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| Black Kettle |
The Grandma continues fighting against the flu. Today, she has been listening to some news and reading some declarations of a mediocre Minister who has despised the Native American Indians and the genocide that they suffered during their resistance to be colonized.
We are living difficult moments around the world and diplomacy must be the key to resolve problems not to create new ones. Denying historical facts, changing their meaning or minimizing their importance has a name, and this name is revisionism.
In historiography, the term historical revisionism identifies the re-interpretation of the historical record. It usually means challenging the orthodox, established, accepted or traditional, views held by professional scholars about a historical event, introducing contrary evidence, or reinterpreting the motivations and decisions of the people involved.
The revision of the historical record can reflect new discoveries of fact, evidence, and interpretation, which then provokes a revised history. In dramatic cases, revisionism involves a reversal of older moral judgments.
More information: How Stuff Works
At a basic level, legitimate historical revisionism is a common and not especially controversial process of developing and refining the writing of history. Much more controversial is the reversal of moral findings, in which what had been considered to be positive forces are depicted as being negative. This revisionism is then challenged by the supporters of the previous view, often in heated terms, and becomes an illegitimate form of historical revisionism known as historical negationism if it involves inappropriate methods such as the use of forged documents or implausible distrust of genuine documents, attributing false conclusions to books and sources, manipulating statistical data and deliberately mis-translating texts. This type of historical revisionism presents a re-interpretation of the moral meaning of the historical record.
History is curious and we sometimes live some casual coincidences. We have just listened to these terrible and uneducated declarations of a Minister, when today, is the commemoration of the Battle of Washita River. Mr. Minister, study History and practise Diplomacy, it's not very difficult.
Before listening to the news, The Grandma has been studying a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Checkpoint 4 & Grammar 25).
More information: Reported Speech & Past Perfect
The Battle of Washita River, also called Battle of the Washita or the Washita Massacre, occurred on November 27, 1868 when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River, near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma.
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| Battle of Washita River, 1868 |
They were the most isolated band of a major winter encampment along the river of numerous Native American tribal bands, totaling thousands of people. But Custer's forces attacked their village because scouts had followed the trail of a party that had raided white settlers and passed through it. Black Kettle and his people had been at peace and were seeking peace. Custer's soldiers killed women and children in addition to warriors, although they also took many captive to serve as hostages and human shields. The number of Cheyenne killed in the attack has been disputed since the first reports.
After the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty, they were -according to the final treaty tect as affirmed by Congress, required to move south from present-day Kansas and Colorado to a new reservation in Indian Territory, modern Oklahoma. The actual oral accord of the treaty negotiations, however, had guaranteed the Cheyennes their traditional hunting lands as long as there was sufficient buffalo to justify the chase, a crucial treaty stipulation which was tacitly dropped in the subsequent ratification process. This forced them to give up their traditional territory for one with little arable land and away from buffalo, their main source of meat and a center of their culture. Months of fragile peace survived raids between warring Kaw Indians and Southern Cheyennes.
More information: Smithsonian
But in summer 1868, war parties of Southern Cheyenne and allied Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Northern Cheyenne, Brulé, Oglala, and Pawnee warriors attacked white settlements in western Kansas, southeast Colorado, and northwest Texas. Among these raids were those along the Solomon and Saline rivers in Kansas, which began August 10, 1868. The warriors killed at least 15 white settlers, wounded others, and were reported to have raped some women, as well as taking others captive to be adopted into their tribes.
In 1897, Kansas Rep. Horace L. Moore remarked at a meeting of the Kansas State Historical Society that The total of losses from September 12, 1868, to February 9, 1869, exclusive of casualties incident to military operations, was 158 men murdered, sixteen wounded and forty-one scalped. Three scouts were killed, fourteen women outraged, one man was captured, four women and twenty-four children were carried off. Nearly all of these losses occurred in what we then called western Kansas, although the Saline, Solomon and Republican do not seem so very far west now.
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| Battle of Washita River, 1868 |
According to Little Rock's account, a war party of about 200 Cheyenne from a camp above the forks of Walnut Creek departed camp intending to go out against the Pawnee. Instead, they raided white settlements along the Saline and Solomon rivers. Some of the warriors returned to Black Kettle's camp. Little Rock learned from them what took place. Little Rock identified the warriors most responsible for the raids and agreed to try to have them delivered to white authorities.
On November 26, 1868, Custer’s Osage scouts located the trail of an Indian war party. Custer's troops followed this trail all day without a break until nightfall, when they rested briefly until there was sufficient moonlight to continue. They followed the trail to Black Kettle’s village, where Custer divided his force into four parts, moving each into position so that at first daylight they could simultaneously converge on the village. At daybreak, as the columns attacked, Double Wolf awoke and fired his gun to alert the village; he was among the first to die in the charge. The Cheyenne warriors hurriedly left their lodges to take cover behind trees and in deep ravines. Custer soon controlled the village, but it took longer to quell all remaining resistance.
More information: Daily History
The Osage, enemies to the Cheyenne, were at war with most of the Plains tribes. The Osage scouts led Custer toward the village, hearing sounds and smelling smoke from the camp long before the soldiers. The Osage did not participate in the initial attack, fearing that the soldiers would mistake them for Cheyenne and shoot them. Instead, they waited behind the color-bearer of the 7th US Cavalry on the north side of the river until the village was taken. The Osage rode into the village, where they took scalps and helped the soldiers round up fleeing Cheyenne women and children.
Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman, were shot in the back and killed while fleeing on a pony. Following the capture of Black Kettle's village, Custer was in a precarious position. As the fighting began to subside, he saw large groups of mounted Indians gathering on nearby hilltops and learned that Black Kettle's village was only one of many Indian encampments along the river, where thousands of Indians had gathered. Fearing an attack, he ordered some of his men to take defensive positions while the others seized the Indians' property and horses. They destroyed what they did not want or could not carry, including about 675 ponies and horses. They spared 200 horses to carry prisoners.
Near nightfall, fearing the outlying Indians would find and attack his supply train, Custer began marching his forces toward the other encampments. The surrounding Indians retreated, at which point Custer turned around and returned to his supply train.
More information: National Park Service
When you lose the rhythm of the drumbeat of god,
you are lost from the peace and rhythm of life.
Native American Cheyenne Proverb
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