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Hot Lead or Cold Water
Charles Brill’s account of the November 27, 1868 incident between Black Kettle’s Cheyenne tribe and U.S. 7thCavalry troops led by Lt. Col. George Custer is entitled, Conquest of the Southern Plains: Uncensored Narrative of the Washita and Custer’s Southern Campaign. Brill’s 1938 publication relied on eyewitness accounts from aged Indian survivors of the conflict. Brill personally took Cheyennes Magpie and Little Beaver and Arapaho Left Hand along with government interpreter John Otterby, a.k.a. Lean Elk, to the site of the attack. This article relies on the 2001 republication of Brill’s accounts by the University of Oklahoma Press re-titled Custer, Black Kettle, and the Fight on the Washita.
The fertile Washita River valley area on the western edge of Indian Territory (Oklahoma) had been a common peaceful wintering ground for numerous Indian tribes for countless years before 1868. There was an abundance of water, game, shelter and vegetation. It was also an area set aside for the Indians in several treaties with the United States between Black Kettle’s Cheyenne and other tribes. On the bitterly cold, snow-covered morning of November 27, 1868 the Indians’ only concerns were keeping warm and tending to their horses. Then Custer’s seven hundred mounted soldiers came charging at the sleepy Indians from all sides with rifles blazing and sabers slashing.
Black Kettle was alerted by a woman who had been tending to the horses and first saw the approaching soldiers. When she yelled out “Soldiers, soldiers!”, Black Kettle fired a warning shot with his rifle to awaken the camp. Then Black Kettle drew his wife, Medicine Woman, up behind him on his pony and attempted to flee as he and Medicine Woman shouted warnings to the camp. He and Medicine Woman were then shot and killed. Magpie, one of the eyewitnesses Brill relied upon, heard Black Kettles’ warning shot and exited his lodge just as he heard a trumpet blast from the nearby trees and then saw the mounted soldiers charging into the village from all sides. Magpie was shot in the leg but managed to escape death by entering the freezing water and hiding in the brush along the banks.
As reported by Brill at page 159:
“From every side came the heavy report of carbines. Occasionally an Indian rifle answered. But these were notable for their infrequency. So sudden had been the attack, only a few of the red men had opportunity to arm themselves. Most of those who did so had only bows and arrows. They were powerless to offer serious resistance. Flight was their only objective.
Those villagers whose tepees stood nearest the stream fared better than their friends in the center and on the south side of the camp. First to dash through the icy waters of the Washita and scramble up the opposite bank found themselves running into scouts and sharpshooters who had deployed in the timber there. They also encountered troopers, mounted and dismounted. Seeing escape shut off in that direction, the fugitives accepted the only avenue left open to them, the channel itself. It was misery to wade its ice-fringed waters, but it was either that or bullets.
Women and children, as well as braves, plunged into the stream. Most of them were scantily clad. Many were without moccasins on their feet. Frequently the water reached to the armpits of adults who had to carry the children through these deep pools to prevent their drowning. Desperately they splashed their way beyond the lines of their enemies.”
Sometimes the fog of history eventually is pierced by uncomfortable facts. The Washita massacre was originally reported as a great military victory over savage foes by courageous heroes. Those reports originated from the “heroes”. The facts managed to slowly ooze out over a great deal of time. Those facts established the betrayal of morality and violations of treaties. They do not tell us, “Why?” The reasons may be explained by Pawnee attorney and scholar of law and history Walter R. Echo-Hawk in his book on bad court cases involving Native American treatment by the dominant white culture.
In the Courts of the Conquerors, The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided contemplates the roots of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and its raison d’être, The White Man’s Burden:
“A popular justification for colonialism among the colonizing nations was the white man’s burden. Originally coined by Rudyard Kipling, the term is a euphemism for imperialism based upon the presumed responsibility of white people to exercise hegemony over nonwhite people, to impart Christianity and European values, thereby uplifting the inferior and uncivilized peoples of the world. In this ethnocentric view, non-European cultures are seen as childlike, barbaric, or otherwise inferior and in need of European guidance for their own good. As thus viewed from European eyes, colonization became a noble undertaking done charitably for the benefit of peoples of color.” See p. 16
The concept of exterminating Native American culture as justified because it was replaced with the blessings of Christianity and civilization is hardly a new idea. The Romans by force of arms visited their supposed superior culture on “lesser” peoples as have many dominate societies for thousands of years. The germ of “destroying a culture to save it” is easily discovered by any powerful society that wants to take what some weaker society has. However, that there was ample precedent for the massacre at the Washita does not expiate Custer’s assault and does not obviate the moral imperative to remember it.
November Re-Visited
As first light appeared on the snow covered ground the morning of November 27, 1868, Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle emerged from his tepee as a woman came running across a stream of the Washita River screaming, “Soldiers, soldiers!” Black Kettle must have thought he was re-living the morning of November 29, 1864 on the banks of Sand Creek, Colorado Territory. That is when and where Colonel John Chivington and seven hundred troops of the U.S. Cavalry massacred a large number of Black Kettle’s tribe.
Black Kettle had settled his tribe at Sand Creek at the suggestion of U.S. Cavalry Major Scott Anthony based on the Ft. Wise Treaty of 1861 signed three years earlier. Major Anthony gave Black Kettle a white flag of truce to display to any soldiers who might come upon Black Kettle’s tribe and mistake its members as hostiles. Chivington ignored it. Only three years after the Sand Creek betrayal, Black Kettle and the United States at the Council of Medicine Lodge, Kansas reached another peace treaty ensuring safety and hunting rights for the Cheyenne along the Washita River Valley in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
During the Sand Creek incident Black Kettle’s wife was shot several times but survived. His wife and he were not so fortunate at The Washita. Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and members of the U.S. Cavalry were acting on orders from General Philip H. Sheridan to: “Kill or hang every warrior. Bring back all women and children.” Both Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman, were shot dead while trying to flee.
Oklahoma history professor Arrell Morgan Gibson (1921-1987) in his widely used textbook, The History of Oklahoma, first published in 1972, at page 94 describes The Washita incident:
“During 1868 the tribes of western Indian Territory had been slow in settling on their reservations assigned by the Medicine Lodge treaties. Some warrior bands had raided settlements on the border. To punish these Indians, the Seventh Cavalry, led by George Armstrong Custer, rode out of Fort Supply (in what is now western Oklahoma) in late November 1868. At daybreak on November 27, Custer and his troops reached the Washita River and made a surprise attack at Black Kettle’s Cheyenne camp. The Seventh Cavalry killed more than one hundred warriors and took fifty women and children as prisoners. The soldiers burned the village and captured a large herd of horses. Chief Black Kettle was among the dead. The Battle of the Washita was more of a massacre than a battle.”
There are other descriptions of The Washita incident. One of the versions most sympathetic to the Indians is contained within Oklahoma historian Charles J. Brill’s (1888-1956) account, Custer, Black Kettle and the Fight on the Washita, that was first published in 1938. Brill reported that Custer’s plan was to use his five-to-one advantage over the Cheyenne and surround the sleeping Indians:
“Custer was not long determining his plan of attack. This time (unlike Sand Creek) there would be no opportunity for his intended victims to escape by flight. Before morning he could surround the village. At a given signal the encircling battle line would converge on the unsuspecting Indians, who then would be completely at his mercy. It would be a wipe-out.”
See p. 148
And there are those who observed The Washita incident in more generic terms. In his The Battle of the Washita historian and professor Stan Hoig (1924-2009) says of Sand Creek and The Washita:
“That both events were massacres-which utilized the element of complete surprise against a people who did not consider themselves to be at war in which troops who had orders to kill anyone and everyone before them made no attempt to allow surrender-is hardly deniable by any accepted use of the word ‘massacre’.”
See p. xiii.
Professor Hoig told the story of The Washita as a clash between cultures:
“At stake were the will and conscience of the United States in resolving the great dilemma of the American Indian. It was an issue in which no middle ground was begged, and one for which history offered no definitive answer concerning the rightness or wrongness of one society and people overcoming and displacing another. At hand was not only the question of human morality but also the march of empire and the inevitable contest between barbarism and civilization.”
See p. 184
Oklahoma in November can range from the temperate to the freezing such as occurred on November 16, 2021 (76℉) and November 19, 2021 (31℉). That there was a foot of ice and snow surrounding Black Kettle’s village on November 27, 1868 is not without precedent and that much more died that day than principle and morality is neither.
A special thank you is due to Cheryl Salerno, Librarian of the Oklahoma Wesleyan University Library
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma for her courtesy and assistance.
Raise a Parting Glass
The old Irish folk ballad, “The Parting Glass”, is a favorite Irish drinking song and is almost always sung, often a cappella, to help the dearly departed on their way. Military veterans are also frequently toasted to honor their service as glasses are raised and the ballad is sung. As you will see that tradition was carried from Ireland to America.
It is Veteran’s Day and as a veteran I have been thinking of all the service members, those who have served before and with me and those who are serving now. The United States Air Force was very good to me even though I gave little more than some of my time during a time my time was not otherwise of much value. While in the Air Force I was sent to Indiana University for one year to study a foreign language. Once honorably discharged I received four years of the G.I. Bill. I still receive VA health benefits. If a balance sheet were kept, I would be much more benefitted than contributing. Fortunately, no such accounting is made. So, thank you America.
And it is not just myself in my family who have been blessed to serve. Both of my brothers and my brother-in-law received honorable discharges and veteran’s benefits from the Army. Our father wanted to serve in World War II but a massive heart attack and his age caused Uncle Sam to say “no thanks.” In my immediate family our son, Jim, got his college education at West Point and now receives disability benefits due to physical health problems caused by his active-duty combat service on the front lines of both the Gulf War and the Iraq War. His son, Nick, our grandson, just graduated from Army Ranger School as Jim did about thirty years ago. Nick also got his college education via an R.O.T.C. scholarship thanks to the Army.
During WWII my mother’s three brothers and one of her sisters served as did my wife’s grandfather and two uncles. Each of these honorably serving family members received post-war benefits from a grateful nation. So, once again, thank you America.
Now going back another generation to my grandfather, Adolphus Cash Redwine, who was born in Georgia in 1848 before he moved to southeastern Oklahoma. With grandpa we find a murkier but perhaps more interesting veteran even if I am not sure which color uniform the Civil War era teenaged soldier wore. All I do know is that a few years ago my first cousin, Paul Redwine, who was the eldest son of one of my father’s numerous brothers living in the Wilburton, Oklahoma area told my sister, Janie, another of our uncles, Henry, received a letter of inquiry from the Veteran’s Administration in regard to our grandfather.
The letter stated grandfather’s military records indicated he was entitled to a military grave marker. Please remember this was at a time all service, Confederate or Yankee, was honored. The VA wanted someone to guide them to grandfather’s burial site. Paul said our Uncle Henry volunteered and the federal man showed up in Wilburton, Oklahoma with a bronze marker for grandpa’s grave.
Uncle Henry was one of the few people who knew the place where granddad was buried as grandfather was a Baptist minister who was preaching from the bed of a buckboard at a camp meeting in the remote hills of southeastern Oklahoma when something spooked the team of mules hitched to the buckboard. The mules took off and grandfather was thrown to the ground and killed. The congregation, at my grandmother’s request, buried grandpa right there with a board to mark the spot. That area grew into the tiny Bug Scuffle Cemetery outside Wilburton. Uncle Henry knew generally where the Bug Scuffle Cemetery was located among the sparsely populated hills. Unfortunately, Uncle Henry also happened to be a local source of moonshine. Uncle Henry made the gentlemanly suggestion that before he and the federal man placed the marker on grandfather’s grave, they should raise a toast in his honor using some of the family’s pride. The federal man, probably not wishing to offend, readily agreed.
My guess is grandfather’s military service, whatever it was, was still honorable even if his marker is not on his grave. For, as you see, Uncle Henry and the federal man raised so many parting Ball fruit jars to granddad’s service they never found his gravesite and lost the marker during their search. However, to grandfather and all veterans I am raising a metaphorical parting glass to say thank you and well done, and thank you to America for allowing us to serve.
Death Is Swallowed Forever (Isaiah 25:8)
Barbara (Taylor) Pease passed away ten days after my brother Phil Redwine. Their Baptist Christian services were similar in several comforting ways. They were also differing as Phil’s funeral was in Norman, Oklahoma and Barbara was honored as a member of the Osage Nation in Indian Camp in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Peg and I had attended Barbara’s mother, Judy Taylor’s, funeral in 2016 and were moved by the Osage graveside rites. Perhaps the coincidence of my appointment as a Special Judge in a recent Indian law case made Barbara’s services even more impressive to Peg and me. I know I was surprised about how little I knew of Osage traditions even though I was born and raised in Pawhuska.
As part of my legal research into an area of the law completely new to me I went to my personal library and reviewed my autographed copy of John Joseph Mathews’ book, The Osages, Children of the Middle Waters. Mr. Mathews was well known to my parents and, at our mother’s request, Mathews signed a copy of his book “with special pleasure” to my brother Phil and me. Mathew’s extensive scholarship into Osage traditions brought out the beauty and solace of Osage burial rites.
Barbara’s services included former Osage Chief Johnny Red Eagle fanning over Barbara’s body with an eagle-tail fan. This impressive ritual reminded me of the following passage in Mathews’ book that described a burial of several Osage members of a hunting party who were killed by a lightning strike:
“The survivors came into the village carrying their comrades and singing their song of death. The Little Old Men looked at the sky in fear, then fanned away the evil spirit from the bodies with an eagle-tail fan…”
See Page 68
At Barbara’s services Palee Redcorn sang beautiful, haunting and comforting acapella renditions of hymns in the Osage language and then transitioned seamlessly into English versions. One of those death songs was the traditional Christian hymn, “Amazing Grace”. At my brother’s funeral his youngest son, Ryan, who is an ordained Baptist minister, sang a deeply felt acapella version of “Amazing Grace” from the pulpit.
Of course, Ryan also gave a marvelous and inspiring message under the most difficult of emotions to honor his father much as Reverend Scott Kohnle of the Indian Camp Baptist Church spoke for Barbara. I do not know if Ryan’s mother’s Native American heritage influenced Ryan’s message for his Dad, but I do know Ryan and Scott both captured the essence of Barbara’s family’s and our grief and pride in our loved ones. Barbara and Phil were similar in their kindness and generosity and in their steadfast pride and support of their numerous grandchildren.
To lose two such priceless members of our small circle within ten days of one another was a lot to bear, but the thoughtful and heartfelt services helped. Peg and I now better understand the communal support of family and tribe.
Mr. Thomas, Meet Phil Redwine
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was a Welsh poet who was imploring his dying father to fight against death. Dylan pleaded with his dad:
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
The bravest fighter against Death I have ever known was my 79-year-old brother, Philip W. Redwine. Death was playing against Phil with a stacked deck but Phil kept drawing to inside straights for 34 years after Death thought it had dealt Phil a losing hand. The ultimate outcome was never in doubt but the timing sure was.
In 1987 Phil had a wife to help support and three young children to rear when, as country singer Tim McGraw sang:
“He was in his early forties (Phil was 44) with a lot of life before him when a moment came that stopped him on a dime.”
The oncologists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington told Phil he could die within 4 months but certainly would not live beyond 2 more years. Phil and our sister, Jane Redwine Bartlett, had gone to Seattle so Phil could apply to be a part of an experimental treatment program as Phil’s physicians in Norman, Oklahoma where Phil practiced law told Phil he only had 6 months to live. The Fred Hutchinson medical team apologized to Phil when they told him the cut off age for the experimental treatment study was 40. As Jane reported to our oldest brother C. E. Redwine and his wife Shirley and me, Phil simply responded that the Fred Hutchinson team, “Was not talking to the Phil Redwine who was dying, but to the Phil Redwine who was living and they were going to want him as a model for their study.” He asked them for the treatment even if he was not included in the study. After an overnight meeting Fred Hutchinson agreed to let him try.
So, for 34 years Phil practiced law, supported his family and was deeply involved in giving of his very limited time and limitless talents to his community. He endured chemotherapy, radiation, kidney failure, heart disease and cancer induced diabetes as he gave love and free legal advice to countless family members and friends. Phil could have been the model for the author of the Book of Proverbs. Just a few of the truisms that Phil’s life exemplified are:
Proverbs 13:22 “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.”
Proverbs 19:11 “Good sense makes a man slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
Phil would always listen respectfully to another’s point of view and would hear them out completely before agreeing or, gently, disagreeing.
Proverbs 18:2 “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”
Proverbs 18:13 “If one gives answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”
Proverbs 18:15 “An intelligent mind acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
When you sought advice from Phil you knew he would carefully consider everything that you said then he would respond wisely and never make you feel lesser. Perhaps his constant companion, Death At Any Moment, guided his thoughts and helped him see others as Ernie Pyle said about soldiers in World War II:
“When you’ve lived with the unnatural mass cruelty that mankind is capable of inflicting on itself, you find yourself dispossessed of the faculty for blaming one poor man for the triviality of his faults.”
And perhaps his own constant vulnerability filled him with a passion to champion those who could not champion themselves. Phil fought the good fight for good causes in and out of court and often at immense cost to himself. He will be greatly missed, but his legacy is long and strong. Well done, Brother, you are my hero.
Tribal Court
After forty years of serving as a judge in the white man’s courts I was recently honored to be asked to serve as a Special Judge by appointment of the Court of Appeals of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community of the Mohican Nation. The appointment of an outside judge was necessary because the case involves questions of tribal membership and the regularly sitting Native American judges for the Tribe had conflicts of interest due to the judges’ personal connections to the issues.
As I had no experience with Native American law, I had to first familiarize myself with the particular Tribe’s particular Constitution, procedural rules and statutes that applied to my assigned case. What I found was the bedrock issues for the Indian judicial system are remarkedly similar to the legal system I learned in law school and sat as a judge in. When I looked closely at tribal law, I came to the same conclusion attorney Abraham Lincoln did. Lincoln said the primary purpose of all courts and lawyers should be to:
“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker, the lawyer (judge) has a superior opportunity of being a good person.”
If one reads some newspaper editors or listens to cable news anchors, he or she might conclude compromise is anathema to the American body politic’s well-being. Conflict and strife with unyielding single mindedness are the watchwords for national media and federal, and many state, office holders. This way of addressing our personal and national problems seems rather discordant when a majority of Americans apparently believe their preferred law giver said:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”
Matthew 5:9
It is ironic that those, many of whom champion Jesus the ultimate practitioner of compromise, so often call for obstinance and conflict. I guess the concept of situational ethics passes them by.
What I discovered in researching tribal law was what legal scholars have known since the days of Socrates: all courts are here to resolve controversies. That is their only charter, not to provide fodder for the gossip mill or entertainment for the afternoon or late-night talk show crowd. Judges, whether in the white man’s legal system or the Indian’s, have one main mission, that is to help people help themselves, if they can, to make peace.
I grew up on an Indian reservation but my experience with the kids I played ball with, fought with and dated was they were just like me. Therefore, I was not surprised Native American courts had the same mission as the one I presided over in the white man’s world. On the other hand, it is comforting to think should I for some reason get caught up in a tribal legal system it will be about the same as the social system I have always known. And I am glad America is finally getting around to recognizing what should have always been the case.
The tribal law I researched reminded me of laws enacted from the times of ancient Rome, ancient Greece and English and French legal philosophers, such as John Locke and Voltaire and American Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Another great philosophical legal leader was Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (1840-1904). Chief Joseph engaged in peaceful resistance until he was forced to surrender which he did based on certain representations from the white man’s government. Those representations were not honored. However, Chief Joseph upheld his end of the peace agreement and he was greatly admired as a peacemaker.
Chief Joseph’s legal philosophy is remarkedly similar to that of our earlier mentioned judge: Jesus said, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Chief Joseph said:
“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them the same law.”
As a tribal judge, even if only for one case, I feel quite at home with this court mission statement from Chief Joseph.