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Thread: Sioux Nation, A Look Back

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    Senior Member Fred Steeves's Avatar
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    Sioux Nation, A Look Back

    With all that's going on at Standing Rock, I figured this may be a good time to go over some very cursory history of Sioux Nation, without taking that thread off topic.

    Generally, the Sioux Indians were nomadic, meaning that they never really stayed in one place for a very long amount of time. Typically they followed the pattern of the buffalo, assuring them that there would be food and clothing wherever they traveled. The Spanish introduced horses to the Sioux in the 1500’s. Once they began to use horses as a means of carrying articles and transportation, life became much easier, particularly since they were living a nomadic lifestyle. The tribe had chiefs designated for various aspects of life, including war, civil rules, and of course, medicine men. The men of the tribe could become chiefs eventually if they demonstrated strong warrior skills.
    http://indians.org/articles/sioux-indians.html

    Things went well until the early 1850's, when white settler and military encroachment began to cause trouble. For nearly 3 decades, Sioux Nation and the U.S. Army fought a series of skirmishes and wars as Sioux territory was steadily encroached on by white settlers and such. This is the best detailed timeline I could find.
    http://www.hanksville.org/daniel/timeline2.html

    The Sioux were formidable warriors and opponents, giving the army all it could handle as you can see from the timeline. Many may not know they were involved in two of the most famous events marking the era of the indian wars in general. In 1876, fed up with encroachments into their sacred Black Hills (namely because gold was discovered there), they and the Cheyanne handed the U.S. military it's worst military defeat in the long Plains Indian War, annihilating George Custers battalion of the 7th Calvary (The 7th Calvary comes into play again 14 years later) at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

    At mid-day on June 25, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Among the Native Americans, word quickly spread of the impending attack. The older Sitting Bull rallied the warriors and saw to the safety of the women and children, while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head on. Despite Custer’s desperate attempts to regroup his men, they were quickly overwhelmed. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and all of his soldiers were dead. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer’s Last Stand, marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War.
    However:

    The demise of Custer and his men outraged many white Americans and confirmed their image of the Indians as wild and bloodthirsty. Meanwhile, the U.S. government increased its efforts to subdue the tribes. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations.
    http://www.history.com/topics/native...little-bighorn

    Which brings us close to the end of any hope for the now soundly defeated Native Americans overall, but who were to have one last mighty inspiration in The Ghost Dance:

    The Ghost Dance movement was born from a vision of the Paiute prophet, Wovoka. He prophesied that this dance would bring peace and happiness to the devastated Indian tribes – disease had ravaged the Indian population and their numbers were decimated; many of their land treaties with the white settlers had been broken and the Native American people were forcefully relocated to reservations…they had been stripped of their land, their culture, and their freedom.

    During this time of profound misery, Wovoka began to practice and teach the Indian tribes this spirit dance to give them hope and help them overcome their pain and suffering.

    It was believed the dance would incite a great apocalypse and ultimately lead to a peaceful end of the white American expansion, the preservation of the Native American culture, and the return of the buffalo.
    http://www.prairieedge.com/tribe-scr...y-ghost-dance/


    And then the end:

    Throughout 1890, the U.S. government worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Indians had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.
    On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which it’s estimated almost 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.

    The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle, but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment’s defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last major confrontation in America’s deadly war against the Plains Indians.
    http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...t-wounded-knee

    The red highlighted sentence above brings together once again Lakota Sioux and the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary, with far different circumstances and results this time around. I guess it's up to each reader to decide whether this was mere coincidence, or indeed a final exacting of revenge.

    The unexamined life is not worth living.

    Socrates

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    Here's a tune to go with this.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA0zpemMUow


    And another one...


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0opaXOeVUFM


    I really like this one. And Bill Miller.

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    Senior Member Fred Steeves's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Fred Steeves View Post


    Throughout 1890, the U.S. government worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Indians had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.

    On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which it’s estimated almost 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.

    The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle, but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment’s defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last major confrontation in America’s deadly war against the Plains Indians.
    http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...t-wounded-knee
    There's more:

    Conflict erupted again at Wounded Knee in 1973, this time more Bundy style. These Lakota warriors were heavily armed, and ready to go down fighting for their cause. Two of them did in the 11 separate firefights with U.S. Marshalls. This is where famous activist Russell Means (1939-2012) made a name for himself.
    http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...765?page=0%2C0

    I think Sitting Bull would have been proud.

    We are poor… but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die… we die defending our rights.
    Sitting Bull
    The unexamined life is not worth living.

    Socrates

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