Ode to the American Indian

While this is not a legend/story, I believe it has a need to be told on this first day of the year 2010. These are the forgotten and ignored owners of this land, “Turtle Island”, who have suffered from the conquest of their homelands.

Winter Owl

You won’t find many monuments to these, the unquiet dead. But their
bones and blood make up the soil where your shopping centers and
highways now stand.

Where is their memorial?
It is in the hearts of those who remember.

Today I remember:
The thousands of Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Iroquois, Ojibway,
Pottawatami, Seminole, Sioux & Chickasaw (and many others) who suffered
untold agony during the forced removal from their homelands in the
1830s.

Innocent men, women and little children perished in concentration camps
or froze and starved to death on the Trail Where They Cried.

The 90 women and children who died in the Bear River Massacre in
southeastern Idaho.

The 200 Cheyenne men, women and children who were slain at Sand Creek
in eastern Colorado by the US Cavalry led by Col. John Chivington, a
Methodist minister who ordered his men to “Kill and scalp all, big and
little; nits make lice.”

The 200 murdered Blackfeet women and children who died at Maries River
in northern Montana and the other 140 People who were left to freeze to
death in the January cold.

The 103 Cheyenne women and children who were butchered on the Washita
River in western Oklahoma.

The 200 to 300 Sioux who were slaughtered under a flag of truce at
Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

The 500 Sauk and Fox Indians led by
Black Hawk who were massacred by
militia forces while trying to negotiate
a surrender.

The Yuki’s and other tribes of Indians in
California whose populations declined from
11,000 to less than 1000 because white men wanted the land to search
for gold.
Organized Indian hunts were held on
Sundays and our People were killed
for sport.

The little children who were kidnapped
from their homes and forced to attend
BIA schools. Many of them died alone and
lie in unmarked graves.

From the small pox, measles, typhoid,
cholera, diphtheria, TB, and VD
epidemics brought to us by the white
invaders to the continued genocide
still being waged against us, we know about
terrorism.

And I remember.

The End…. Or is it the End of The Suffering
of the Many Nations………

Author Unknown