Indian Affairs
It is an unfortunate fact that New Mexicans know very little about New Mexican history. There are many reasons for this but basically it is because serious New Mexico history requirements are non-existent in the educational chain (the few weeks in 7th grade don’t do the job). That is part of the reason the Oñate controversy simply will not go away. Ironically, the Oñate issue has opened up vistas which are generally ignored in American historiography. Therefore we have an Orwellian manipulation of information to contend with because the American human rights record regarding Indians is atrocious.
Millions of Native Americans (Amerindians) in what is now the USA were brutally exterminated/deported from their native lands. Contrary to much too popular opinion, this DIDN'T happen in the Southwest under Oñate or the Spanish government. Let us briefly survey “Indian Affairs” in what is now the USA.
(1.)The 1599 war against Acoma was caused by a premeditated Acoma ambush when a handful of invited Spaniards went up to Acoma to trade. The Acomas had their weapons ready to exterminate the Spaniards who believed they were going up to trade iron hatchets, etc., for items like flour as had been prearranged. Some 13 Hispanics were killed whereupon war, not an extermination, was declared, fought, and the village was conquered. Acoma Pueblo lives to this day. Did the foot (toes?) cutting really take place? Twenty-four warriors were sentenced to the dismemberment and 20 years servitude. (If you sentenced someone to slavery for 20 years would you first cut off his foot?) Not a single writer ever recorded that he saw a footless Acoma in New Mexico. John Kessell's researchers on the "Vargas Project" never found a document stating the sentence had been carried out. Yet some writers delight in promoting the foot-cutting.
(2.)The St. Lawrence Day Massacre of August 10, 1680, promoted as the Pueblo Revolt by almost all writers, was a surprise uprising that had genocidal intentions because it targeted non-combatants along with everybody else. Three out of every four dead were innocent women and children. Yet the bloody affair is publicized as a blow against oppression. This is peculiar only to the Hispanic Southwest for no other Indian uprising in what is now the USA has ever been depicted as a blow for freedom. The Orwellian situation is such that Hispanics who preserved Indians are accused of exterminating them. A brief exposition of Indian affairs in what is now the USA is disquieting to many people. For example:
(3.) Who exterminated the Indians along the east coast? The English settlers. They did such a thorough job that today most people can’t even name a sampling of the once numerous tribes that lived there.
(4.) Who ordered the germ warfare use of smallpox against the Indians in 1763 during the Pontiac war? The Englishman Lord Jeffrey Amherst (who was honored by having a college named after him).
(5.) Who ordered the deportation of all Indians from their native lands east of the Mississippi (1830)? President Andrew Jackson.
(6.) Who was responsible for the Council House murders in San Antonio against the Comanches who had been invited to come in and talk peace (March 19, 1840)? Texans.
(7.) Who virtually exterminated the California Indians starting in 1849? The American 49ers.
(8.) Who launched the Sand Creek Massacre (the Amerindians 9-11, which started the longest race war in the history of the USA, the American wars against the Plains Indians) on a peaceful Indian encampment (November 29, 1864)?. Reverend Chivington and his Coloradans.
(9.) Who brutally deported the Navajos from their homeland (1864)? Kit Carson at the head of U.S. Army forces.
(10.) Who perpetrated the Washita Massacre on a peaceful Indian encampment (November 27, 1868)? Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
(11.) Who perpetrated the Camp Grant Massacre (1871)? Citizens of Tucson.
(12.) Who deported the Chiricahuas (including the loyal Apache Scouts who worked for the American Army) from Arizona and sent them to dungeons in Florida (1886)? American authorities.
(13.) Who machine-gunned (Hotchkiss guns) the surrendering refugees of Big Foot’s band of Sioux at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890)? The 7th Cavalry. (This massacre finally ended the American “Indian Wars.”)
Are all of the above the real reasons why demonstrations are tolerated against Oñate? Is Oñate a “safe” issue because Hispanic New Mexicans can be vilified with impunity? What would happen to the protesters if they roared into Taos and demonstrated against Kit Carson?
Rubén Sálaz is the author of EPIC OF THE GREATER SOUTHWEST, a new history to be released in 2004, and of NEW MEXICO: A BRIEF MULTI-HISTORY.
