“The Earth Cries”, by the historian Peter Cozzens, who won the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History, objectively describes the real history behind the so-called “Indian Wars” and breaks once and for all with the infinity of stereotypes spread until now satiety for the movies.
“The Earth Cries”, by the historian Peter Cozzens, who won the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History, objectively describes the real history behind the so-called “Indian Wars” and breaks once and for all with the infinity of stereotypes spread until now. satiety for the movies.
It is worth bearing in mind these figures: in 1820, the population of the United States was roughly ten million; in 1890, the census counted 63 million. Only the emigration of German origin had contributed six million new citizens, ahead of the five million Irish emigrants or the four million Italians. Faced with this inexorable reality, the Plains Indians barely numbered 75,000 individuals, and the natives who were incorporated with the annexation of the former viceregal territories of California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas are estimated at around 150,000. They thus had no chance of resisting the white onslaught, and yet many of them fought against hope to defend their hunting grounds. They did not only face the whites. Centuries of internal warfare had shaped a mosaic of tribes hostile to each other, who cultivated inextinguishable hatreds. As a Sioux chief lamented to General Hancock: “You have divided my land and I don’t like that. These lands used to belong to the Kiowas and the Crows, but we expelled those peoples from them, and there we act just like the whites when they want the land of the Indians». Yes. All of them had been victims and executioners. and there we act just like the whites when they want the land of the Indians». Yes. All of them had been victims and executioners. and there we act just like the whites when they want the land of the Indians». Yes. All of them had been victims and executioners.
The great prairies
As in the Europe of the Roman Empire, a new tribe always arose in the east, beyond the limes, fighting for the abundant lands of the West. Thus, pushed by white settlers and other tribes, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho came from their Appalachian forests to the great prairies. There they met the horse, brought from the south, from the legendary lands occupied by the Spanish. And they became buffalo hunters and drove the Crows and the Pawnes, and then the Kiowas, down to the low plains.
Hand blows on neglected camps; ritual slaughter of women and children that preceded the plundering of enemy herds of ponies. Back and forth battles, without winners or losers, in a vicious circle of blood. “Dances with Wolves”, but without a Kevin Costner who worked the miracle of repeating rifles. And so, when the avalanche of whites to the West became unstoppable, there was no American military detachment that did not count among its ranks the mortal enemies of the rebel tribe in question. The best, depending on which side you look at, were the crows. But in hatred of the Sioux, especially the Lakota, the Osage also stood out. Actually, nothing that we Spaniards had not already seen in the northern lands, periodically devastated by Apaches and Comanches. Almost three centuries of struggle on the border, with the viceroyalty troops –the “leather dragons”– and the Opata and Pima allies chasing the “wild Indians” groups. The Spanish, too, as the Americans would later do, signed treaties, built forts –“presidios”, according to the Castilian term–, bribed war parties to obtain truces, sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence. with the viceroyalty troops –the “leather dragons”– and the Opata and Pima allies chasing the “wild Indians” groups. The Spanish, too, as the Americans would later do, signed treaties, built forts –“presidios”, according to the Castilian term–, bribed war parties to obtain truces, sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence. with the viceroyalty troops –the “leather dragons”– and the Opata and Pima allies chasing the “wild Indians” groups. The Spanish, too, as the Americans would later do, signed treaties, built forts –“presidios”, according to the Castilian term–, bribed war parties to obtain truces, sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence. The Spanish, too, as the Americans would later do, signed treaties, built forts –“presidios”, according to the Castilian term–, bribed war parties to obtain truces, sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence. The Spanish, too, as the Americans would later do, signed treaties, built forts –“presidios”, according to the Castilian term–, bribed war parties to obtain truces, sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence. they sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence. they sent missionaries and, when there was no other choice, costly punitive expeditions. Independent Mexico inherited the problem, but soon ran out of ransom money and, what is worse, most of the Indian allies had fought for the King or, like the Yaquis – whom the Mexican government deported to the Yucatan in 1910 to keep their lands–, they had preferred to stay out of the War of Independence.
When the gringos annexed half of Mexico (Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty of 1848), they inherited their quota of Apaches. Hard people, we already say, for whom the whites did not keep any mystery. Only Cochise, a Chiricagua Apache, understood the problem. But his meager means did not allow him to carry out the necessary ethnic cleansing of white settlers – farmers, ranchers and gold prospectors. Still, he killed several hundred and held the Cavalry in check. It was a cruel war, marked by the massacre of Aravaipa Apache women and children at Camp Grant, at the hands of a gang of Tucson residents. Actually, there were many massacres in all the disputed areas, but very few battles. Guerrilla warfare, ambushes and long persecutions, with the Indians weighed down by the responsibility of defending their families. But not only the enormous extension of the land to cover excuses the difficulties of the Army: the political pressures on Washington, with humanitarian lobbies that defended the rights of the Indians, without much success; the reduction to a minimum of the military forces after the Civil War –which cost 800,000 deaths between the two sides–, the poor quality of the troops, drunks and rapists –Custer kept the teenage daughter of the chief Little Rock to serve him of concubine–, and the legendary skill as horsemen of the Indians explain the inexplicable.
The end came, as Senator Henderson had prophesied, with the extinction of the buffalo. In three years (1872/1875), white fur trappers killed three million specimens, depopulating Arkansas and southwestern Kansas. As General Sheridan told the Texas legislators who wanted to save the buffalo, and it goes without saying, “The fur trappers have done more to settle the Indian problem in two years than the Army has done in thirty. For the sake of lasting peace, let them skin buffalo to extermination.” But, also, with the repeating rifle.
Rifles that talk a lot
On August 2, 1867, from a hill, Chief Red Cloud, one of the few Indian leaders who understood that what was at stake was simply the extinction of his way of life, watched his warriors approach the circle of wagons. Inside, the four civilian loggers from Fort Kerarny on the Bozeman Trail and the 28 infantrymen who escorted them. The older ones had tied their shoelaces to one foot and to the trigger of the rifle. The idea was to shoot themselves in the head before falling prisoners of the Cheyennes, experts like few others in the art of torture. The leader of the attack, Crazy Horse, lost control of his men as soon as the skirmish began. Two hundred warriors decided that it was better to capture the mule train first. The rest, another two hundred Indians, approached the wagons, leaning into the right flank of their ponies for cover. The tactic was simple: withstand the first volley and wait until the soldiers had to reload their rifles before launching themselves swiftly at the target. Sitting on their horses, the warriors waited for the soldiers to draw their ramrods for reloading. But it was not like that: the United States Army had just released its new quick-loading rifles. The surprised Indians launched themselves into the attack three times, but without enthusiasm. The aversion to suffering many casualties was proverbial in tribes always short of men. Still, they killed a lieutenant who reared his head, six soldiers, and wounded four others, most by Cheyenne sniper fire. The Indians suffered twelve killed and thirty wounded. When they left, Red Cloud could be heard muttering, “Loud-talking rifles.” If nomadic life on the prairie, in the mountains, and in the deserts became extinct, the Indians, taken to the reservations, did not. And so the descendants of the Romans can yearn for and vindicate the old ancestors of Numancia and Viriato. Because that’s really what it’s about.Peter Cozzens’s book : of our childhood daydreams.
If there is a phenomenon in the history of the United States that has been exploited ad nauseam in Western popular culture, this has been the conquest of the West and the conflict with the native tribes that inhabited it, known as the Indian Wars. From a demonization of the North American Indian or native, the pendulum swung from the 1970s to its sanctification, and more balanced visions are often lacking, capable of overcoming this Manichaeism of good and bad. And that is something that Peter Cozzens achieves with «The earth cries». The bitter history of the Indian Wars for the conquest of the West”, a gripping narrative that has won the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History and has been praised by Booklist as “a wonderful work of understanding and compassion”.
“Hostiles”, the most violent “western”
The book “The Earth Weeps” by the American military historian Peter Cozzen and the film “Hostiles” by Scoot Cooper, which will be released throughout 2018, bring the wildlife of the prairies of the West back to the western imagination American and its inevitable end. Both in Cozzen’s rigorous text and in Cooper’s implausible script, a part of the reality of the so-called “Indian wars” is pointed out that the latest historiographic currents have tended to leave aside: that genocidal violence not only nested among the whites thirsty for new lands, but it was a constant in the future of some tribes that swore eternal hatred to each other. The Scoot Cooper film, which features the participation of actors Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike and Cherokee actor Wes Studi, It arrives with the letterhead of being the most violent “Western” that has been shot in recent years. After the demystification of the gunmen that Clint Eastwood began with «Unforgiven», it seems that the revisiting of the so-called last frontier, the wild land conquered by settlers who traveled to the United States, with the help of the army, has begun. After a long absence from the screens (demolished by that famous «Blue Soldier») it seems that cowboys and Indians movies are returning to cinemas.
