t we? We’ve always known the answer; it’s never changed for the last 500 years. Are they “savages” or are they human beings?
They are human beings! And we must never tire of affirming their basic humanity and equality with all other people. Are they stupid or intelligent? They are intelligent.
And on the list of questions flows: cowardly or brave? They are courageous in the extreme.
Do they favor unethical conduct or honor? They favor honor.
Do they love their families? Of course!
Do they know their own history? Yes, unfortunately yes, although not as well as you might think; many Indians of the current generation are seeking journeys of self-discovery. We should join them. A little journey of knowledge and self-discovery never hurt anyone, eh? I have tried to walk on the path of the truth and go where the path takes me.
I do not always choose my destination the way other people choose theirs. My life has been guided, foreordained. I seek Truth first and foremost and always. Nothing matters more; truth can never matter less. This is the meaning of my name: I Am He Who Speaks the Truth.
What Does Truth Look Like?
Were there a way to transmit to you some part of this truth, without words, then might you see a different truth. Then would you see the author’s face totally transformed and transfigured, one worked by some strong emotion in the extreme, compounded in equal measure by unbearable feelings of anguish, horror, and grief for the brutal assaults on the Native Americans that are left to us to read as part of a sad and tragic literary legacy.
There are some stories too horrendous to share here for they represent a savage brutality on the part of the invading Europeans. Indeed, only one word truthfully describes what happened to the Native American peoples: genocide! Yes, that most horrible and unspeakable of all words, the one word that makes us shudder and wonder how and where in human history did people go so terribly wrong as to make such a word necessary!
Death and Disease Tell the Tale
Back in 1607 and 1620, when the settlers landed and there was friendship before the fighting started, nobody could say how it would all turn out. Even after the period of friendship started to split apart, the fighting was between equals, more or less. More we cannot say since the Indians’ ability to plan and carry out military strategies were offset by a new foe: germs.
The great disease-driven decimation of the Native Americans had already begun in the 1600s although many tribes further west had yet to experience the catastrophic drop in population that was coming. Who knows how many died from disease and how many brave warriors died in battle? No one thought to keep a careful count, though here and there a particular battle may yield an approximate answer.
Thousands were to die of smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, whooping cough, and other such diseases–generally not fatal to European-Americans but nearly always fatal to the Native Americans. They knew no such diseases before the Europeans brought them, and thus the Indians had no biological immunity. They died in large numbers.
Yet, to truly remember them, we must also remember their way of life, their culture, their way of living. The one small gift of being able to show others how to live in balance and harmony with Nature, with Mother Earth, is itself precious beyond words. There are many other gifts but this one most especially stands out!
Remembering the Past
The military campaigns of the 19th century are over; all the deeds, both heroic and bloody, are gone now. The deeds of the great chiefs and mighty warriors are remembered in song and speech and on the “talking leaves” (book pages) but the deed itself as part of a living breathing cultural tradition has now faded into the dreams of an earlier age.
Perhaps in a few places some of their brave deeds and righteous ways are still told, still live on after them: the oral tradition is amazingly strong and reappears time and again despite all attempts to crush the cultures from whence it springs.
Brave hearts, good deeds, kind acts live on . . . as must be said about the lives of all good men and women everywhere, of whatever culture or race or language, whether Asia or Africa or the Americas . . . . . these names and spirits still reside here with us in this land . . .
Sequoyah, whose long struggle to create an alphabet for his people produced a written language, a newspaper, schools, and education and made the Cherokee a strong people that would survive . . . .
Geronimo, who showed us the soul of a true warrior . . .
Osceola, his knife slashing the false treaty paper in angry defiance . . .
Cochise, slashing the side of an army tent in order to escape a planned assassination . . .
Chief Seattle
Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Crazy Horse
Red Cloud
Black Hawk
Tecumseh
Black Fish
Black Kettle of the Cheyenne . . .
These men have left brave lives behind and in these stories there are great lessons to be learned. Listen. Read. Learn.
Sitting Bull said:
“Go! Leave our land! Take your lies with you . . . I am very fond of this little grove of oak trees, and do not wish to part with them . . .”
It was said that he got up early always, before dawn, and walked barefoot in the dew . . . that he could put his ear to a tree and hear the heart of Mother Earth beating . . .
“God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.”
The spirit of Sitting Bull still lives!
I Am He Who Speaks the Truth
I am one more who will fight to the death
I am one more who died fighting
So my people could live
