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By Root 540 0

sanction of our courts. Even when the federal government gave lip service to honoring the treaties, settlers, ranchers and miners ignored them and grabbed the richest valleys, lushest forests and lands with the most minerals. They squatted where they wanted, then persuaded Congress to legitimize the status quo and abandon the treaties that they were unlawfully ignoring. What would happen if Cuba abrogated its treaty granting America the use of Guantánamo Bay, one that can be lawfully annulled only with the consent of both nations? It would be considered an act of war, and smart bombs would rain on Havana. But if Indians even complain about a broken treaty, they are scorned, vilified or put into jail. I don’t think anything equals the hypocrisy the United States has exhibited toward the Native American. Our leaders have called for their annihilation in the name of democracy; in the name of Christianity; in the name of the advancement of civilization; in the name of all the principles we have fought wars to uphold.

From Congress, the White House and human-rights groups, we constantly hear complaints about ill-treatment and genocide against this group or that. But no people has ever been treated worse than Native Americans. Our government intentionally starved the Plains Indians to death by slaughtering the buffalo because it was quicker and easier to kill buffalo than to kill Indians. It denied them food and forced them to sign treaties giving up their land and future. The Indians were rarely defeated militarily; they were starved into submission. In the Orient I once heard a phrase describing nineteenth-century Chinese peasants as “rice Christians.” It was an allusion to the way in which Catholic missionaries converted them; if they attended Mass and religious instruction, they were given rice; if not, they starved. The same was done to subdue the Native Americans. Kit Carson applied a scorched-earth policy that burned the Navajo fruit trees and crops, then chased the Navajos until they were dead or starving. Those who went to reservations and showed any independence were denied food, blankets and medicine, or were given moldy flour and rancid meat that accelerated their annihilation. The government blamed the spoiled food on frontier traders, but while the Indians were being given tainted food and starved to death, the soldiers guarding them were well fed. Starvation was used as a national policy; it was an act of intentional genocide. It is no coincidence, I suspect, that when Hitler was plotting his Final Solution, he ordered a study of America’s Indian-reservation system. He admired it and wanted to use it in Europe.

Starved, degraded and emotionally depleted, in the end the Indians had no choice but to submit. As Chief Seattle said when he surrendered his tribal lands to the governor of Washington Territory in 1855, “My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea covered its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.…”

Twenty years later, a great leader of the Nez Percé, Chief Joseph, made many accommodations to settlers while trying to preserve his people’s culture. But as in so many cases, the government reneged on the treaties it signed with the Nez Percé: first it forced the tribe onto a wasteland that white men didn’t want, and then, when gold and other minerals were found there, it ordered the Indians off it. The great warrior took his entire tribe—women, children, teepees and all—and, with another chief, Looking Glass, led it on a desperate flight of over 1,500 miles toward Canada, pursued by thousands of cavalrymen. En route, there were fourteen major engagements with the cavalry, and Chief Looking Glass proved himself a brilliant tactician. When they were finally stopped by the army, less than fifty miles from the Canadian border and freedom, Chief Joseph surrendered in a speech that summarized poignantly how a great