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Frontier Planters Petition Governor Berkeley to Commission Volunteers Against the Indians

spring 1676

The humble petition of the poore distressed subjects in the upper parts of James River in verginia humbly Complain that the Indians hath already most barbarously and Inhumanly taken and murdered severall of our bretheren and put them to most cruell torture by burning of them alive and by cruell torturing of them which makes our harts Ready to bleed to heare and wee the poore subjects are in dayly dandger of loosing our lives by the heathen in soe much that we are all afraid of going about our demesticall affaires. Wherefore we Most Humbly request that your gracious Honor would be pleased to grant us a Committion and to make choice of Commitioned Officers to lead this party now redy to takes armes in defence of our lives and estates…

The humble petition of the poore distressed subjects in the upper parts of James River in verginia humbly Complain that the Indians hath already most barbarously and Inhumanly taken and murdered severall of our bretheren and put them to most cruell torture by burning of them alive and by cruell torturing of them which makes our harts Ready to bleed to heare

The humble petition of the poore distressed subjects in the upper parts of James River in verginia humbly Complain that the Indians hath already most barbarously and Inhumanly taken and murdered severall of our bretheren and put them to most cruell torture by burning of them alive and by cruell torturing of them which makes our harts Ready to bleed to heare

“The poor residents of the upper parts of the James River in Virginia are submitting this petition. The Indians have been murdering our neighbors and torturing others by burning them alive.”

and wee the poore subjects are in dayly dandger of loosing our lives by the heathen in soe much that we are all afraid of going about our demesticall affaires. Wherefore we Most Humbly request that your gracious Honor would be pleased to grant us a Committion and to make choice of Commitioned Officers to lead this party now redy to takes armes in defence of our lives and estates…

and wee the poore subjects are in dayly dandger of loosing our lives by the heathen in soe much that we are all afraid of going about our demesticall affaires. Wherefore we Most Humbly request that your gracious Honor would be pleased to grant us a Committion and to make choice of Commitioned Officers to lead this party now redy to takes armes in defence of our lives and estates…

“We are in daily danger of losing our lives to the Indians. Governor, please commission officers to fight the Indians so that we can protect our lives and our land.”

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Fort Sumner, New Mexico,February 26th, 1864.

My dear Wife:

It is now so long since I have heard from you, that I begin to think that you have quit writing. It is equally a long time since I have written to you, but I have travelled many a weary mile and passed many a cold, cheerless night, since I wrote you last.

I wrote to you last from Military post of Los Pinos, New Mexico,-- well, on the 7th of the present month I left that post, with 44 men of my company, having in charge 243 Navajo Indians, 81 of whom were men, the balance were women and children; the Indians comprised all ages, from the old man or woman of a hundred years, to the sucking babe; some of them were taken prisoners during the late expedition of Col. Kit Carson, against that nation; their fathers or brothers having been killed in battle; others of them came into the Forts Wingate and Canby and gave themselves up as prisoners. I had 16 wagons each drawn by 8 mules, which required about 35 Mexican teamsters; so you see that with soldiers, Indians, Mexicans, etc., etc., I had quite a command, but it required a constant vigilance on my part to prevent them from rising, if they wished so to do--and murdering us; also to prevent them from escaping. I was ordered to bring them to this post, (Fort Sumner); it is situated on the Rio Pecos, and is about due east from Fort Craig, -- you will find it readily on a large map.

As I said before, I left Los Pinos, which is a beautiful place, with my "outfit" and arrived here on the 22nd, being on the road 15 days, long weary days, most of time in the mountains, three ranges of which I crossed over--the total distance in that time was 242 miles. While in the mountains we experienced very cold weather and some of the time having no water, but what we obtained by melting snow, and part of the time, we had no wood either to keep us warm, or melt our snow,-- everything must have an end; so we finally arrived here safely. I had fed the last of the Indian provisions the day before, and my company were quite out of provisions. Four of the Indians died and were buried on the road, so I got here with 239 of the Red Skins, they causing me very little trouble other than feeding such a large number every day,

My dear wife, this is a terrible place; it is intended to make it the final home of all the Indians in this country; there are about fifteen hundred here now,-- Navajos and Apaches, and as many more are expected here during the next three months; there are five small companies, including mine, of soldiers here, and it requires our constant attention to took out for them, As fast as any Indians are taken in any part of the country, they are sent here. The Rio Pecos is a little stream winding through an immense plain, and the water is terrible, and it is all that can be had within 50 miles; it is full of alkali and operates on a person like castor oil,-- take the water, heat it a little, and the more you wash yourself with common soap, the dirtier you will get. We are one and all looking very anxiously for the 16th of August, when we will be allowed to go to our homes. Captain Cremony is here with his company; he is in very good health.

The mail came in today, but brought no letters from you. I will write to you by the next mail. Give my respects to all. My warmest love to yourself and babies, and believe me to be ever

Your loving husband,George.

Direct your letters to Lieut. Geo. H, Pettis, Company "K", 1st California Infantry, Fort Sumner

"Children: This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old today. I was born at Kings Iron Works in Sulllivan County, Tennessee, December the 11th, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing in Beaver Creek and roaming through the forest hunting the deer and the wild boar and the timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary wilderness with no companions but my rifle, hunting knife, and a small hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness wanderings. The removal of Cherokee Indians from their lifelong homes in the year of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private soldier in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians and able to fluently speak their language, I was sent as interpreter into the Smoky Mountain Country in May, 1838, and witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the History of American Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west.

One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted.

In another home was a frail mother, apparently a widow and three small children, one just a baby. When told that she must go, the mother gathered the children at her feet, prayed a humble prayer in her native tongue, patted the old family dog on the head, told the faithful creature good-by, with a baby strapped on her back and leading a child with each hand started on her exile. But the task was too great for that frail mother. A stroke of heart failure relieved her sufferings. She sunk and died with her baby on her back, and her other two children clinging to her hands.

Chief Junaluska who had saved President Jackson’s life at the battle of Horse Shoe witnessed this scene, the tears gushing down his cheeks and lifting his cap he turned his face toward the heavens and said, "Oh my God, if I had known at the battle of the Horse Shoe what I know now, American history would have been differently written."

At this time, 1890, we are too near the removal of the Cherokees for our young people to fully understand the enormity of the crime that was committed against a helpless race. Truth is, the facts are being concealed from the young people of today. School children of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point to satisfy the white man’s greed.

Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokees who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the matter.

I can truthfully say that I did my best for them when they certainly did need a friend. Twenty-five years after the removal I still lived in their memory as "the soldier that was good to us".

However, murder is murder whether committed by the villain skulking in the dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music.

Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer of 1838. Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile. I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory.

Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth weigh our actions and reward us according to our work.

Children - Thus ends my promised birthday story. This December the 11th 1890."

Telegram from General Nelson Miles in Rapid City to General John Schofield in Washington, D.C. on December 19, 1890:

"The difficult Indian problem cannot be solved permanently at this end of the line. It requires the fulfillment of Congress of the treaty obligations that the Indians were entreated and coerced into signing. They signed away a valuable portion of their reservation, and it is now occupied by white people, for which they have received nothing."

"They understood that ample provision would be made for their support; instead, their supplies have been reduced, and much of the time they have been living on half and two-thirds rations. Their crops, as well as the crops of the white people, for two years have been almost total failures."

"The dissatisfaction is wide spread, especially among the Sioux, while the Cheyennes have been on the verge of starvation, and were forced to commit depredations to sustain life. These facts are beyond question, and the evidence is positive and sustained by thousands of witnesses."

The captured Indians had been ordered to give up their arms, but Big Foot replied that his people had no arms. Forsyth said to me, 'Tell Big Foot he says the Indians have no arms, yet yesterday they were well armed when they surrendered. He is deceiving me. Tell him he need have no fear in giving up his arms, as I wish to treat him kindly.' Big Foot replied, 'They have no guns, except such as you have found.' Forsyth declared, 'You are lying to me in return for my kindness.'

During this time a medicine man, gaudily dressed and fantastically painted, executed the maneuvers of the ghost dance, raising and throwing dust into the air. He exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' as he did so, meaning he was about to do something terrible, and said, 'I have lived long enough,' meaning he would fight until he died. Turning to the young warriors who were squatted together, he said 'Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot penetrate us. The prairie is large, and their bullets will fly over the prairies and will not come toward us. If they do come toward us, they will float away like dust in the air.' I turned to Major Whitside and said, 'That man is making mischief,' and repeated what he had said. Whitside replied, 'Go direct to Colonel Forsyth and tell him about it,' which I did.

Black Elk – Account of the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890) There was much shooting down yonder, and there were many cries, and we could see calvarymen scattered over the hills ahead of us. Calvarymen were riding along the gulch and shooting into it, where the women and children were running away and trying to hide in the gullies and the stunted pines. …

We followed down along the dry gulch, and what we saw was terrible. Dead and wounded women and children were scattered along there and where they had been trying to run away. The soldiers had followed along the gulch, as they ran, and murdered them in there. Sometimes they were in heaps along the gulch, as they ran, and murdered them in there. Sometimes they were in heaps because they had huddled together, and some were scattered all along. Sometimes bunches of them had been killed and torn to pieces where the wagon guns hit them. I saw a little baby trying to suck its mother, but she was bloody and dead. …

When I saw this I wished that I had died too, but I was not sorry for the women and children. It was better for them to be happy in the other world, and I wanted to be there too. But before I went there I wanted to have revenge. I thought there might be a day, and we should have revenge.

President Benjamin Harrison – Report on the Wounded Knee Massacre and the Decrease in Indian Land Acreage (1891) The outbreak among the Sioux which occurred in December last is as to its causes and incidents full reported upon by the War Department and the Department of the Interior. … That these Indians had some just complaints … is probably true; but the Sioux tribes are naturally warlike and turbulent, and their warriors were excited by their medicine men and chiefs, who preached the coming of an Indian messiah who was to give them power to destroy their enemies. …

In view of the alarm that prevailed among the white settlers near the reservation and of the fatal consequences that would have resulted from an Indian incursion, I placed at the disposal of General Miles, commanding the Division of the Missouri, all such forces as we thought by him to be required. He is entitled to the credit of having given thorough protection to the settlers and of bringing the hostiles into subjection with the least possible loss of life. …

Since March 4, 1889, about 23,000,000 acres have been separated from Indian reservations and added to the public domain for the use of those who desire to secure free homes under our beneficent laws.

GRESHAM, JOHN C. Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 7th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Wounded Knee Creek, S. Dak., 29 December 1890. Entered service at: Lancaster Courthouse, Va. Birth: Virginia. Date of issue: 26 March 1895. Citation: Voluntarily led a party into a ravine to dislodge Sioux Indians concealed therein. He was wounded during this action.

SULLIVAN, THOMAS. Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 7th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Wounded Knee Creek, S. Dak., 29 December 1890. Entered service at: Newark, N.J. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 17 December 1891. Citation: Conspicuous bravery in action against Indians concealed in a ravine.

"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man…

It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. . .

As we have taken into our national family seven millions of Negroes, and as we receive foreigners at the rate of more than five hundred thousand a year, and assimilate them, it would seem that the time may have arrived when we can very properly make at least the attempt to assimilate our two hundred and fifty thousand Indians…

The school at Carlisle is an attempt on the part of the government to do this. Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe and loyalty to the nation at large. It has preached against colonizing Indians, and in favor of individualizing them...”

Captain Richard H. Pratt, 1892

Texas has been absorbed into the Union as the inevitable fulfillment of the general law which is rolling our population westward.... It was disintegrated from Mexico in the natural course of events, by a process perfectly legitimate on its own part, blameless on ours....

California will, probably next fall away from Mexico... The Anglo-Saxon foot is already on its borders....

All this without agency of our government, without responsibility of our people--in the natural flow of events, the spontaneous working of principles....

Democratic Review, 1845

Well my name is Mick Ryan, and I'm lyin’ here still In a lonely spot near where I was killed By a red man defending his native land In the place that they called Little Big Horn

And I swear I did not see the irony When I rode with the Seventh Cavalry I thought that we fought for the land of the free When we rode from Fort Lincoln that morning

And the band they played that Garryowen Brass was shining, flags a flowin’ I swear if I had only known I'd have wished that I'd died back at Vicksburg

For my brother and me, we had barely escaped From the hell that was Ireland in ’48Two angry young lads who had learned how to hate But we loved the idea of America

And we cursed our cousins who fought and bled In their bloody coats of bloody red The sun never sets on the bloody dead Of those who have chosen an empire

But we'd find a better life somehow In the land where no man has to bow It seemed right then and it seems right now That Paddy, he died for the Union

Ah, but Michael he somehow got turned around He had stolen the dream that he thought he'd found Now I never will see that holy ground For I turned into something I hated

And I'm haunted by that Garryowen Drums a beating, bugles blowin' I swear if I had only known I'd lie with my brother in Vicksburg

And the band they played that Garryowen Brass was shining, flags a-flowin' I swear if I had only knownI'd lie with my brother at Vicksburg