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Introduction Death On The Plains
The story of the American Wild West is a conflicting mixture of half-remembered facts and make believe. In the public’s perception, the West is largely a myth. Through TV, pulp novels, art and cinema, the west has been presented in wildly differing forms, from a place of romance, optimism and valour, to a morass of violence, corruption and lies. As far as the original inhabitants of the West were concerned, it was the second that was closer to the truth. This was the West of history books, a wild, inhospitable, unforgiving land that harboured danger at every turn, in sharp contrast to the idealised views Easterners often had of it. Easterners thought the West was free range, a ‘Garden of Eden’, just waiting to be colonised. Views soon changed however and the pioneers’ adventures out West could become, quite literally, hair-raising.
An American Dream
At the beginning of the 1840s the North American Indians looked across the plains at the unstoppable expansion of the white man’s West. It seemed inconceivable that a land that was theirs by birthright could be taken away from them. During the following decades of conflict, as the settlers pushed onward through the ‘Virgin Land’ (which wasn’t virgin at all), the Indians saw their way of life disappear before their eyes. For the next 40 years they desperately clung to a dream, the terrible consequences of which left the once proud Indians reduced to living in appalling conditions on reservations. It was certainly true that danger haunted the settlers every step of the way. After setting off in covered wagons and coasting through lush grasslands, pioneers were often alarmed when hostile Indians ran off their horses in the night. If the settlers were lucky enough to arrive at their destination, knock-together a makeshift cabin and set up home, their tranquillity could be broken in a moment. While away hunting, a husband could return to find his hard toil and loved ones gone forever. His house burned, his wife murdered and scalped (or worse captured) and his prized stock run off. Such was the ferocity of an Indian attack. But was killing every Indian in sight really the solution ?
The extreme danger posed by Indians was in addition to the other perils of frontier life, among them drought, starvation, disease and the weather. In one instance a wagon train was wiped out, not by an Indian attack, but when these natural perils coincided with horrific results. In August 1846 the inexperienced ‘Donner Party’ ( a group of settlers heading to the Californian gold fields from Fort Bridger ) made the fateful decision to take an alleged shortcut, called the ‘Hastings Cut-off’. As it was, the ‘Cut-off’ turned out to be aptly named, though not because it reduced the distance to California. The party became trapped in a particularly terrible winter. Snowbound, they began to starve and eventually resorted to cannibalism. Of the 88 settlers who had set out, only 49 survived – the relief party couldn’t reach them until February 1847. But of all these perils, it was the Indians who proved most problematic to the whites. When the settlers started to complain about the harassing Indian attacks on what they believed to be ‘their’ land, the army got involved. However, the Indians had a very good argument in favour of their ownership of the land – they were there first. Not only that, they had been there a very long time.
Land of My Fathers
The first visitors to America were Vikings, who landed in 1000 AD, but it was formally discovered nearly 500 years later by Christopher Columbus, who claimed it for the King of Spain. These first European arrivals called the red-skinned, feather-wearing natives ‘Indios’ when they landed in 1492. English-speaking settlers arrived in 1607, building the first settlement at Jamestown. The Indians the European settlers found on the east coast were made up of many tribes. Some were hunter-gatherers, others had adopted primitive farming methods. The mistake made by the Europeans was not a n unusual one for people encountering a new race for the first time. Because the Indians couldn’t speak a European language, they were uncultured savages, living in primitive conditions and crying out to be taught European ways and customs. The Indians got along well with their new neighbours initially, but as immigrants arrived by the boatload, and the settlers started to move inland, the Indians turned on the whites. These Eastern Indians were pacified ( or just plain decimated ) in a series of bloody wars with the settlers. The first was the Pequot War of 1636 ( which ended in an Indian defeat ) and the major fracas of the period was King Philip’s War of 1675 – 78. Philip ( whose Indian name was Metacomet ) was accused of plotting against the settlers. The lengthy conflict was defined by a series of attacks on towns and prolonged sieges, which again ended in the Indians’ capitulation ( and Philip’s death ).
These early wars set the pattern for the later, more familiar, Indian Wars. Usually a minor incident caused the peace to be broken, followed by a large-scale raid ( invariably resulting in a massacre ). Then the rebellion would be quelled by the army, with each side blaming the other for starting the conflict. Over the next two hundred years, the Indians were gradually shunted inland and squashed between areas of white settlement. Both the British and the ‘Americans’ ( as the settlers came to be known ) used Indians in the War of Independence (1775 – 83 ), though the Indians initially tried not to get involved. They were also allied to forces during the French and Indian Wars that broke out intermittently between 1689 and 1763 ( the so-called ‘Trapper Wars’ ) and the War of 1812. But by the early 1800’s nearly all the eastern Indians had been pushed into ‘designated areas’ or had been driven further inland. In the late 18th and early 19th century, Europe lost interest in American affairs and both Spain and France pulled out of North America. At this stage, the bulk of North America, from the west coast to the Mississippi, was uncharted and full of Indians. In 1803, in the so called Louisiana Purchase, the Americans bought 800,000 square miles of land beyond the Mississippi River from the French for the modest sum of $15,000,000. this now meant that America owned most of the land westward from the Mississippi. There was only one problem – the colonists about to settle the land would have to get rid of the current occupants.
An Unhappy Chapter
It was the Californian Gold Rush of 1849 that began the westward push which resulted in the most famous Indian Wars. Many hundreds of thousands of Indians had already been killed by diseases brought by the white-men. This latest influx of whites eager to get-rich-quick meant the Indians had to do something to protect their homeland. Soon afterwards, the Indians began hostilities and started to attack the intruders. The government countered this with a huge treaty in 1851. Dubbed the Treaty of Laramie, this involved a massive gathering of Northern Indians at Fort Laramie, the largest council ever assembled. The government offered to pay the Indians $50, 000 a year plus guns ( for hunting purposes, of course ) if they stopped attacking the Forty-niners’ wagons. Another provision was that the Indians musty stay in their own ‘designated areas’ ( in the days before they were called reservations ) , a concept completely alien to the free-roaming, nomadic Indians’ lifestyle. In retrospect, getting the Indians to comply was like trying to tell fish to stay in their own part of the ocean. Indians knew no borders, only rough tribal territorial boundaries. Moreover, these tribal boundaries were there to be broken – the acquisition of hunting land was one of the main reasons for inter-tribal conflict. But for a complete outsider like the white man to arrive and steal the land was something the Indians wouldn’t stand for. The Indians had a great deal of trouble understanding many of the white man’s ideas. They never fathomed the value of money and were uncomprehending of the white man’s lust for the ‘yellow metal’ found in abundance in the hills. They also had trouble with the notion of countrywide government. For instance, Geronimo thought that each group of troops sent after him represented a local town, rather than any larger governmental department. Therefore, with this reasoning, he thought that each town had its own little army to defend it, without realising the wider picture.
In 1853, the Southern tribes signed a similar treaty to the Laramie deal, protecting the Santa Fe Trail trading route. But thereafter, the government didn’t look after the ‘pacified’ Indians very well. Poor supplies and exploitation resulted in starvation and disease. Moreover the uneasy peace resulted in more troops arriving to police the frontier should trouble begin,. In this atmosphere of disquiet, trouble was never far away. In August 1854, near Fort Laramie, an argument over an injured cow resulted in the first real action of the post-Laramie Treaty Indian Wars. The Indians accused of injuring the animal were Sioux and the army got involved. A 30-man army contingent was sent to catch the culprits in a nearby village. The inexperienced lieutenant in charge, itching for a fight, lost his patience and opened fire on the village. The Indians went berserk and slaughtered the command to a man. Nearly a year later, in August 1855, the army sought retribution for the outrage and 600 soldiers levelled the Indian village on Ash Creek, the site of the previous massacre. It was the first instance of the US Army marching straight to the source of the trouble and stemming it at grassroots level. Their victims included women and children. But the ‘Indian Troubles’, as they were vaguely referred to, were interrupted by the small matter of the American Civil War.
Many Indians saw the War as an opportunity to get their land back. The settlers were largely defenceless, with most of the troops away in the east, and the Indian fighting during the Civil War was amongst the bloodiest of the conflict. Settlers were murdered, while the Indians’ only opponents were poorly armed but vicious militiamen. These violent squabbles reached their zenith in the Civil War years, with the Minnesota Massacre (an Indian atrocity) and the Sand Creek Massacre (perpetrated by the army). In the first, the Santee Sioux, dissatisfied with their lifestyle under white supervision, ran riot throughout Minnesota in 1862, sacking towns and killing indiscriminately. In the second, the Colorado Volunteers, dissatisfied that they had been recruited but hadn’t shot any Indians, ran riot in 1864, in retribution for the Minnesota Massacre, attacking a peaceful Cheyenne village and killing indiscriminately. In 1866, Captain Fetterman’s command was wiped out by the Sioux and Cheyenne during Red Cloud’s War, in retribution for the Sand Creek massacre…a pattern was emerging.
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