Post by blackcrowheart on Dec 28, 2005 21:42:21 GMT -5
A solemn ride to realize a dream
A group of American Indians is taking part in a weekend horseback
ride to honor the memory of 38 Indians hanged in Mankato in 1862. The
horseback trek came to one of the riders, Jim Miller of South Dakota,
in a dream.
Warriorwoman watches the riders and horses as they begin their 3-day
ride to Mankato.
Randy Furst, Star Tribune
Last update: December 23, 2005 at 9:37 PM
www.startribune.com/stories/462/5800336.html
They rode east along the highway into the morning sun Friday, 11
American Indians on horseback, each carrying an eagle feather, led by
a man from Porcupine, S.D., who had dreamt last March that this day
would come.
They rode to remember their ancestors. Thirty-eight of them were
hanged in Mankato on Dec. 26, 1862, in what has been called the
largest mass execution in American history.
More Indians on horseback are expected to join the procession during
the weekend ride. It will end Monday, when they will enter Mankato
near the site where gallows once stood and conduct a final ceremony.
"I'm a little anxious," said Jim Miller, 57, holding a sacred staff
covered with buffalo fur. He was sitting atop the lead horse, which
was pawing the snow-covered ground outside the community center on
the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton. "I'm happy -- I'm
fulfilling my dream," he added.
Miller, an Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South
Dakota, said he had had a dream where Indian horse riders descended
on Mankato; he told Alex White Plume, vice chairman and acting
president of the tribe, about it. White Plume told Weldon Wolfchild,
chair of the Lower Sioux Community, and they agreed to organize the
ride.
On Thursday night, about 150 Indians gathered at the community center
to share a meal and hold a ceremony to send off the riders. Sitting
in the crowd, 73-year-old Roland Columbus talked about the song his
grandfather, Moses Hisday, wrote, memorializing the 38 executed
Indians who were hanged after they rose up in a confrontation with
white settlers.
Hisday taught Columbus the song, written in the Sioux language, in
the late 1930s and told him to sing it wherever he could, to remind
people what happened.
"From the clouds on high, they're looking down," the song
begins. "The Indians that you hung are looking down. All of those
that have gone before, they are looking down." When they arrive in
heaven, the song concludes, Indians will be standing in the front
ranks.
Columbus' great-great grandfather was Little Crow, the Sioux leader
killed by settlers in 1863.
Wolfchild, 59, said that the riders planned to camp out each night
before riding to the hanging site Monday. According to Indian
accounts, some Indians seized after the revolt was suppressed were
taken on oxcarts, bound hand and foot, from Morton to Mankato in 1862.
Along the way, angry settlers assaulted them, and some, says
Wolfchild, were killed. This weekend's horse ride retraces the trip,
though the exact route is unknown, he said.
Wolfchild says that his great-great-grandfather, Chief Medicine
Bottle, was one of two Indians hanged at Fort Snelling rather than in
Mankato. Kenneth Carley, who wrote the book, "The Sioux Uprising of
1862," said Medicine Bottle was "sentenced to death on rather flimsy
evidence."
Some accounts blame the revolt on the Indians who killed women and
children.
But Wolfchild, a Vietnam War veteran, says he understands the chaos
of war. He blames the revolt on failed crops for two consecutive
years and the failure of the U.S. government to ship gold to the
Indians, who had been promised it in return for land they ceded after
an 1851 treaty. There was no money to buy food, the Indians were
starving, and some of the younger Indians began the war, Wolfchild
said.
Steve Crooks, 62, took from an envelope the manuscript of a 1937
interview with his grandfather, George Crooks, who was 7 in 1862.
"When the subject of the 1862 massacre comes up, why not take time to
think and consider both sides of the story before you condemn the
Indians for trying to protect their own," George Crooks said. "Try to
remember that the white people took everything the Indian had to live
for away from him."
Riding horseback Friday was 30-year-old Wiwanglilaci Win Camp, whose
name means Sun Dance Woman. "I want my son to know his ways and to
know where he comes from, to know we're a proud people, that our land
is sacred," she said.
She was wearing a jacket with the words, "Indian" on the front, "d**n
proud of it" on the back.
Her son's name, Ta Tanka Ska Ska, means "the motion of buffalo." The
7-year-old is the youngest rider this weekend. Friday morning he was
clamoring for his mother to put him on the horse.
A group of American Indians is taking part in a weekend horseback
ride to honor the memory of 38 Indians hanged in Mankato in 1862. The
horseback trek came to one of the riders, Jim Miller of South Dakota,
in a dream.
Warriorwoman watches the riders and horses as they begin their 3-day
ride to Mankato.
Randy Furst, Star Tribune
Last update: December 23, 2005 at 9:37 PM
www.startribune.com/stories/462/5800336.html
They rode east along the highway into the morning sun Friday, 11
American Indians on horseback, each carrying an eagle feather, led by
a man from Porcupine, S.D., who had dreamt last March that this day
would come.
They rode to remember their ancestors. Thirty-eight of them were
hanged in Mankato on Dec. 26, 1862, in what has been called the
largest mass execution in American history.
More Indians on horseback are expected to join the procession during
the weekend ride. It will end Monday, when they will enter Mankato
near the site where gallows once stood and conduct a final ceremony.
"I'm a little anxious," said Jim Miller, 57, holding a sacred staff
covered with buffalo fur. He was sitting atop the lead horse, which
was pawing the snow-covered ground outside the community center on
the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton. "I'm happy -- I'm
fulfilling my dream," he added.
Miller, an Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South
Dakota, said he had had a dream where Indian horse riders descended
on Mankato; he told Alex White Plume, vice chairman and acting
president of the tribe, about it. White Plume told Weldon Wolfchild,
chair of the Lower Sioux Community, and they agreed to organize the
ride.
On Thursday night, about 150 Indians gathered at the community center
to share a meal and hold a ceremony to send off the riders. Sitting
in the crowd, 73-year-old Roland Columbus talked about the song his
grandfather, Moses Hisday, wrote, memorializing the 38 executed
Indians who were hanged after they rose up in a confrontation with
white settlers.
Hisday taught Columbus the song, written in the Sioux language, in
the late 1930s and told him to sing it wherever he could, to remind
people what happened.
"From the clouds on high, they're looking down," the song
begins. "The Indians that you hung are looking down. All of those
that have gone before, they are looking down." When they arrive in
heaven, the song concludes, Indians will be standing in the front
ranks.
Columbus' great-great grandfather was Little Crow, the Sioux leader
killed by settlers in 1863.
Wolfchild, 59, said that the riders planned to camp out each night
before riding to the hanging site Monday. According to Indian
accounts, some Indians seized after the revolt was suppressed were
taken on oxcarts, bound hand and foot, from Morton to Mankato in 1862.
Along the way, angry settlers assaulted them, and some, says
Wolfchild, were killed. This weekend's horse ride retraces the trip,
though the exact route is unknown, he said.
Wolfchild says that his great-great-grandfather, Chief Medicine
Bottle, was one of two Indians hanged at Fort Snelling rather than in
Mankato. Kenneth Carley, who wrote the book, "The Sioux Uprising of
1862," said Medicine Bottle was "sentenced to death on rather flimsy
evidence."
Some accounts blame the revolt on the Indians who killed women and
children.
But Wolfchild, a Vietnam War veteran, says he understands the chaos
of war. He blames the revolt on failed crops for two consecutive
years and the failure of the U.S. government to ship gold to the
Indians, who had been promised it in return for land they ceded after
an 1851 treaty. There was no money to buy food, the Indians were
starving, and some of the younger Indians began the war, Wolfchild
said.
Steve Crooks, 62, took from an envelope the manuscript of a 1937
interview with his grandfather, George Crooks, who was 7 in 1862.
"When the subject of the 1862 massacre comes up, why not take time to
think and consider both sides of the story before you condemn the
Indians for trying to protect their own," George Crooks said. "Try to
remember that the white people took everything the Indian had to live
for away from him."
Riding horseback Friday was 30-year-old Wiwanglilaci Win Camp, whose
name means Sun Dance Woman. "I want my son to know his ways and to
know where he comes from, to know we're a proud people, that our land
is sacred," she said.
She was wearing a jacket with the words, "Indian" on the front, "d**n
proud of it" on the back.
Her son's name, Ta Tanka Ska Ska, means "the motion of buffalo." The
7-year-old is the youngest rider this weekend. Friday morning he was
clamoring for his mother to put him on the horse.