Month of Atonement
September Dawn and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 05/01/2007
Hollywood usually depicts Indians as fatally naive about white mentality and agendas, but it sounds like Sitting Bull was quite savvy.
He wasn’t naïve, but the sad part, the true tragedy, was that he understood that the white world could not be overcome. The rank manipulation, the cheating, the lying, the lack of feeling and understanding, their contempt for Indian society that they had was not gonna end. But the basic thing is that Sitting Bull said to himself, I’m an Indian, always will be an Indian and I’m not going to conform to their way of living because I abhor it.
Sitting Bull gave a voice to his opinions that was very strong, and he stood up to them every time. The problem was that the government did not want that kind of voice to be on the reservation. Sitting Bull was never considered a sellout. He always stood up for his people, even when they became irritated with his constant opposition because it made their lives harder in terms of getting resources and so forth.
Is the death scene fairly accurate?
McLaughlin, the reservation agent, did send a crew of his death squad, his Indian police, out to get Sitting Bull because they were concerned about the Ghost Dancing getting out of control. Word got out, and a lot of the people around where Sitting Bull lived came and camped around his house. When the men came, they went through the people, went inside and pulled Sitting Bull out of bed. Once he was out, he called for help, and firing started. Nobody knows who fired first. But he was shot—there were two troops on either side of him—one of those men shot him on the side of the head and another shot him in the back of the head, and he was gone.
Post A Comment