The eradication of the Native American Indian between 1787 and 1900 was a catastrophic precedent in the history of the United States. To the federal bureaucracy, the world from the outset was divided into two classes of people - US citizens, who are protected, and varmints.
For more than a century leading up to their independence from Britain, the colonies and their allies ignored chivalry and other conventions of European warfare. They devastated, usually with impunity, the homes and lives of Native American men, women and children.
What the colonists began, the federal government continued. By 1900, the citizen-or-varmint classification had spread around the world. Essentially, for two centuries, the federal government has been trying to turn the whole world into an Indian reservation.
Well, that's an exaggeration, but not much. There have been exceptions, especially in recent decades. White Europeans, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders have generally been considered equals. But as a generalization, everywhere except those areas, I think it holds. Either you are one of us, or you are sub-human and probably deserving of .50 caliber enlightenment.
With the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the Philippine Insurgency from 1898-1902, the US entered the 20th century with a policy of intervention, treating the rest of the world in the same manner as it had been treating the native culture of North America: citizen or varmint. You become like us, or you go on the reservation.
Decline of the Native American Population
About a dozen major Indian Wars took place from the early 17th century to the formation of the US government in 1787. Following the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, conflicts between settler and Native American turned into government-backed wars of eradication.
The Native American population is conservatively estimated to have dropped from 600,000 in 1800 to 250,000 by the 1890s.1
The 250,000 is a more reliable number than the 600,000, since no one was counting Indians before the massacres began. I've seen estimates of their original numbers in the millions.
We do know that, whatever their original numbers, by 1900, Indians were a tiny population and did not participate in the growth enjoyed by the white population. Says David Stannard (American Holocaust, Oxford U. Press, 1992), "Nationwide by this time only about one-third of one percent of America's population, 250,000 out of 76,000,000 people, were natives."2
Here are but a few examples of the Indian Wars, which shaped the attitude the US government would have toward non-citizens around the world.
Pequot War, 1637
In the Pequot War, the killing of trader John Oldham in July 1636 led to the formation of a militia. What followed was the first significant clash between English colonists and North American Natives. From 400 to 700 Indian men, women and children were killed. Most of the survivors were sold into slavery in Bermuda.
The Pequot tribe was virtually exterminated, and the precedent was set. You can stay on the land we approve of if you obey our rules. Anyone who does not follow our plan will be hunted down and killed.
From then on, it was an escalating series of battles, massacres and exterminations: the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Creek War, the First and Second Seminole Wars, the Black Hawk War and the Sioux Wars, to name several of the more noted conflicts. We'll look at just a few of these from around 1865 to 1900. When the Indian wars wound down, the United States government began applying its Indian policies in the Philippines, and then onward around the world.
Sioux Wars, 1854-1890
After the Sioux had assisted the British in the War for Independence, and again in the War of 1812, peace came. Later, however, settlers encroached on Sioux lands, and attacks and counterattacks ensued.
Americans will be quick to remember the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876, but few recall the conflicts that led to that battle.
Before Custer's Last Stand, the US government in 1867 had guaranteed the Sioux permanent possession of the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota. That agreement was broken when prospectors swarmed the territory looking for gold in the 1870s. In 1890, the last of the Sioux resistance was annihilated on Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.
Ute Wars, 1865-1868, 1879
The Utes (of Utah) fought the encroachment of the whites, who were consuming the natives' water, wildlife and other resources.
The horse-loving resident Utes were deemed "primitive savages," who needed to be transformed into pious farmers. To make this point, Indian agent Nathan Meeker plowed under a Ute's pony racetrack.
In the late 1870s, the beaten Ute tribes were forced to sign a treaty, then relocated to the Ouray reservation in Utah.
Red River War, 1874-75
The Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kataka and Kiowa Indians depended on the buffalo for their food and shelter. White buffalo hunters began wiping out the herds, and the Indians fought them.
In 1874, Generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan were sent against the Indians. Total killed or starved to death is unknown, but by the end of 1875, there were no independent tribes left ranging the Southern Plains; all survivors were confined to reservations.
The Nez Perce War, 1877
When Lewis and Clark came upon this Pacific Northwest tribe in 1805, the natives were estimated to number about 6,000. In 1877, President Ulysses S. Grant opened the Nez Perce homeland to settlement and promptly ordered their bands moved onto a reservation in Idaho.
The Nez Perce resisted the government's demands and waged a series of battles and escapes throughout Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The Indians at one time traveled more than 1,500 miles while outmaneuvering 10 units of U.S. soldiers.
Chief Joseph eventually surrendered ("I will fight no more forever"). Some Indians were forced into exile in Oklahoma, and others were sent to the Colville Reservation in the state of Washington.
The Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890
The numbers killed in this massacre were not large, perhaps half the 350 men, women and children in the camp at the time. The siege came at the end of a long run of intrusions onto Indian lands by gold prospectors, and farmers who coveted the region's rich soil. Each intrusion spurred a succession of Indian uprisings, led by Lakota Sioux chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
Major General Nelson A. Miles was determined to redeem the fallen Custer and win important Indian battles on behalf of the US government. And always the same pattern: each defeat of the Indian culminated in a treaty whereby the Native American relinquished rights to his lands and went off to live on a reservation.
If a tribe was lucky, there would be no mix-up in communications that might lead to another raid and more deaths. General Miles, the story goes, misread the large numbers of a band of Big Foot that were moving over to a reservation in southwest South Dakota, known as Wounded Knee. He ordered the Seventh Cavalry to go after them.
The Wounded Knee massacre marked the final major confrontation between Native Americans and the white man. In less than ten years - beginning with the 1898 Spanish-American War - the US government would embark on another long history of encroachment and intrusion, this time around the world.
The Aftermath of the Indian Wars
Those are just a few of the US government's wars of ethnic cleansing and extermination against the American Indians. After Wounded Knee, US officials began to turn their attention to foreign countries. The first people to feel the policy Washington had been using on the Indians were the Filipinos.
Some of the best descriptions of the federal government behavior in other countries came from two-star General Smedley Butler (1888-1940) of the US Marine Corps. General Butler fought in 121 battles and received two Medals of Honor. In the 1930s, during his retirement after 33 years of active duty, he began to ask what it was all for.
Butler explained, "I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups."3
In his book WAR IS A RACKET (1935), he said, "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the very few at the expense of the very many."4
In a speech in 1933, Butler said:
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I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.
I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.
The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.5
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Butler was emphatic that he remained loyal to his country and would defend it with his life, but the country and the government were not the same thing, and he was embarrassed to admit his government had snookered him into killing large numbers of innocent people. He remains a hero to the Marine Corps - Camp Butler in Okinawa is named after him - but few marines have ever been told about the racket Butler warned about.
