William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes
Whites looking for gold kill Indians just as they would kill bears and pay no regard for treaties.
Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills lands that were sacred to the Lakota Sioux and were reserved for exclusive use of the Indians by the Fort Laramie Treaty. Greedy whites, ignoring the treaty provisions not only entered the Black Hills to pan and mine for the gold, but killed many Indians they ran across Sherman was angry and wrote to his old friend President Grant. Grant, now a political, had to contend with public opinion that thought it absurd that gold should not be mined because a few Indians regarded the land as sacred. Meanwhile Grant was working with a few others to portray minor clashes between whites and Indians in the Black Hills as violent and dangerous Indians breaking the treaty.
William Tecumseh Sherman Letter to President Ulysses Grant 1875
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Prior, the Military, worked hard to enforce the Fort Laramie Treaty which gave the Lakota Sioux Indian Tribe exclusive use of the Black Hills. Bu then gold was accidentally found in the Black Hills and white miners started to illegally enter the Lakota territory. Many of them killed Indians that they ran across. See Quotation 643700. President Grant, under huge political pressure instructed General Sheridan to stop enforcing the provisions of the treaty and keep the whites out of the Black Hills. They idea was to allow the miners to clash with the Lakota who would likely defend their sacred land, and when some whites had been killed, send the army in to “pacify” the Indians and use that as a means of relegation of the Treaty so the the gold areas would bee legally accessible.
The officer who testified at the inquiry of the Sand Creek Massacre, Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, was murdered thereafter in Denver by a supporter of Chivington’s. Sand Creek’s Indians were mutilated even after death with breasts and scrotums cut off as souvenir tobacco pouches. Ironically, President Lincoln had med with some of the killed Cheyenne leaders at the White House the year before and his quotation presages those whites who would break treaty.
Hobson, like Mark Twain in America, was a major critic of imperialism.
The discovery started a white frenzy to prospect the Black Hills. The trouble was that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had guaranteed the Black Hills to the Lakota Sioux. The Army tried to keep the white gold seekers out, but it was too difficult and there was not great public support for honoring the treaty. So the army decided to buy the Black Hills from the Indians and open it to legal prospecting. But the Sioux refused to sell not wanting to trade their sacred land for money and having no interest in gold. So the whites broke the treaty and took the gold anyway. This led to the hostilities and the greatest Indian victory wiping out Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
To many, this quotation is shocking. TR was a presidential pioneer in race relations being the first President to ever invite a Black to dine at the White House. See {588996} for his views on Blacks. Although modern and liberal with respect to most minorities, TR had a major blind spot regarding Native Americans and was among the worst racists.
First Published American Indian Author. His last public speech. He was referring to a horrible massacre of Christian Indians and the polarizing effect that such conflicts had. Whosoever publicly castigated a massacre of whites or Indians would be met by accusations of condoning the massacres of the other side and ignoring the inevitable and natural seeking of retaliation for future protection and revenge.
Published 100 years after it was written. This is the first known written statement of what became a de facto policy regarding the American Indian.
This quotation is often used as the greatest evidence the white usurpation of Indian land and the dubious value of all the treaties that had been made with the Indians guaranteeing them specific lands. Jackson, however, was not completely accurate. The Iroquois who fought on the American side in the Revolution were still on their lands in New York State. However, the Iriquois had their dealings with the State and local governments, and fared better than those tribes that depended in the Federal Government—especially with racists like Jackson in the Presidency.
Wayne played so many parts depicting whites in the process of expanding Westward that many people saw him as an expert on the history of the Westward Expansion. He did not comment on the whites who then kept huge ranches “selfishly” for themselves or those who selfishly would not share the mineral rich land that they had taken with anyone including the original Indian owners. So in this view, the Indians should have not been capitalists but they should have been socialists and shared their resources.
- Born: February 8, 1820
- Died: February 14, 1891
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Soldier
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), receiving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched earth policies he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the first modern general".
