Honoring the Past Can Be Painful

  As I began researching the history of the Kiowa, I couldn't help but feel as though
every time I asked a question, took a picture, or doubted a source, I was opening
an old wound. The old adage to let sleeping dogs lie - to not ask the descendants
of the Kiowa of their ancestor's fates or to talk about the discrimination they have
faced over the years - filled my apprehensive mind. The fact that the majority of
my ancestors, all poor, Southern whites who had had a hand in pushing the
American Indian off of his ancestral lands and into a government controlled
existence, shamed me to no end.

 The genocide that occurred during Indian removal in the 19th century  is a part of
history that most Americans deal with rather reluctantly. The belief is that
progress, being inevitable, was what killed the Native American way of life, not
some kind of grand scheme or conspiracy. No one, so traditionalists like to claim,
was responsible for the plight of the native people -it was just a case of que sera,
sera.  The truth is far different, however. The United States government, under the
recommendation of General William Tecumseh Sherman (the one who marched
on Atlanta during the Civil War), purposely created an agenda to eradicate the
Indians, or, at the very least, force them into assimilation. For some tribes, the
policy came to life by being given the blankets of small pox victims; others
watched as their main source of food and trade, the buffalo, were killed off by the
tens of thousands.

 In order to understand the past, one has to come to terms with it, warts and all.
That is why discussing slavery, while painful for all parties involved, is the surest
way to uncover the truth in American history. Likewise, dealing honestly with
Native Americans' historical treatment - whether by examining forced
assimilation, removal, outright starvation, dishonored treaties or tribal warfare -is
the only method to understand what drove the Anglo settler in the past and what
still drives the Native American today.

 
Pawnee buffalo hide, Indian City,
Oklahoma.
Sayndayn, The Kiowa
Legendary Hero, on the
Changing World

Sayndayn was coming along,
and as he came he saw that
all his world had change.d
Where the buffalo herds used
to graze, he saw white-faced
cattle. The Washita River,
which once ran bankful with
clear water, was soggy with
red mud. There were no deer
or antelope in the brush or
skittering across the high
plains. No white tipis rose
proudly against the blue sky;
settler's soddies dented the
hillsides and the creek banks.

My time has come, Sayndayn
thought to himself. The world
I lived in is dead. Soon the
Kiowa people will be fenced
like the white man's cattle
and they cannot break out the
fences because the barbed
wire will tear their flesh. I
can't help my people any
longer by staying wit them.
My time has come, and I will
have to go away from this
changing world.

From American Indian Mythology by
Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,
1968, 173-77), as excerpted in Our
Hearts Fell to the Ground:  Plains
Indians Views of How the West
Was Lost, ed. by Colin G. Calloway
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's,
1996), p.51.
"Our Hearts Fell to the Ground." A view of the Tonkowa Massacre Site,
near Andarko, Oklahoma.
Necessary Pain