Sermons

Have you ever taken an American History class that identified Generals Sherman, Miles and Custer as war criminals. Did you ever hear the story of Colonel Chivington massacring the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek- 105 women and children, 28 men killed and mostly scalped, by American soldiers.
The “final solution” over here would combine assimilation and genocide. Bit by bit lands were nibbled away by misleading treaties that were mostly ignored. The goal was eradication of the culture of an entire race of people- removal of their free-flowing way of life as hunters and gatherers and isolation on fixed agriculture-based reservations far from their familiar homeland, climate, or lifestyle. They were to become farmers on comparatively shabby farmland. They became intentionally economically dependent on the government for such handouts as would keep them from actually starving or freezing to death. Greed and corruption in the old Indian Affairs bureau made it worse.
Standing Bear of the Poncas, was not fooled by the intent of the reservation system:
“When people want to slaughter cattle, they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us. . . . My children have been exterminated.” [Brown, 351]

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