In Memory of Crazy Horse
Today is Tuesday, 5 September 2006.
Crazy Horse of the Lakota Sioux was murdered on this date in 1877.
Depending on interpretation, Crazy Horse was a great defender of his people against European conquest, a “merciless Indian savage”, or a terrorist.
“He [King George III] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
These are, of course, the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. We may assume Jefferson wasn’t kidding himself: he knew quite well that the First Peoples had no need of encouragement by the British monarch to defend themselves against the imperial designs and depredations of the Thirteen Colonies. The First Peoples were fighting for their lives, their homes, their way of life. (First Peoples, Native Americans, “Indians”, etc.)
The actual situation of “bring on” is rather like that of a later King George, the W, in his infamous invitation to Iraqi insurgents: “Bring ‘em on!” In both cases, an empire had invaded another country, sought to impose (to its own benefit, of course) its own notions of governance and polity, and the inhabitants resisted.
We may dismiss this interpretation as self-serving propagandistic bombast of the first water. Shame on slave-holding Jefferson for sinking so low as to include it in the Declaration.
Had King George the W been around in 1877, he would undoubtedly have denounced Crazy Horse as “a terrorist, part of the great axis of Injun-fascism, the battle against which constitutes the defining struggle of the 19th century”.
Crazy Horse of the Lakota was, of course, a great leader in the struggle to defend his people against conquest by Euro-American death squads (as uniformed armies engaged in conquest should properly be named).
Crazy Horse had sealed his fate by being the principal war leader when George Custer met his match at the Battle of the Greasy Grass (or Little Big Horn, in Euro-American nomenclature). He resisted imprisonment at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and was murdered by a soldier-terrorist. He was 27 or 28.
The Museum of the Bourgeois honours the memory of Crazy Horse, and thereby the memories of all those who resisted the destruction of the First Peoples.
_____________________________________
Note: Crazy Horse died “about midnight” on the night of 5-6 September. Many Lakota choose to memorialize his death on 6 September.
Crazy Horse of the Lakota Sioux was murdered on this date in 1877.
Depending on interpretation, Crazy Horse was a great defender of his people against European conquest, a “merciless Indian savage”, or a terrorist.
“He [King George III] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
These are, of course, the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. We may assume Jefferson wasn’t kidding himself: he knew quite well that the First Peoples had no need of encouragement by the British monarch to defend themselves against the imperial designs and depredations of the Thirteen Colonies. The First Peoples were fighting for their lives, their homes, their way of life. (First Peoples, Native Americans, “Indians”, etc.)
The actual situation of “bring on” is rather like that of a later King George, the W, in his infamous invitation to Iraqi insurgents: “Bring ‘em on!” In both cases, an empire had invaded another country, sought to impose (to its own benefit, of course) its own notions of governance and polity, and the inhabitants resisted.
We may dismiss this interpretation as self-serving propagandistic bombast of the first water. Shame on slave-holding Jefferson for sinking so low as to include it in the Declaration.
Had King George the W been around in 1877, he would undoubtedly have denounced Crazy Horse as “a terrorist, part of the great axis of Injun-fascism, the battle against which constitutes the defining struggle of the 19th century”.
Crazy Horse of the Lakota was, of course, a great leader in the struggle to defend his people against conquest by Euro-American death squads (as uniformed armies engaged in conquest should properly be named).
Crazy Horse had sealed his fate by being the principal war leader when George Custer met his match at the Battle of the Greasy Grass (or Little Big Horn, in Euro-American nomenclature). He resisted imprisonment at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and was murdered by a soldier-terrorist. He was 27 or 28.
The Museum of the Bourgeois honours the memory of Crazy Horse, and thereby the memories of all those who resisted the destruction of the First Peoples.
_____________________________________
Note: Crazy Horse died “about midnight” on the night of 5-6 September. Many Lakota choose to memorialize his death on 6 September.
posted by HH at 11:45 AM
3 Comments:
A note of information regarding the naming of First American peoples. European names for the various groups of First Americans are altogether too often the names given to them by competitor groups.
Speaking in broad generalities while attempting to avoid stereotyping, First Americans tended to name themselves "the people," or some variation on that theme. Each group's names for competitor were often less flattering - including such names as "eaters of raw flesh," "covered with the nits of lice," "enemies," "snakes," and other equally endearing terms.
I believe that the term "Sioux" is one of those less than complementary appellations given to the Lakota by those peoples who did not share common interests with them.
With respect to the relationships between the First Americans and immigrant arrivals, I would offer the observation that even with the purest of intentions, the history of these interactions is strong evidence that the unintended consequences arising from a committment to search for knowledge and technology (boldly going where no one has gone before) tends to validate the idealism of Chuang-tze (An admittedly 1950's English spelling).
Apologies for the pedantic excursion. My excuse is that I suspect that HH and some of the other readers of his most excellent blog may enjoy attempting to find out (or prove) whether this contributor is indeed, as suspected, full of shit like a Christmas turkey.
Thank you for the correction, Canaar. I think you're right, Sioux is derogatory. HH has no First Peoples languages, and this nomenclature can be quite a minefield. Pedantic? Not at all. Whenever knowledge is true, sharing it is never pedantry. So far as the Christmas turkey goes, I don't think you're full of shit. However, I would think twice before having Christmas dinner at your house, unless it were vegan.
HH,
I was more concerned about the excursion into Chinese philosophy as foundation for historical analysis and the subsequent use of the analysis as a reference guide to future human interactions with any sentient beings we may some day encounter.
Clearly this theme concerning unintended harm has been explored and developed by SF writers to greater and lesser degree, perhaps most popularly postulated by the "prime directive." It appears that over time, the Star Trek writers came to the conclusion that culture, like quantum particles changes in response to observation. In human history, such change has perhaps too often been to the peril of both observer and observed.
A fundamental unanswered question in my opinion, is whether any further exploration in search of intelligent life can can be analyzed for risk/reward with any degree of certainty beyond reliance on a leap of faith.
In our history of exploration, it seems to be uniformly true that the explorers fared considerably better than did the explored. I balance this postulated fact concerning our species history against a human view that Darwinian selection regulates our intercultural relationships that arise from our acceptance of the challenge of frontier.
David Brin touches the edge of what modifications to Darwinian selection might apply to discrete populations of sentient beings on a more universal scale which returns me back to the question of whether the followers of Ludd may have only taken the wrong path in their response to their perceptions and whether Chuang-Tze's philosophy might have prevailed but for the overwhelming power of the profit motive. I note great similarity between his philosophy and of those First American spiritual and economic practices with which I have an admittedly "passing acquaintance."
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