When Dee Brown was a child growing up in the 1920s around the oilfields of Louisiana and Arkansas, many of his playmates were Native American children, whose fathers, like Brown’s, drifted over from Oklahoma to work in the oilfields.
One night, Brown was at a lumber-camp theater watching a movie featuring brave pioneers fighting off waves of merciless Indians when another kid, a native American, spoke up. “You know,” he said. “Those aren’t real Indians.”
Brown never forgot that moment.
Brown grew up to be a librarian. In his spare time, he wrote more than a dozen books, mainly western histories, movies, children’s tales and Civil War stories. Although well-crafted, none of his books sold very well.
Brown was in his 60s when he completed a meticulously researched account of the tragic demise of the Western Native American tribes. Based on his previous sales, his publisher printed just 10,000 copies when it was released in 1970.
But there was something powerful at play, and Brown’s history caught fire, resonating with readers who were just beginning to hear of the My Lai Massacre. The book has never been out of print and has sold 5 million copies worldwide.
“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” was a reckoning, a collection of a hundred My Lais that shattered the myth of how the west was won.
The final chapter of the book was devoted to what is now known as The Wounded Knee Massacre. On the late afternoon of Dec. 28, 1890, two troops of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry arrived at a Lakota Sioux encampment at Wounded Knee Creek and did a head count. There were 120 men and 230 women and children. On the following morning, as Cavalry officers were collecting the few guns in the Indians’ possession, a shot rang out and all hell was visited upon the Indians. From a battery of four Hotchkiss repeating rifles (the forerunner of the machine gun) soldiers trained their weapons on the Indians and opened fire.
When the shooting had ended, 300 Indians, most of them women, children and old people, had been slaughtered as they huddled defenseless in the ravine below.
The Army created a myth to cover up the slaughter, referring to the engagement as the “Battle of Wounded Knee.” To support the farce and cover up the cold-blooded murder, 19 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest honor in the American military.
I ran across a news item this weekend that sent me to my book collection to locate my copy of their “Wounded Knee.”
Pete Hegseth, the Fox TV buffoon turned bumbling Secretary of War (Trump renamed the Department of Defense as The Department of War because he thinks it makes him feel like a tough guy instead of the big-mouth bully he actually is) announced that the medals of those 19 soldiers would not be rescinded.
“We’re making it clear that (the soldiers) deserve those medals,” Hegseth said in the video, before adding, “Their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate.”
I read again the aching account of what actually happened at Wounded Knee, a crime that is now considered the end of the Army’s genocide of native Americans.
Might as well award a posthumous Medal of Honor to Lt. William Calley, the officer who ordered the slaughter of more than 300 women, children and elderly people at the village of My Lai in 1968.
Hegseth can go to hell, as far as I’m concerned, but nothing this administration does surprises me much.
Hegseth’s obscene pronouncement is not a one-off. It is just the latest example affirming that the White Nationalist era of the Trump Administration is in full bloom.
Civil Rights advancements of the 1950s and 1960s are being rolled back steadily. Republican gerrymandering dilutes Black and Hispanic voting strength. Affirmative action and Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs are demonized, then destroyed. U.S. military bases are reverting to names honoring Confederate officers. School segregation, under the guise of “Parental Freedom” and “School Choice,” is growing all across the country.
So, no, it should not surprise anyone that this administration makes heroes of the murderers at Wounded Knee.
Our nation is quickly reverting to its openly racist past.
And half or more of Americans, including a lot of people reading this column, are just fine with that.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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