Largest mass hanging in United States history
What brought about the hanging of 38 Sioux Indians in Minnesota December 26, 1862 was the failure "again" of the U.S. Government to honor it's treaties with Indian Nations. Indians were not given the money or food set forth to them for signing a treaty to turn over more than a million acres of their land and be forced to live on a reservation.
Indian agents keep the treaty money and food that was to go to the Indians, the food was sold to White settlers, food that was given to the Indians was spoiled and not fit for a dog to eat. Indian hunting parties went off the reservation land looking for food to feed their families, one hunting group took eggs from a White settlers land and the rest is history.
Authorities in Minnesota asked President Lincoln to order the immediate execution of all 303 Indian males found guilty. Lincoln was concerned with how this would play with the Europeans, whom he was afraid were about to enter the war on the side of the South. He offered the following compromise to the politicians of Minnesota: They would pare the list of those to be hung down to 39. In return, Lincoln promised to kill or remove every Indian from the state and provide Minnesota with 2 million dollars in federal funds. Remember, he only owed the Sioux 1.4 million for the land.
So, on December 26, 1862, the Great Emancipator ordered the largest mass execution in American History, where the guilt of those to be executed was entirely in doubt. Regardless of how Lincoln defenders seek to play this, it was nothing more than murder to obtain the land of the Santee Sioux and to appease his political cronies in Minnesota.
http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/hanging.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm UK 
It is however a subject which interests me in general. I've been watching a DVD box set - " The Great Indian Wars 1540-1890 "
Learning the U.S. Cavalry was sent to destroy vast numbers of buffalo, leaving them dead all over the plains, sometimes in great mountains of slaughtered animals, to lay waste to as many as possible, stealing far more than the food and shelter and clothing needed for daily life horrifies me even now, all these years later.
That can never be understood at less than completely evil. How could they live with their consciences?
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Genocide by Other Means: U.S. Army Slaughtered Buffalo in Plains Indian Wars
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As long as the North American buffalo roamed free and bountiful, the Plains Indians were able to remain sovereign. Buffalo were their lifeline—the Indians had a symbiotic relationship with them, and always honored the mighty beasts for the many blessings they provided. “The creation stories of where buffalo came from put them in a very spiritual place among many tribes,” said University of Montana anthropology and Native American studies professor S. Neyooxet Greymorning. “The buffalo crossed many different areas and functions, and it was utilized in many ways. It was used in ceremonies, as well as to make tipi covers that provided homes for people, utensils, shields, weapons and parts were used for sewing with the sinew.”
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As the U.S. government and its restless people looked to expand westward after the Civil War, they started to infringe upon Indian lands. During the Plains Indian Wars, as the U.S. Army attempted to drive Indians off the Plains and into reservations, the Army had little success because the warriors could live off the land and elude them—wherever the buffalo flourished, the Indians flourished. But pressure on the Army to contain the Indians increased in the 1860s when gold was discovered in the Montana Territory, and part of what is now eastern Wyoming became the route of the Bozeman Trail, the quickest way to get to the mines in Montana. This trail cut through sacred ground for the Sioux, as well as their prime hunting grounds—the “best game country in the world,” according to one veteran trapper. The Sioux regularly attacked travelers on the Bozeman Trail, and Army forts were set up to protect travelers through the Powder River Basin. During the Indians’ clashes with settlers, prospectors and U.S. Cavalry to protect a last bastion of their food supply in what became known as Red Cloud’s War, U.S. Army Captain Fetterman bragged, “With 80 men I could ride through the whole Sioux Nation.” He soon got the chance to back up that boast: Captain Fetterman and his men met with some representatives of the Sioux Nation and their allies, led by Crazy Horse, on December 21, 1866, in the Powder River Basin, and the result of that battle is remembered in history books as the Fetterman Massacre—all 81 men in his party were slain. It was the Army’s worst defeat on the Plains until the Battle of Little Bighorn, 10 years later, and forced it to pull out of the area after the Fort Laramie Treaty was signed in April 1868.
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Isenberg said, “Some Army officers in the Great Plains in the late 1860s and 1870s, including William Sherman and Richard Dodge, as well as the Secretary of the Interior in the 1870s, Columbus Delano, foresaw that if the bison were extinct, the Indians in the Great Plains would have to surrender to the reservation system.” Colonel Dodge said in 1867, “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone,” and Delano wrote in his 1872 annual report, “The rapid disappearance of game from the former hunting-grounds must operate largely in favor of our efforts to confine the Indians to smaller areas, and compel them to abandon their nomadic customs.”
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Greymorning noted that some revisionists try to blame Indians for the death of the buffalo, but he said one picture is better than a thousand lies: “When you see a photograph of carcasses of buffalo lying miles and miles along stretches of railroad tracks, probably eight to 10 feet high, you know this was part of the government campaign to kill the buffalo.”
More:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/gallery/photo/genocide-by-other-means%3A-u.s.-army-slaughtered-buffalo-in-plains-indian-wars-30798
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You have undoubtedly seen photos taken by the U.S. photographer, Edward Sheriff Curtis of North American Indians. These photographs, although clearly posed, are irreplaceable, taken around the early 1900's.
Here's a quick group with photos:
Photos: North American Indian Photographs by Edward Curtis
Posted Nov 15, 2010
In 1906, American photographer Edward S. Curtis was offered $75,000 to document North American Indians. The benefactor, J.P Morgan, was to receive 25 sets of the completed series of 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs entitled The North American Indian. Curtis set out to photograph the North American Indian way of life at a time when Native Americans were being forced from their land and stripped of their rights. Curtis’ photographs depicted a romantic version of the culture which ran contrary to the popular view of Native Americans as savages.
Born in 1868 in Wisconsin, Curtis moved with his father to the Washington territory in 1887 where he began working at a photography studio in the frontier city of Seattle. Curtis began work on his series in 1895 by photographing Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Sealth and published the first volume of The North American Indian in 1907. The last volume wasn’t published until 1930. In more than three decades of work documenting Native Americans, Curtis traveled from the Great Plains to the mountainous west, and from the Mexican border to western Canada to the Arctic Ocean in Alaska.
Below are selected images of the Native American way of life chosen from The Library of Congress’s Edward S. Curtis Collection. Some were published in The North American Indian but most were not published. All the captions are original to Edward Curtis.
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http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-160964/cache/curtis001.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1354118144
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Title: Sioux chiefs. Date Created/Published: c1905. Summary: Photograph shows three Native Americans on horseback. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. #[/center]
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/11/15/north-american-indian-photographs-by-edward-curtis/2551/
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(Multiple photos in each portfolio)
Vol.1. The Apache. The Jicarillas. The Navaho.
Vol.2. The Pima. The Papago. The Qahatika. The Mohave. The Yuma. The Maricopa. The Walapai. The Havasupai. The Apache-Mohave, or Yavapai.
Vol.3. The Teton Sioux. The Yanktonai. The Assiniboin.
Vol.4. The Apsaroke, or Crows. The Hidatsa.
Vol.5. The Mandan. The Arikara. The Atsina.
Vol.6. The Piegan. The Cheyenne. The Arapaho.
Vol.7. The Yakima. The Klickitat. Salishan tribes of the interior. The Kutenai.
Vol.8. The Nez Perces. Wallawalla. Umatilla. Cayuse. The Chinookan tribes.
Vol.9. The Salishan tribes of the coast. The Chimakum and the Quilliute. The Willapa.
Vol.10. The Kwakiutl.
Vol.11. The Nootka. The Haida.
Vol.12. The Hopi.
Vol.13. The Hupa. The Yurok. The Karok. The Wiyot. Tolowa and Tututni. The Shasta. The Achomawi. The Klamath.
Vol.14. The Kato. The Wailaki. The Yuki. The Pomo. The Wintun. The Maidu. The Miwok. The Yokuts.
Vol.15. Southern California Shoshoneans. The Diegueños. Plateau Shoshoneans. The Washo.
Vol.16. The Tiwa. The Keres.
Vol.17. The Tewa. The Zuñi.
Vol.18. The Chipewyan. The Western Woods Cree. The Sarsi.
Vol.19. The Indians of Oklahoma. The Wichita. The Southern Cheyenne. The Oto. The Comanche. The Peyote Cult.
Vol.20. The Alaskan Eskimo. The Nunivak. The Eskimo of Hooper Bay. The Eskimo of King Island. The Eskimo of Little Diomede Island. The Eskimo of Cape Prince of Wales. The Kotzebue Eskimo. The Noatak. The Kobuk. The Selawik.
http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/curtis/toc.cgi
