i just watched bury my heart at wounded knee and the army shot women and kids along with others. Why?

Question

I am alsmost sure this happened even though it is a movie, but why was the army so dang mean to shoot women and children? How cold hearted.

I would imagine they are down in the hotland burning up (hell)

yeah well that is retarded. I am white but I find it sad that we come here to america and kill to own property.

I am glad the indians do not have to pay our stupid taxes and they can also have their reservations. But I am sure that does not even pale in comparison to the people they have lost.

Answer 1

The claim is that a riot was being generated on the reservation. There were quite a few of those type of incidents in past 'Indian Affairs'. Indeed, nothing to be proud of in any of that cruel and mindless treatment.

Answer 2

I have to point out to gastropode that the current administration is not responsible for the problem. The Clinton administration had a Secretary of the Interior who lost track of billions of dollars and then tried to shake down the Indian tribes for more money.
Yes, Wounded Knee did happen but things have changed a lot since 1876. Indians (yes, I know it is PIC) are now US citizens (1927) and they are a favored class at the EOCC. During the 19th century the Indian policy was very dependent on who was in office. Some presidents treated the Indians like independent people and nations. The next president thought of them as varmints and parasites. That is why so many treaties were broken. You can' t have a treaty with someone who doesn't vote or have a country. Then there were the officers in charge of the military at all levels. There were good officers who tried to understand the Indians and help them. Then there others who thought of them as sub human. It was a terrible time in our nations history though not unique in the history of the world.

Answer 3

If you are refering to the HBO movie version that just came out, I enjoyed both that movie and the book. The movie did not focus on white people as the main character...the person above me is wrong. The movie focused on the story's main characters...through the eyes of Sitting Bull and his family/tribe and their struggle to live the traditional way, and the transformation of the Native American being forced into the white settler culture through the eyes of Charles Eastman (I don't know how spell his Native American name sorry). All the Native Americans in the movie were protrayed by true Native Americans. I felt the movie followed the book well, but of course since I had read the book first I am very attached to the book, and had already imagined the way things happend in my own mind. Both are great though!

Answer 4

A common saying back in our history was "The only good Indian is a dead Indian".

The native people of our country were not considered human. As more and more Europeans came here, more and more Indian tribes were FORCED to move westward. In 1830, then-President Andrew Jackson ordered that "there shall be no indians living east of the Mississippi". The government gave the indians a choice - move or we will move you. Some tribes signed treaties giving up their homelands for lands in the west in what is now Oklahoma. They moved with their families. Many more said NO. They had lived on their ancestral homelands for thousands of years and didn't want to go.

So - the government rounded up the Cherokee, Creeks, Choctaw and others and force-marched them - in winter - and made them go to the Indian Territory. Over 3000 women, children, old people and others died on the walk.

This country has a huge blackmark on it's history due to the treatment of the native population.

The last indian wars were fought in what is now the Dakotas, Wyoming and those areas. These plains indians were the last holdouts and fought bravely to hold on to their homelands and hunting grounds. But more and more people came to their lands, built farms and settled. Then gold was discovered in the Black Hills and that started a huge rush of people from all over the world - all heading for the indian homes. These invaders killed, raped, burned everything. They almost completely wiped out the buffalo - which was the main food source for the plains tribes. The massacre at Wounded Knee was just one of the last in a long history of this kind of genocide.

If you want to read a really good book about it, go to the library and check out "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by author Vine DeLoria. This will give you a better sense of that time period than the movie did - even though I enjoyed the film.

The reason the Army and others killed off the indians was because of the land. The United States made more than 370 separate treaties with the native indians and broke every one of them....right up to today.

About those reservations: There were terrible places. No running water, no place to hunt, depending on government handouts. It was a huge failure and still is in many places. Today, those tribes on indian land are holding on to the land for dear life. Somebody is always trying to move them off. Fortunately, today there are Indian lawyers and others who fight for the rights of the natives people in this country.....and, of course, the casino industry has brightened many a tribes finances.

It wasn't just the army either.... In California, it was the Franciscan fathers of the Catholic faith who were responsible for the death of many indians in that area. They enslaved the people, forced them to build the missions and presidios for the military, work the fields, and took their land.

Same in Hawaii - except this was mostly Protestant missionaries who stole those islands.

Answer 5

A man named Kingsley in California wiped out an entire tribe of Indians. He was regarded as a great humanitarian because he told his men to just shoot the children and adults with their rifles (.50 Sharps) and to shoot the babies with their pistols.

He didn't like the way the babies exploded when shot with a rifle.

Treatment of Native Americans has not improved a whole lot since that happened in 1876.

When a Federal judge ordered that Indians be paid money "held in trust" for oil and other mineral leases the Feds. have given out, he was fired (2006). The money is mostly "missing" somehow and the current administration says it is "unreasonable" to demand that it be accounted for much less given to the people it belongs to.

Now the babies die of malnutrition and lack of health care. Those few tribes that have started pulling themselves up with casino operations are regular targets for bigotry. The alleged governor of California says "They should be made to pay their fair share"... Loss of a hemisphere of the earth, loss of culture and murdered families isn't enough?

Reservations were set up and to a large extent remain concentration camps. The Dawes act (sinfully misrepresented as is a lot of the history around in shown in this butchering of Bury my Heart..) was enacted to allow the taking of 10,000,000 acres of reservation land that had not turned out to be useless. Currently the majority of American Indians do not live on reservations and they pay taxes just like anybody else. The federally mandated quantum requirements for tribal membership (even if the tribes may set percentage requirements) is a continuing form of genocide designed to destroy Native culture.

One country with a somewhat more enlightened approach to dealing with the people they stole the land from is New Zealand.

The hemorrhoid above (maznoid?) really needs to get his head out in the fresh air and read some history.

Answer 6

Yes it is a true story. Sad. back then the Indians were not thought of as humans but animals that got in the way of progress. So many were killed during those years. Read more books about it.A history that needs to be kept alive and never repeated.

Answer 7

In the infamous words of Colonel Chivington of the Sand Creek Massacre fame "nits make lice." I'm sure the 7th cav were more than willing to seek retribution for the massacre of their force under Custer 20 years earlier....

Answer 8

This has been going on since the dawn of man is not unique to this continent and still goes on now in other countries. Indeed between tribes "Native Americans" were not all that friendly to each other at the time. Also if you look at our record you might see the US has been one of the first to change the error of their ways in many Human rights and civil issues. If we had gone about things as earlier "civilizations" have done in the past. There might not be any Native Americans left to talk about.

Answer 9

Those were the orders of a demented officer sort of like Lt. Calley in Vietnam.His idea was "nits breed lice so lets kill all of them."

Answer 10

It's called ethnic cleansing these days but then it was a way of making space in the land of the free for immigrants.
Hitler used similar methods in Europe but he was not so successful.