Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data.
There is no word for reconciliation in Ojibwe. There is a word for making it right: gwayakochigemin. That's what we must try to do.
It's a long ride to Whitestone Hill from Crow Creek, but the memory and story need to be told and retold. Riding on horseback 200 or so miles through Dakota Territory, aka eastern South Dakota, and across the border to Forbes, North Dakota, one can see a lot. Small towns, fields of GMO corn for ethanol plants, plans for a carbon sequestration pipeline, and shrinking towns.
Is it so much better, after all that "progress," than the 50 million buffalo and 250 species of prairie grass that were once here? Was it worth it?
That's the kind of question one asks on the ride.
Some 40 or so Dakota, Anishinaabe, Lakota and allies annually ride the Whitestone Hill Memorial Ride. We remember and try to heal from one of the worst massacres to occur on the northern Plains. It's a hard place to find: The 12-by-12-inch sign says Whitestone Hill. The "monument" is a soldier with a bugle atop the hill, surrounded by 22 soldiers who died there. It's shameful.
It has been called a battlefield by those who lie. Heavily armed battalions from Iowa and Nebraska shot into pieces hundreds of Dakota and Lakota who were camped with the last remaining buffalo herds, harvesting, praying, and mourning their losses from the 1862 hanging of 38 Dakota in Mankato.
Having chased the Dakota across the vast expanse of prairie in brutal wars, on Sept. 3, 1863, Gen. Alfred Sully's troops attacked a hunting camp of 600 lodges. They shot their babies, horses and dogs, and burned their tipis and food.
Sully was in charge, with one company of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, two of the Sixth Iowa Cavalry, under the commanding officers Maj. Albert House, and the Second Nebraska Cavalry under Col. Robert Furnas.
As George Belden reports in his eyewitness account, the order from Sully was to hold the Indians in check until they could finish his council with Chiefs Two Bears and Little Soldiers, both neutral toward the U.S. While Sully negotiated, the Iowa Capt. Bayne stepped in front of the men and said, "Boys, we have come a long way to fight the Indians, and now that we have got them, I am in favor of whaling them. Shall we advance?"
The men moved forward, Belden wrote, and Bayne said, "Each man pick his Indian."
The Indians were seen raising their hands like they wanted to shake hands and then "a little Dutchman on the left fired and killed him," Belden wrote.
That's how it started. It seems the Dakota sought peace; they had enough of war.
Once the shooting started, the Cavalry went after those who were fleeing. "Sully ordered Colonel Robert W. Furnas, commanding the Second Nebraska Cavalry, forward at full speed to cut off the Indians' retreat. ... Sully sent Colonel David S. Wilson, with part of the Sixth Iowa, to the north side of the village."
The State Historical Society of North Dakota wrote: "Although the Indians scattered in as many directions as possible, most tried to escape down the ravine. As the Indians came to a saucer-like broadening of the ravine about one-half mile from the village, they began to gather in a large throng. There they were surrounded by Col. Furnas' cavalry, Major House's battalion, and Col. Wilson's Sixth Iowa troops.
"Furnas ordered his men to dismount and advance toward the ravine on foot. When his men were within a few hundred yards, he ordered them to begin firing. The other troops followed his lead, dismounted, and closed in on the Indians."
"The light of the following day revealed a field of carnage," according to the historical society. "Dead and wounded men, women, and children lay in the campsite and in the ravine. Tipis stood vacant or drooped in various stages of destruction ... personal items, tools, utensils, weapons, toys, and injured or dying horses and dogs littered the ground. Injured women protected babies and the little children. As the soldiers looked after the wounded and gathered the dead, Sully moved his camp to the battlefield. While some squads of soldiers patrolled the region searching for escapees, other men were put to work digging graves and destroying the village and Indian possessions." Seven hundred horses were killed or captured.
How do you heal from that? Pray and ride. We ride for all those who cannot, and the horses and dogs they killed. We ride up the hill, fast, and we bring our dogs, too. It is how we remember. North Dakota should come clean on history. I think those 22 soldiers should go home, the monument should be scrapped, and the Iowa and Nebraska officers should be tried for war crimes. And we will pray and ride for those who cannot.
Someone needs to make it right. Gwayakochiigedaa. Let's make it right.