On a cold day in May 1758, a 10-year-old girl with red hair and freckles on her face, caring for the children of neighbors in rural western Pennsylvania. In a few moments, Mary Campbell's life changed forever, when Delaware Indians kidnapped her and included her in their community for the next six years.
He was the first of about 200 known cases of kidnapping white people, many of whom were at stake in the ongoing power struggle that included European countries, American colonies, and indigenous peoples who tried hard to defend their population, land, and their way of life.
Although Mary finally returned to her white family - and some evidence shows that she had lived happily with the Indians who adopted her - her experience was a warning to white settlers, which sparked fears of barbarous Indians, and created paranoia which escalated into hatred of Indian tribes.
Reporting from History.com, since Europeans arrived on the American coast, the coastal region became a shared space between conflicting differences, which caused the government of the United States (US) to authorize more than 1,500 wars, attacks and raids against Indians —The most attacks ever done by any country in the world against its original inhabitants.
At the end of the Indian War at the end of the 19th century, around 238 thousand native populations still remained — a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million Indian tribes who lived in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492.
There are many reasons for this racial genocide. The invaders - most of whom were prohibited from inheriting property in Europe - arrived on the American coast and thirsty for Indian land, and the abundant natural resources that accompanied it. Indian collusion with Britain during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, exacerbated American hostility and suspicion of them.
Even more basic, Indians are too different: Their skin is dark. Their language is foreign. And their worldview and spiritual beliefs are beyond the comprehension of most white people. For the invaders who were afraid that their loved ones might become the next Mary Campbell, all this sparked racial hatred and paranoia, which made it easy for them to describe the Indians as bar people who had to be killed in the name of civilization and Christianity.
The following are some of the most aggressive acts of genocide ever committed against Native Americans, according to a History.com report:
GNADDENHUTTEN MASSACRES
In 1782, a group of Moravian Protestants in Ohio killed 96 Christian Delaware Indians, which illustrates the increasing insult to the natives. Captain David Williamson ordered repentant Delaware citizens - blamed for attacks on white settlements - to go to a can shop, where the militias beat them to death with wooden hammers and axes.
Ironically, the Delaware were the first Indians to arrest a white settler and the first to sign a US-Indian agreement four years earlier — an agreement that set a precedent for 374 Indian agreements over the next 100 years.
Often using the common phrase "peace and friendship", 229 this agreement caused the tribal lands to be surrendered to the rapidly developing United States. Many of these agreements negotiated US-Indian trade relations, and established trading systems to overthrow the British and their goods — especially weapons that they put in Indian hands.
TIPPECANOE BATTLE
In the early 1800s, the revival of the charismatic warlord Shawnee, Tecumseh, and his brother, known as the 'Prophet', convinced the Indians of various tribes, that it was in their interest to stop tribal disputes and band together to protect their common interests.
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The decision by Indiana County Governor (who later became President) William Henry Harrison in 1811 to attack and burn Prophetstown - the Indian capital on the Tippecanoe River - while Tecumseh was campaigning among the Choctaws to get more soldiers, incited the Shawnee leader to attack again .
This time he persuaded Britain to fight with his soldiers against America. Tecumseh's death and defeat at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, made the Ohio border "safe" for settlers — at least temporarily.
CREEK WAR
In the South, the War of 1812 changed to the Muskogee Creek War of 1813-1814 — also known as the Red Scepter War. Being an inter-tribal conflict between the Creek Indian factions, the war also involved US militias, along with Britain and Spain, who supported the Indians to help prevent America from violating their interests.
Creek's initial victory inspired General Andrew Jackson to retaliate with 2,500 people - mostly Tennessee militiamen - in early November 1814. In retaliation for the Creek-led massacre at Fort Mims, Jackson and his men slaughtered 186 Creek tribes in Tallushatchee. "We shoot them like dogs," said Davy Crockett.
Desperately, the Muskogee Creek women killed their children, so that their children would not see the soldiers slaughtering them. When a woman is about to kill her baby, the famous Indian warrior, Andrew Jackson, takes the child from his mother. Later, he gave the Indian baby to his wife, Rachel, and raised him like their own child.
Jackson then wins the Red Stick War in a decisive battle at Horseshoe Bend. The next agreement requires that Creek surrender more than 21 million hectares of land to the United States.
FORCED DISPOSAL
One of the most contentious issues on the Congress floor was the Indian Expulsion Bill of 1830, which was pushed by then President Andrew Jackson. Although it was attacked by many legislators and called amoral, the bill was finally passed in the Senate by a margin of nine votes, 29 to 17, and by a smaller margin in the DPR.
In Jackson's thoughts, more than three dozen eastern tribes blocked what he saw as settler rights to clear the wilderness, build houses, and plant cotton and other plants.
In his annual address to Congress in 1833, Jackson denounced the Indians, stating, "They do not have the intelligence, industry, moral habits, or desire for improvement that is important for making every change. Being in the midst of another superior race ... they must surrender to the power of circumstances, before disappearing. "
From 1830 to 1840, US troops removed 60,000 Indians — Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and others — from the East in return for new territory west of Mississippi. Thousands of people died along the road known as the "Tear trail". And as white people continue to push westward, the territory for Indians continues to shrink.
MANKATO EXECUTION
Provisions promised to the Indians through government treaties were later realized, which made Dakota Sioux residents - who were banned on land on the Minnesota border - hungry and desperate.
After the raid on the nearby white farm for food led to a deadly dispute, Dakota residents resumed their search, leading to the Little Crow War of 1862, in which 490 settlers - mostly women and children - were killed.
President Lincoln sent an army, which defeated the citizens of Dakota; and after a series of mass trials, more than 300 Dakota men were sentenced to death.
Although Lincoln reduced most of the sentence, on the day after Christmas in Mankato, military officials hanged 38 Dakota citizens at once — the largest mass execution in American history. More than 4,000 people gathered on the streets to watch, many carrying picnic baskets. Thirty-eight people were buried in shallow graves along the Minnesota River, but doctors dug up most of the bodies to be used as medical corpses.
SLAUGHTER SAND CREEK
The Indians who fought to defend their people and protect their homeland, provided much justification for American troops to kill Indians on the border, even for those who were peaceful.
On November 29, 1864, a former Methodist pastor, John Chivington, led a surprise attack on peaceful Cheyennes and Arapahos at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. His force consisted of 700 people, mainly volunteers in the First and Third Colorado Regiments.
Drunk from drinking too much the previous night, Chivington and his men bragged that they would kill the Indians. Once upon a time, Chivington stated, "Away with those who sympathize with the Indians! I came to kill Indians, and I believe it is right and honorable to use all means under God's heaven to kill Indians. "
On that cold morning, Chivington led his army against 200 Cheyennes and Arapahos. Cheyenne Black Kettle leader, had tied the American flag to the pole of his cabin when he was ordered, to show that his village wanted to make peace. When Chivington ordered the attack, Black Kettle tied a white flag under the American flag, calling on his people that the soldiers would not kill them. But as many as 160 people were slaughtered, mostly women and children.
CUSTER CAMPAIGN
This time, a war hero from the Civil War appeared in the West. George Armstrong Custer rode with the Irish Seventh Cavalry, mostly Irish. Custer wants fame, and killing Indians - especially those who are peaceful and not hoping to be attacked - is an opportunity.
On orders from General Philip Sheridan, Custer and the Seventh Cavalry attacked Cheyennes and their Arapaho allies on the western border of the Indian Territory on November 29, 1868, near the Washita River. After slaughtering 103 soldiers, plus women and children, Custer told Sheridan that "a great victory had been achieved," and described that, "One, the Indians were asleep. Two, women and children don't give much resistance. Three, Indians are confused by our policy changes. "
Custer then led the Seventh Cavalry in the northern plains against Lakota, Arapahos, and North Cheyennes. He boasted, "The Seventh Cavalry can handle whatever it encounters," and "there are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry."
Hoping for another big victory, Custer attacked the gathering of the greatest warriors on the plateau on June 25, 1876 - near the Little Big Horn river in Montana. Custer's death at the hands of the Indians increased propaganda for military revenge, to bring "peace" to the border.
WOUNDED KNEE
Anti-Indian anger increased in the late 1880s, when the spiritual Ghost Dance movement emerged, which spread to dozens of tribes in 16 states, and threatened attempts to assimilate tribal communities culturally.
Ghost Dance - which taught that Indians had been defeated and locked up because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs - called for rejection of the white man's way of life.
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In December 1890 — a few weeks after the famous Sioux Sitting Bull Chief was killed when captured — the US Army's Seventh Cavalry massacred 150 to 200 Ghost Dance members in Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
For the massacre they committed against Lakota, President Benjamin Harrison gave about 20 soldiers the Medal of Honor.
RESILIENCE
Three years after Wounded Knee, Professor Frederick Jackson Turner announced at a small meeting of historians in Chicago, that "the borders have been closed," with his famous thesis that put forward American exclusions.
The famous statue of James Earle Fraser's "End of the Trail" - which debuted in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco - exemplifies the idea of a race that was destroyed and disappeared. Ironically, more than 100 years later, the American Indian population has survived into the 21st century and swelled to more than 5 million people, according to History.com.
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