Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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And even though most Winnebagos (Ho-Chunk) had not been involved in the 1862 rebellion, they too were forced to relocate to Crow Creek in Dakota Territory. They had to move because the settlers in Minnesota wanted their Winnebago land. Like the Sioux, the removal trip cost many lives, especially of women and children. Once they arrived at Crow Creek they found that they had been forced to trade good land for inferior, sandy soil. Finally, as usual the 1,300 Winnebagos were surrounded by 600 white profiteers and the brutality of military guards.⁷³

The 1863 removal and relocation of the Mescalero Apaches and Navajos to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico took place in the shadow of the Minnesota uprising, and was the result of Lincoln’s wartime militarization of the Indian problem. As the Sioux reservation was opened up to white settlers, it was closed to the Sioux and they were forgotten. Although Lincoln’s humaneness was shown in his clemencies of several Santee Sioux warriors, it was still the largest mass execution in American history in which the guilt of the accused was in doubt. His Minnesota policy, shaped in part by the realities of politics and the pressures of the Civil War, became the template for Indians elsewhere, with Arizona’s Navajos, Mescalero Apaches from west Texas, and Paiutes south of Lake Tahoe being relocated, and Cheyennes and Arapahos in Colorado being massacred at Sand Creek by the military. The army had proposed a similar removal plan for the California Indians where they would be relocated from the mainland to a concentration camp on Catalina Island. Fortunately, Commissioner Dole halted these preparations.⁷⁴ Lincoln’s last proclamation was also militaristic in that he ordered the execution of any soldier found guilty of smuggling arms to the Indians.⁷⁵