Genocide in Texas
by Brenda Norrell
REDLAND, Texas - It is a history that the United States buried, along with the Indian women and children. But there is an invoice for the smallpox blankets given to Indians to eradicate them and a printed record of the scalp laws with payments of 10 pounds of silver for the scalp of an Indian child.
Steve Melendez, Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston, said the genocide of American Indians is a fact of history that must be recorded accurately in history so Indian nations can heal and racism in America can be countered.
Melendez said the invaders of this continent carried out systematic genocide to eradicate Indians and it continues today, with the recent theft of Western Shoshone land in Nevada by the United States government.
Melendez spoke on genocide at the commemoration of the massacre at Neches, near Tyler in northeast Texas, where the Texas militia murdered 800 Indian men, women, children and elderly on July 16, 1839.
On display was the invoice documenting the smallpox that was distributed to Delaware Indians by way of blankets and handkerchiefs in 1763.
“I think it is ironic that we stand here today at the site of a destroyed Delaware village. For it was the Delaware Indians in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who were given the smallpox blankets back in 1763. Many people don’t believe that the Indians were given smallpox blankets but we have found the invoice from Fort Pitt.”
The invoice states: “To sundries got to replace in kind those which were taken from the people in the hospital to convey the smallpox to the indians. Viz: 2 Blankets; 1 silk hankerchef and 1 linnen.”
Speaking to several hundred people, including Cherokee and other tribes, Melendez said, “Was there genocide in America?
“The killing here continued in the surrounding area until July 24. A militia force was stationed to the north to cut the Indians off if they fled north but they never saw battle. They were not needed.”
The people were slaughtered. Texas Cherokee and 13 associated bands led by Chief Bowles and Chief Big Mush were among 800 men, women, children and elderly killed on July 16, 1839. The bands included Shawnee, Alabama, Delaware, Kickapoo, Quapaw, Choctaw, Biloxi, Ioni, Coushatta, Mataquo and Caddo of the Neches.
“At some point in history, America has to acknowledge the wrongs that were done and call them what they were - Genocide”, Melendez said.
“At some point in history, America has to acknowledge that the way they confiscated Native lands was not right. At some point in history, America has to call things like what happened here - they have to call it extermination, which it was.”
“On July the 7th, our President George W. Bush signed into law bill H.R. 884 which arbitrarily confiscated 24 million acres of Western Shoshone Land.”
Melendez pointed out that in its final report to Congress, the Indian Claims Commission, which was the vehicle used to value the Western Shoshone land, describes itself as a commission and not a judicial court. This commission arbitrarily set the price of Western Shoshone lands at 15 cents an acre.
“Fifteen cents an acre! We had the All Star Game in Houston last Tuesday and hot dogs were selling for five dollars apiece. At this kind of an exchange rate, the Western Shoshone would have to sell 33 acres of land just to buy a hot dog. History seems to keep repeating itself over and over again”, Melendez said.
“Any memorial that is erected here should not be called the Battle of the Neches. We should honor the dead with the truth, and call it what it was - Genocide in the Americas.”
During the 11th annual Neches memorial ceremony, tribes gathered to pray at a monument erected in memory of Cherokee Chief Bowles.
Danny Hair, chairman of the North American Indian Cultural Association of Texas, told those gathered that the spirits of the ancestors remain strong here. The American Indian Cultural Society hosted the ceremony, which included Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith and Cherokee National Youth Choir from Tahlequah, Okla.
For more information, please contact indmuseum@yahoo.com and
American Indian Genocide Museum http://www.aigenom.com
Texas appropriate location for American Indian Genocide Museum (Part two)
by Brenda Norrell
HOUSTON - There was no state that surpassed Texas in the genocide of American Indians. Now, it is here in Texas that the American Indian Genocide Museum is documenting the American holocaust.
“They were run out of Texas”, said Steve Melendez, Pyramid Lake Paiute of Nevada, now living in Texas and president of the museum. “We are really sitting on a powder keg here in Texas.”
Melendez said the museum is retelling Indian history and hopes it will lead authors to rewrite textbooks without bias. “It seems like the Indian side of the story has never been told. They would rather live in this sanitized view of history.”
The payment for Indian scalps, including the scalps of Indian children, was written in the laws of Massachusetts. “The Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay”, Vol. I, states the rate for Indian scalps began at 50 pounds. The price for the scalp of Indian children under 10 was 10 pounds of silver.
The scalp law read, “That there shall be paid out of the publick treasury of this province unto any party or parties that shall voluntarily go forth at their own charge, by commission as aforesaid, in the discovery and pursuit of the said Indian enemy and rebels, for every man or woman of the said enemy that shall be by them slain, the sum of fifty pounds; and for every child of the said enemy under the age of ten years that shall be by them slain, the sum of ten pounds ...”
When the slaughter subsided in the United States, scalp bounty hunters went to Mexico and slaughtered entire villages. They would leave arrows at the sites to make it look like Indians carried out the carnage.
“This is not revisionist history, this will really shock people”, Melendez said.
Melendez has also discovered an invoice for the blankets and handkerchiefs used by the British to convey small pox to Delaware Indians. It is from Fort Pitt, in modern-day Pittsburg.
Pointing out that such invoices have long been concealed, Melendez said, “They don’t want this information to get out.”
But it was not only the Delaware Indians who received small pox blankets. In Texas, a military colonel distributed small pox to imprisoned Indians and then released them so that they would return to their tribes and infect their people. This account comes from Col. James Neill in “Recollections of Early Texas, Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins”.
“On this raid, Colonel Neill adopted a singular, if not barbarous, method of sending destruction upon the Indians. Having procured some smallpox virus, he vaccinated one of the captive warriors, and then released him to carry the infection into his tribe! Nothing was ever heard as to the success or failure of this project.”
Some presidents of the United States also voiced racism and determination to eliminate American Indians. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was among those who felt land should be taken from the “savages”.
Roosevelt is quoted speaking of the red, black and yellow Aboriginal landowners in “The Winning of the West, Vol. 4, The Indian Wars”.
Roosevelt said, “The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, - in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles for territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison. Looked at from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; But it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.”
Melendez points out that the bounty for Indian scalps and distribution of small pox virus was accompanied by the movement to rid the Plains of buffalo and replace them with cattle, as described in the “Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman”.
“They naturally looked for new homes to the great West, to the new Territories and States as far as the Pacific coast, and we realize today that the vigorous men who control Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, Montana, Colorado, etc., etc., were soldiers of the civil war. These men flocked to the plains, and were rather stimulated than retarded by the danger of an Indian war. This was another potent agency in producing the result we enjoy to-day, in having in so short a time replaced the wild buffaloes by more numerous herds of tame cattle, and by; substituting for the useless Indians the intelligent owners of productive farms and cattle-ranches.”
In Texas, only three federally-recognized tribes remain, the Alabama Coushatta Tribe on the eastern border, the Ysleta del Sur (Tigua) on the southwestern border and the Kickapoo in Eagle Pass, Tex.
In the 1700s, President of the Republic of Texas Mirabeau Lamar pressed for the extermination of Indians, including the massacre of 800 Cherokee and related bands at Neches 165 years ago.
Melendez said now Texas is considering constructing a monument in Lamar’s memory.
“It is like putting up a statue of Hitler”, Melendez said.
These are facts that the American Indian Genocide Museum hopes will usher in a new era of healing for Indian people and counter racism in America. The museum board, now searching for a building to house their data as a permanent museum, has a vision to defeat prejudice and discrimination through education.
The American Indian Genocide Museum is a memorial to the victims of ethnic cleansing. Along with countering racism, the museum is exposing prejudice generated toward Native peoples through biased reporting of history. A library and microfilm archive will be available.
The museum states, “The problem with dehumanizing people in order to take their land is, that the next step is to take their lives also. Genocide in the Americas is not an easy subject to address - not for any American.”
Melendez, pointing out that he is father and grandfather, said, “I want better for my kids and grandkids.”
For more information, please contact indmuseum@yahoo.com and
American Indian Genocide Museum http://www.aigenom.com
Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com
other links:
http://www.brendanorrell.blogspot.com
Brenda Norrell is a staff writer for Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com
and a Contributing Editor for the U.N. OBSERVER & International Report.
Photo source: Profiting on American Indian Genocide
http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/19718.php
ADDENDUM: One Correction: Western Shoshone Title is Still Intact – Despite what the U.S. says or the perception it has created to cloud the issues. As the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States found in its 2003 Final Report: in the Western Shoshone case, the Indian Claims Commission is an illegitimate means for the U.S. to use to claim title to these lands. The U.S. must either give the Western Shoshone a full and fair hearing on the issue of title or negotiate a fair resolution.
Perception is only 9/10 of the law if we let it be. You can’t sell a nation by finding a few individuals who are willing to accept a check. If that was the case, maybe a few of us with Irish blood can accept some British monies and sell out the historic struggle of the Irish people?
As Chief Raymond Yowell of the Western Shoshone National Council stated recently: “The federal government cannot unilaterally sell out a Nation’s homeland. We are still here and we will continue to assert our rights by way of our ancestors and under the Treaty of Ruby Valley. Our connection with the land was given to us by the Creator, not the U.S. – the U.S. cannot take what it did not give. We will use our rights to protect the land. Our title is still intact – we repeat: Western Shoshone Land is Not For Sale.”
Please also see:
THE GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS: A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/lillithsrealm/myhomepage/Sterilization/GNA.htm
Ecocide of Native America:
Environmental Destruction Of Indian Lands and People
http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/ecocide.htm
Genocide of American Indians
http://www.runningdeerslonghouse.com/webdoc15.htm
United Native America
http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/main.html
American Indian Movement http://www.aimovement.org
as well as the INDIAN TRUST series in our International Law section and the Western Shoshone “Payoff” Bill series in our Economics section.
by Brenda Norrell
REDLAND, Texas - It is a history that the United States buried, along with the Indian women and children. But there is an invoice for the smallpox blankets given to Indians to eradicate them and a printed record of the scalp laws with payments of 10 pounds of silver for the scalp of an Indian child.
Steve Melendez, Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston, said the genocide of American Indians is a fact of history that must be recorded accurately in history so Indian nations can heal and racism in America can be countered.
Melendez said the invaders of this continent carried out systematic genocide to eradicate Indians and it continues today, with the recent theft of Western Shoshone land in Nevada by the United States government.
Melendez spoke on genocide at the commemoration of the massacre at Neches, near Tyler in northeast Texas, where the Texas militia murdered 800 Indian men, women, children and elderly on July 16, 1839.
On display was the invoice documenting the smallpox that was distributed to Delaware Indians by way of blankets and handkerchiefs in 1763.
“I think it is ironic that we stand here today at the site of a destroyed Delaware village. For it was the Delaware Indians in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who were given the smallpox blankets back in 1763. Many people don’t believe that the Indians were given smallpox blankets but we have found the invoice from Fort Pitt.”
The invoice states: “To sundries got to replace in kind those which were taken from the people in the hospital to convey the smallpox to the indians. Viz: 2 Blankets; 1 silk hankerchef and 1 linnen.”
Speaking to several hundred people, including Cherokee and other tribes, Melendez said, “Was there genocide in America?
“The killing here continued in the surrounding area until July 24. A militia force was stationed to the north to cut the Indians off if they fled north but they never saw battle. They were not needed.”
The people were slaughtered. Texas Cherokee and 13 associated bands led by Chief Bowles and Chief Big Mush were among 800 men, women, children and elderly killed on July 16, 1839. The bands included Shawnee, Alabama, Delaware, Kickapoo, Quapaw, Choctaw, Biloxi, Ioni, Coushatta, Mataquo and Caddo of the Neches.
“At some point in history, America has to acknowledge the wrongs that were done and call them what they were - Genocide”, Melendez said.
“At some point in history, America has to acknowledge that the way they confiscated Native lands was not right. At some point in history, America has to call things like what happened here - they have to call it extermination, which it was.”
“On July the 7th, our President George W. Bush signed into law bill H.R. 884 which arbitrarily confiscated 24 million acres of Western Shoshone Land.”
Melendez pointed out that in its final report to Congress, the Indian Claims Commission, which was the vehicle used to value the Western Shoshone land, describes itself as a commission and not a judicial court. This commission arbitrarily set the price of Western Shoshone lands at 15 cents an acre.
“Fifteen cents an acre! We had the All Star Game in Houston last Tuesday and hot dogs were selling for five dollars apiece. At this kind of an exchange rate, the Western Shoshone would have to sell 33 acres of land just to buy a hot dog. History seems to keep repeating itself over and over again”, Melendez said.
“Any memorial that is erected here should not be called the Battle of the Neches. We should honor the dead with the truth, and call it what it was - Genocide in the Americas.”
During the 11th annual Neches memorial ceremony, tribes gathered to pray at a monument erected in memory of Cherokee Chief Bowles.
Danny Hair, chairman of the North American Indian Cultural Association of Texas, told those gathered that the spirits of the ancestors remain strong here. The American Indian Cultural Society hosted the ceremony, which included Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith and Cherokee National Youth Choir from Tahlequah, Okla.
For more information, please contact indmuseum@yahoo.com and
American Indian Genocide Museum http://www.aigenom.com
Texas appropriate location for American Indian Genocide Museum (Part two)
by Brenda Norrell
HOUSTON - There was no state that surpassed Texas in the genocide of American Indians. Now, it is here in Texas that the American Indian Genocide Museum is documenting the American holocaust.
“They were run out of Texas”, said Steve Melendez, Pyramid Lake Paiute of Nevada, now living in Texas and president of the museum. “We are really sitting on a powder keg here in Texas.”
Melendez said the museum is retelling Indian history and hopes it will lead authors to rewrite textbooks without bias. “It seems like the Indian side of the story has never been told. They would rather live in this sanitized view of history.”
The payment for Indian scalps, including the scalps of Indian children, was written in the laws of Massachusetts. “The Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay”, Vol. I, states the rate for Indian scalps began at 50 pounds. The price for the scalp of Indian children under 10 was 10 pounds of silver.
The scalp law read, “That there shall be paid out of the publick treasury of this province unto any party or parties that shall voluntarily go forth at their own charge, by commission as aforesaid, in the discovery and pursuit of the said Indian enemy and rebels, for every man or woman of the said enemy that shall be by them slain, the sum of fifty pounds; and for every child of the said enemy under the age of ten years that shall be by them slain, the sum of ten pounds ...”
When the slaughter subsided in the United States, scalp bounty hunters went to Mexico and slaughtered entire villages. They would leave arrows at the sites to make it look like Indians carried out the carnage.
“This is not revisionist history, this will really shock people”, Melendez said.
Melendez has also discovered an invoice for the blankets and handkerchiefs used by the British to convey small pox to Delaware Indians. It is from Fort Pitt, in modern-day Pittsburg.
Pointing out that such invoices have long been concealed, Melendez said, “They don’t want this information to get out.”
But it was not only the Delaware Indians who received small pox blankets. In Texas, a military colonel distributed small pox to imprisoned Indians and then released them so that they would return to their tribes and infect their people. This account comes from Col. James Neill in “Recollections of Early Texas, Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins”.
“On this raid, Colonel Neill adopted a singular, if not barbarous, method of sending destruction upon the Indians. Having procured some smallpox virus, he vaccinated one of the captive warriors, and then released him to carry the infection into his tribe! Nothing was ever heard as to the success or failure of this project.”
Some presidents of the United States also voiced racism and determination to eliminate American Indians. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was among those who felt land should be taken from the “savages”.
Roosevelt is quoted speaking of the red, black and yellow Aboriginal landowners in “The Winning of the West, Vol. 4, The Indian Wars”.
Roosevelt said, “The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, - in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles for territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison. Looked at from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; But it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.”
Melendez points out that the bounty for Indian scalps and distribution of small pox virus was accompanied by the movement to rid the Plains of buffalo and replace them with cattle, as described in the “Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman”.
“They naturally looked for new homes to the great West, to the new Territories and States as far as the Pacific coast, and we realize today that the vigorous men who control Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, Montana, Colorado, etc., etc., were soldiers of the civil war. These men flocked to the plains, and were rather stimulated than retarded by the danger of an Indian war. This was another potent agency in producing the result we enjoy to-day, in having in so short a time replaced the wild buffaloes by more numerous herds of tame cattle, and by; substituting for the useless Indians the intelligent owners of productive farms and cattle-ranches.”
In Texas, only three federally-recognized tribes remain, the Alabama Coushatta Tribe on the eastern border, the Ysleta del Sur (Tigua) on the southwestern border and the Kickapoo in Eagle Pass, Tex.
In the 1700s, President of the Republic of Texas Mirabeau Lamar pressed for the extermination of Indians, including the massacre of 800 Cherokee and related bands at Neches 165 years ago.
Melendez said now Texas is considering constructing a monument in Lamar’s memory.
“It is like putting up a statue of Hitler”, Melendez said.
These are facts that the American Indian Genocide Museum hopes will usher in a new era of healing for Indian people and counter racism in America. The museum board, now searching for a building to house their data as a permanent museum, has a vision to defeat prejudice and discrimination through education.
The American Indian Genocide Museum is a memorial to the victims of ethnic cleansing. Along with countering racism, the museum is exposing prejudice generated toward Native peoples through biased reporting of history. A library and microfilm archive will be available.
The museum states, “The problem with dehumanizing people in order to take their land is, that the next step is to take their lives also. Genocide in the Americas is not an easy subject to address - not for any American.”
Melendez, pointing out that he is father and grandfather, said, “I want better for my kids and grandkids.”
For more information, please contact indmuseum@yahoo.com and
American Indian Genocide Museum http://www.aigenom.com
Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com
other links:
http://www.brendanorrell.blogspot.com
Brenda Norrell is a staff writer for Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com
and a Contributing Editor for the U.N. OBSERVER & International Report.
Photo source: Profiting on American Indian Genocide
http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/19718.php
ADDENDUM: One Correction: Western Shoshone Title is Still Intact – Despite what the U.S. says or the perception it has created to cloud the issues. As the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States found in its 2003 Final Report: in the Western Shoshone case, the Indian Claims Commission is an illegitimate means for the U.S. to use to claim title to these lands. The U.S. must either give the Western Shoshone a full and fair hearing on the issue of title or negotiate a fair resolution.
Perception is only 9/10 of the law if we let it be. You can’t sell a nation by finding a few individuals who are willing to accept a check. If that was the case, maybe a few of us with Irish blood can accept some British monies and sell out the historic struggle of the Irish people?
As Chief Raymond Yowell of the Western Shoshone National Council stated recently: “The federal government cannot unilaterally sell out a Nation’s homeland. We are still here and we will continue to assert our rights by way of our ancestors and under the Treaty of Ruby Valley. Our connection with the land was given to us by the Creator, not the U.S. – the U.S. cannot take what it did not give. We will use our rights to protect the land. Our title is still intact – we repeat: Western Shoshone Land is Not For Sale.”
Please also see:
THE GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS: A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/lillithsrealm/myhomepage/Sterilization/GNA.htm
Ecocide of Native America:
Environmental Destruction Of Indian Lands and People
http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/ecocide.htm
Genocide of American Indians
http://www.runningdeerslonghouse.com/webdoc15.htm
United Native America
http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/main.html
American Indian Movement http://www.aimovement.org
as well as the INDIAN TRUST series in our International Law section and the Western Shoshone “Payoff” Bill series in our Economics section.