We’Ve Done Them Wrong!: A History of the Native American Indians and How the United States Treated Them

Copyright © 2012 by George E. Saurman.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-4488-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-4490-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-4489-1 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012915676

iUniverse rev. date: 08/23/2012

Contents

Acknowledgement

Introduction

Chapter 1: The New World before the Invaders

Chapter 2: The Old World Looks Outward

Chapter 3: William Penn’s Holy Experiment

Chapter 4: The Spread of Civilization

Chapter 5: The Indian Wars

Chapter 6: Atrocities Suffered by the Indians

Chapter 7: Contributions of the Native American Indians

Chapter 8: Conditions on Reservations Today,

Chapter 9: The War Goes On

Chapter 10: Comments from Native Americans

Chapter 11: Conclusion

Bibliography

Native American Charities

Acknowledgement

It is with a great deal of gratitude that I acknowledge the valuable assistance of Jeffrey Fehlenberg who critiqued my work early on and made me aware that I was guilty of approaching much of my evaluation from the white man’s point of view. His great understanding of the Native American Indian culture enabled me to more evenly balance my presentation. In spite of the very disturbing treatment of these first citizens by our ancestors, I wanted to strike a sense of understanding from the point of view of both sides in the development of a new nation.

Introduction

This book is intended to be an apologetic admission of gross transgressions of the United States against the inhabitants of this land when the civilization of Western Europe entered the New World in the name of colonization, and which unfortunately, continue even today. As a nation we have defeated greedy anarchies, power hungry dictators, potential invaders in many parts of the world, and in every case we have rebuilt what we destroyed. In our dealings with the Native American Indians, however, we have been less than fair, certainly not compassionate, and in many instances cruel and downright dishonest.

This book can be summarized best by remarks made by Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs in the Department of Interior Affairs at a ceremony celebrating the 175th Anniversary of the establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, delivered on September 8, 2000.

We must first reconcile ourselves to the fact that the works of this agency have at various times profoundly harmed the communities it was meant to serve. From the very beginning the Office of Indian Affairs was an instrument by which the United States enforced its ambition against the Indian nations and Indian people who stood in its path.

He referenced the Trail of Tears and described the agency’s role in ethnic cleansing citing the deliberate spread of disease, the destruction of huge numbers of buffalo herds and even the use of alcohol to destroy both mind and body. He even acknowledged the killing of women and children which he described as cowardly.

He further spoke of the needless and violent massacres which actions took place at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. He recognized planned efforts to total annihilate the Indian culture which ultimately led to the destruction of tribal economies and which were intended to render the total dependence of the Indian population on services which the agency he represented was supposed to provide.

The agency proceeded to forbid the speaking of Indian languages, it disallowed traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional government and sought to make Native American Indians ashamed of who they were. He further put the blame for the shameful conduct of the boarding schools for the children on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, describing the conduct employed as brutalizing them emotionally, psychologically, physically and spiritually.

While he sought to present the present conduct of the Bureau as finally serving the people it was supposed to protect all along, he acknowledges the legacy which the past has thrust upon them. He refers to the passing of the trauma of shame, fear and anger of the past from one generation to another and admits that past events have resulted in wide spread alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence taking place on today’s reservations.

He summarizes that many of the difficulties found today in Indian country are the result of the mistreatment suffered throughout our history as our nation grew and moved across the country. He states that poverty, ignorance and disease have been the by-products of the past conduct of the agency.

He confesses that in the past the agency has committed acts so terrible that they continue to infect, diminish and destroy the lives of Indian people still today.

And he also vows that these wrongs must be acknowledged if the healing is to take place. He concludes with a call to wipe away the tears of seven generations and allow broken hearts to mend.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs was born in 1824 in a time of war on Indian people. May it live in the year 2000 and beyond as an instrument of their prosperity, said the Assistant Secretary.

Politically these words sound good. They do enumerate some of the transgressions which took place, but like the bureau itself which was publicized as an agency intended to protect and assist the Native American Indians, it was and remains, a weapon by which the government continues to wrest additional lands and rights from the original inhabitants of America.

Once again, whether the people of the agency failed the red man in preventing the devastation or whether indeed they performed well their real mission to make it happen is a matter for debate.

While the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs is most certainly aware of what happened at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, most people haven’t a clue. You will read the details of these massacres and others later in this book, but it is unlikely that without fully understanding the immensity of these travesties, one would be less likely to understand the true impact of the needless killing involved.

It is helpful to realize that his reference to tribal economies should include intertribal economies as well. As the Europeans brought metal tools, shiny beads, colorful fabrics and firearms they began to displace intertribal commerce that had been fruitful for many generations. Many trade routes existed on land and over waterways not only between villages, but also between different tribes. Trade language used at the time still exists.

In outlawing traditional governments the federal government sought to establish governments within the Native population that were more convenient for them to deal with. Our concept of chiefs gives far more power to them than actually existed. The chief was a facilitator and leader by example. Decisions were made communally which created an environment with which it was difficult for the colonists to deal. There was no one person with whom they could negotiate and they wanted to change that.

Justice for the American Native Indian is still unfortunately very elusive. In April of 2008, the Colorado Legislature passed a resolution comparing the deaths of millions of Native American Indians to the Holocaust.

On December 4, 2009, a headline in the Intelligencer, a local Pennsylvania newspaper read, IRS Sells Indian Tribe’s Land to Settle Debt. The article goes on to describe that 7,100 acres, a total of eleven square miles of Crow Creek Sioux tribal land in central South Dakota was auctioned off for 2.6 million dollars which was less than its appraised value of 4.6 million dollars to pay for federal employment taxes owed by the tribe.

The tribe had previously been told by the Office of Indian Affairs that federally recognized tribes did not have to pay these taxes. The land was part of the tribe’s original reservation established in an 1868 treaty. The tribe filed a lawsuit on December 7 seeking to block the sale. Judge Roberto A. Lange declined their request, but promised to schedule a trial to hear the tribe’s arguments. At the time of this writing there has been no decision.

What I have attempted to do in this book is to point out some of the facts surrounding the building of one great nation, while at the same time destroying many others. My intention, however, is not to condemn, but rather to hopefully help others recognize the great debt that we owe to these people and to encourage every effort to make amends and move forward together. We must never again allow such atrocities to occur or such discrimination to continue to exist.

In conversations with other people, I have found that most are unaware of many of the events that transpired with regard to the official treatment of the Native American Indians. It has either been lost in the maze of other activities or purposely hidden from the American public, but certainly not found in our American history books. And while illegal immigrants carry the day in today’s media reports, somehow the original inhabitants of this great land are unreported and seemingly remain an inconvenience to the American conscience.

I was aware of the help that the Indians had given to the colonists in Massachusetts and their role in the first Thanksgiving. I was also aware of their participation in the settling of Jamestown, Virginia. However, their subsequent contributions as veterans in every war that we have been involved in and especially the role of the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II have received far less recognition than they deserve, even though President Ronald Reagan declared August 14th as National Navajo Code Talkers Day.

The absence of any mention of the contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy to the establishment of our form of government is embarrassing. I will explain more of that later. Their described role in our history has been that of a constant enemy and a threat to the lives of the invading settlers. Their contributions have been all but ignored.

Only recently has the realization of the plight of the American Indian really hit home for me. It began with a small response to a request for money from the former Olympic champion and U.S Marine Officer, Billy Mills, who has dedicated his life to helping his fellow natives with a program called, Running Strong for American Indian Youth.

Since then I have been contacted by several groups, all describing the extreme conditions of poverty existing on their respective reservations and seeking assistance. In spite of our great verbal dedication to justice, we have banished them to the most difficult areas of this continent where they must try to survive. On many reservations they face a shortage of water, poor soil, extremes of temperature and weather conditions that constantly challenge their very existence.

While we expend billions of dollars in aid to third world countries annually, the amount budgeted for aid to Native Americans is pitiful by comparison and the effort to establish a situation which lends itself to humane potential is simply not being adequately addressed.

It was because of this personal awakening that I determined to thoroughly research the situation and share my findings with others in the hope that it might ignite a search for a remedial solution and in the meantime encourage as many individuals as possible to support the charitable organizations listed at the end of the book that are attempting to provide some of the daily needs of life for these impoverished Native elders and children seeking survival in a cruel and unyielding environment.

The contents of this book represent several hundreds of hours of reading and study which have caused me to become passionate in the desire to pierce the silence which has surrounded this inconvenient inheritance left to us by our forefathers. We are a great Nation and have an obligation to do much better than we have done to date.

Chapter One

The New World before the Invaders

History has described the continents