[Tamaroa]

Washita was in 1868 and Big Horn was in June of 1876. Personally, I have the utmost respect for our armed forces from the 20th century on. However, I have serious reservations about our military in the 19th century. When you look at the Trail of Tears, The situation with the San Patricios in the War with Mexico and the wars of extermination on the Indians, you truly need to wonder about "manifest destiny" as well as our naked political aggression of that era.

Here is just one question that I have, the answer to which has eluded me for decades. The United States waged a war ostensibly to end slavery which wound up killing 625,000 Americans. Ex-slaves were guaranteed citizenship and freedom with the passage of the 14th,15th and 16th amendments. Then this same army went out west and destroyed the Indian population for primarily two reasons:

1) Gold
a. Custer Looked the other way in the 1860's and allowed an Indian Treaty to be broken because of the discovery of Gold in the Dakotas
2) the Americans much more productive use of farm land.
a. The American citizen with its agrarian model could grow much more on one square mile of land then the Indian could hunt or gather on that same square mile. Did that give us the right to "take" the land.

There is a book called a "Century of Dishonor" written by Helen Hunt Jackson which chronicles the history of every treaty made with the Indian in the 19th century. Not one was honored by Americans. The book is sentimental and not very well written, but it does a good job in pointing out the double standard that existed at the time.

By the way there is a book about Custer "The Son of Morning Star" by Evan S. Connell which makes good reading This review from Amazon: "Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as "one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers," wrote what continues to be the most reliable--and compulsively readable--account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his meticulous research and novelist's eye for the story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness, and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West."

Bill