It is the rare historian who can look back on the troubled history of the encounter between red man and white on this continent without rooting for one side or the other but instead recognize the tragic nature of the conflict. For one inescapable element of tragedy is its inevitability. Looking backward, it may seem that way, but it didn't have to be so.
It would take a genius like Edward Gibbon to tell the story of this country's Indian Wars and explain how they might have turned out differently and better given reasonable leaders on both sides. Such an historian is Peter Cozzens, who has titled his latest work The Earth Is Weeping. And there is much to weep over, especially when it comes to the policies dictated by Washington instead of reason.
Such an earlier analyst was George Crook--an unusually far-seeing and senior military officer of his time. As he summed up the lesson of this country's Indian Wars at least for the Indians themselves: "All tribes tell the same story. They are surrounded on all sides, the game is destroyed or driven away, they are left to starve, and there remains but one thing for them to do--fight while they can. Our treatment of the Indian is an outrage." As it continues to be to this day.
But there are some exceptions to this rule of unreason. The right-hand lede of a front-page story in a recent Democrat-Gazette begins with a wonderful dateline--CANNON BALL, N.D.--and it's all about how the feds won't grant an easement for the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota. It seems the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers has outgrown its old motto--Keep Busy--and recognized that just continuing to repeat its past policies would endanger both the Standing Rock Sioux's water and its culture. Hooray, hell's bells and how 'bout that?
As might have been expected, state officials in North Dakota decried this enlightened decision, with Governor Jack Dalrymple denouncing the new policy as a "serious mistake" that will only "prolong the dangerous situation" of having all these protesters camping out on federal land as the dead of winter approaches. Just as the Indian tribes did in an earlier century. The governor's ahistorical approach indicates that the white man has learned little over time and, worse, still speaks with forked tongue.
The Corps' latest pipeline project covers 1,170 miles and is to come in at a total cost of $3.8 billion--if only these pesky Injuns and their friends could be swept out of the way. Just as their forebears, both ideological and biological, could be swept out of the way. The one now incomplete segment of this pipeline is to run under Lake Oahe, a reservoir created for the mighty Missouri River and, happily, discussions rather than battles are taking place among all sides.
To quote Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary for Civil Works: "Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it's clear that there's more work to do. The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing." Hear, hear! Or as an Englishman named Churchill once commented, "Better jaw-jaw than war-war." His remains the best course of action whether in the Old World or New.
Ms. Darcy recommends starting all over again with an Environmental Impact Statement all can comment on fully and publicly. Why hurry people about their ancestral lands again without giving them a say in the matter, however contentious? Well begun is still half done. Even if Energy Transfer Partners is still balking at the delay and making belligerent noises. Noisy bluster was never an adequate substitute for quiet reason. Or good judgment. Or simple justice after all these years. So let's hold our horses--literally, in the U.S. Cavalry's case--rather than rush into another Little Big Horn.
What a cast of characters--familiar and not so familiar--the sweeping history of the Indian Wars of the United States presents: from George Armstrong Custer to Philip Sheridan to William Tecumseh Sherman to Sitting Bull to Chief Joseph, Cochise to Geronimo! And lest we forget, there are all those tribes like the Modoc and legendary characters with great names like Lean Bear, Little Wolf, and Dull Knife just waiting to be returned to life in the chronicles of the Indian Wars.
What a collection, certainly on the American side, of fools, amateurs, incompetents, grasping Indian agents, and others whose common denominator was their glaringly bad faith. This is not to say that America's Indians didn't also have more than their full share of horse thieves, zealots, loners, and leaders who showed glaringly bad faith and worse judgment. No wonder the earth wept. The story remains unfinished, as all history does. Why not give this chapter a happier ending than many in the bloody past?
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 12/14/2016