The question was simple and matter of a fact. It was all so,.. innocent. But I have suddenly found myself at a loss for words.

My dear friend from Australia has asked me to write about something. I remember our conversation was simple. The question was simple and matter of a fact. It was all so,.. innocent. But I have suddenly found myself at a loss for words.

How do I explain the Indians...?

It is well known I am a half-breed. I walk between two worlds. And I have tried to imagine how our collective history must seem to someone from that distance. I feel so sure that other countries all started the same way, yet, what happened here is not yet, reconciled. History has not yet been told.

It was such an innocent request. But I can not try to address it without making clear, what happened to our people was no less than genocide. It was the slaughter of innocence that will forever stain the foundations of the United States of America with the blood of the annihilated.

The blood of women, babies, the old. The blood of warriors so fierce, they were called 'Braves'.

This is the story of two peoples, one pale and powerful. The other, dark and innocent.

I have seen estimates that suggest how many natives were here in North America when the white man landed. Those estimates go as high as 250 million.

To give you a sense of 250 million people, that is very close to our current population level. When most people think of Indian tribes, or encampments, they usually imagine small bands of nomads in groups of maybe a couple of hundred. It was not like that when the white man landed.

These Indians would have lived in huge mobile cities. An Indian village most likely consisted of THOUSANDS of people. Some took longer term approaches to the land and created the first farming communities. They built few or no permanent structures, as they believed in a total eco-friendly way. They developed written languages, and fought with each other for hunting grounds.

There is many clues, and compelling evidence saying that the trade routes of Native Americans were quite advanced. They probably traded with people as far away as South America to the south and the Eskimos to the north. They mostly shared a common belief that the earth itself could not be owned by mankind. They believed the earth owned THEM.

The earth was their Mother, and she was good to them. The oceans were not so kind.

I have seen many re-enactments of Indians standing around by the coast one day and suddenly seeing a strange vessel that made them all cringe with unexpected trepidation. I believe it may have been very different than that.

Because of a walnut, there is evidence that Viking people had some kind of trade/contact with the Americas for some time. I have a feeling that large European ships may not have been unheard of off the coasts of North America; it may even have been a common site for the Indians.

Certainly the Plains Indians may have been startled, but I think the Coastal Indians probably had a good understanding of those white sails suddenly cresting the horizon. The Vikings may even have traded with them. That is what happens when history is burned; it becomes hard to tell what happened exactly.

It was all a grand adventure in unspoiled majestic lands. Then a tide shifted in Europe and the tsunami that came this way was nothing short of biblical. It is a story that is still pushed away in shame, and left untold and unaccepted, as if denial can stop history from judging the very nature of man, himself.

In Europe, as they grew and cultured themselves, they kept expanding the borders of their known world. Men like the Viking Sailors; they threw themselves to fate and returned heroes for learning the unknown. Trade was forever expanding. Men who made good business got rich and fat from their bounty.

Then things changed. Beads and walnuts were not enough. Blankets, food for travelers were not enough. Word got out that a whole bunch of land lay just across the ocean, unclaimed by Kings or Czars.

Greed became glory, glory became a rallying cry.

Men like Amerigo Vespucchi, and Christopher Columbus took up the cause. Promises were made, glory sought and given.

I am often amazed at the complete ignorance white people show when speaking of Christopher Columbus. It honestly shocks and appalls me at how, robotic, their functioning knowledge of this man is.

Exhibit A...He did NOT bloody discover America. Ever wonder WHY we are NOT named THE COLUMBIAS???

And did you know for example, he kept a daily journal...? This is the moment most white peoples eyes go blank. Surprisingly it is also the moment all people of color arch their eyebrows and say "Oh REALLY?'.

What if everything you knew was wrong?

I often say even though I am both white and Indian, I identify more with Indians cause I look like them. We are the same. But looks alone did not do it, as I was raised as white, in the black and white south.

It was always one or the other for me. I was both. The day I read from Columbus's diary, I had a perceptible shift in my...sympathies.

Peace between these two peoples would not be possible. He never had any intention of it. He says so himself.

History books make a fun scene at the SHOCK the Native Americans showed at the sudden introduction of horses into their lives. Wow ! What MIGHTY NOBEL animals they are!!

Of course they were shocked. That sudden introduction to this new animal happened as they were being run down by them and taken captive or killed by a strangely dressed white man. If you don't believe me, go read Columbus' own words. He gets MUCH more descriptive, and he would know, he was there.

Hey mister! My kingdom for a horse!

America became then, EXACTLY what it is today. The ultimate war prize. Everyone knows what happened after.

'New Subjects' were taken back to present to Her Majesty and Spain looted the resources as best they could. But no matter how hard it was they kept getting better at it. Eventually so did France, and England. All of their armies had a go at us. All of their monarchs plundering entire forests for their own war machines.

And all the while this was happening an entire race was being thrown to one of the most savage slaughters probably ever. The mass population thinning was probably accidental at first. Small Pox. The Indians had no immunity to it. The disease rapidly killed MILLIONS. Entire peoples were erased from the face of the earth. Probably the reason people imagine small bands of people as a 'Tribe' is because by the time history could barely get past that era, entire tribes had been completely annihilated by the disease.

All the white countries fighting agreed on one thing. The more Indians that die, the better it will be for their glorious plans. The theft of a lifetime had begun.

Small Pox eventually was not enough. It did not kill enough of them fast enough. It was very simple really. When you steal someone's land, you have to kill off the heirs and witnesses. Or the ownership of that land will ALWAYS be in question.

The same applies to the genocide of the Jews in Hitler's Germany. It did not start out as genocide. It started out as a campaign of theft. A theft so big, only MURDER could cover it.

Do I think ALL white people that first came here were... Genocidal thinking..? No, but many, many of them were, that is simply undeniable. People in the oppressing race see life MUCH differently than the oppressed view them back.

There was another physical reality of Indians that still to this day lays a shocking waste among the survivors of the native bloodlines. People snicker about it, think it is an inside joke... The fact is that 'joke' started when this knowledge was used against the Indians like a weapon.

Indians have no genetic resistance to alcohol. People do not quite understand the difference between a bloodline that has drank liquor from the beginning of time, and a race that only had alcohol introduced into their bodies say 200 years ago.

Indians can't handle their liquor huh? Yeah, real funny. Ha. Ha. DUHHH

Some things are just so NOT funny.

White man knew it even then. WHY EXACTLY do you think that chief gave up Manhattan for what again..???

Louisiana Purchase... 3$ an acre. What kind of wine do they serve at those negotiations?

You CAN actually go look it up, because there WAS a deliberate campaign to give them booze along with the shaft. History's little inside joke.

Let us review the choices. Here is some booze, some beads, some blankets. Oh and look at the pretty rabbit skins. In return for occupying all of your lands we will send you some rotted beef every Christmas...

OR...

We slap you in the face and if you refuse our bead blanket deal we call it an 'Indian uprising' and bring in an army and cut down your moccasin clad women as they try to shelter your babies with their own bodies while being trampled under the feet of our nifty new introduction to this continent, the horse. We will kill your old even as they cringe from our fire sticks. And we will occupy all of your lands anyway. And anyone left standing will be trampled as well. Isn't a horse useful and EXCITING!!???


Do you realize horses are so stupid they will let themselves be ridden to DEATH? They will return to a burning barn. Some choice. Pass the bottle, and the pipe, and a vision would be nice. Mercy itself would have been a miracle. Many resisted.

Their children were starved, and murdered. It was just the way it was. It was all for a greater glory. It did not matter.

A prize. A people. A winner. A loser. Two bloodlines collide. History will always be written by the winner.

'Manifest Destiny' must have sounded like salvation to men who knew in their hearts the cost of their prize would be written in blood. Perhaps such a catch phrase comforted them enough to let them sleep at night. To these white men, Wounded Knee was nothing more than a slight limp on a cold evening. Ghost dancers were but shadows in the dark.

In the mornings they were heroes. They took the prize by any means necessary.

And let us not forget what they won. Purple Mountain majesty, above the fruited plains. Amber waves of grain. Where God, shed His grace on thee. From sea, to shining sea, an OCEAN of land. Land so vast it encompassed desserts, swamps, valleys, and mighty mountain ranges.

A land with almost a perfect strategic position on the globe, and a vastness of resources that was astounding. A land so large another race of people had to be enslaved to work it. Armies of slaves had to be deployed to tame the earth and bend it to the will of long term plans.

I have often thought that where African history becomes, intersected.. Into the early parts of our history as a nation, the story of the Native Indians gets overwritten.

The focus of history suddenly shifts to a prism seen from the context of slavery, and it is there the genocide is... lost into the consciousnesses of memory.

It is very easy to understand how this happens. Slavery is a horrific sin that is right there in your face, right out in the open. With a pack mentality a whole people can be influenced to believe they can actually own the flesh of another race. All histories have these issues. And here it was wide open, brutal, and in your face on a daily basis. Slavery is a collective sin of the master and those who do not free his slaves from him. Slavery by definition is almost impossible to hide.

Genocide however, can be carried out in silence. Silence is the champion of genocide. The focus of the present sin of slavery takes a direct turn away from those women and children laying dead in the wake of soldiers carrying this nation's flag.

I often wonder about the young soldiers that carried those flags. I think they must have looked just like any young soldier nowadays, sitting in proud blue uniforms, astride a swift and faithful horse. An all American horse, huge, and squared with muscle. Powerful and saddled for battle.

I think of those young men who faced villages, and were told to attack and kill them all. I honestly wonder what was going through their minds as they heard the order. I try to imagine were the conflicting emotions furiously confusing? When understanding dawned, what in the hell were they thinking?

WHY did they go through with it? I can only think of one reason. The PRIZE must be made worth it. There had to be GLORY. It HAD to be WON. Freedom depended on it. They were told it was their 'Manifest Destiny'. They wanted to believe. Men, who ordered, demanded MURDER with a pen stroke were financially invested in it.

This white man I know said recently "I personally think Custer was a bully who got what he deserved." Amen brother man. Tell it like it is.

A bully who has been made a hero. Once again the winner writes history as THEY want it to be. The truth is that when you try to attack women and children when you THINK their men are no where around you wind up as a human pin cushion. History records what it will but he damn sure died knowing he was dying badly. Those braves tore him to pieces. It was well deserved.

And through all of this something very interesting was being cooked up by an elite group of white men known as our Founding Fathers. They wrote a document that literally changed the chances of all oppressed people. The weary, the poor. The masses yearning to breathe free all suddenly had a chance.

For a moment I will forget the Declaration of Independence refers to Native Indians as 'Savages' and 'Godless heathens'. And instead look at the Constitution that followed.

Even though the writers were elite, they gave commoners real power. They had too. They needed armies willing to fight the Red Coats for the PRIZE. As the Constitution was meant to be, it became a living document that was amended, refined with every alteration. The freedoms the Founding Fathers laid out were built upon to give real hope to all people.

For example the 13-15th amendment deals specifically with slavery, and does away with it, and its stigma. It makes the slave the master of his own fate, free from fear or injustice. It gives them a vote by birthright.

But the Constitution is just a sacred piece of paper laying out an idea, a nation. That idea actually took some time to take effect in reality.

Speaking of injustice, in the meantime, the natives became a hunted and shattered race. Want to know the REAL reason why the football mascot 'Red Skins' is offensive..? Because, not too long ago, the United States Government was offering REWARDS for RED SKINS.

Let me repeat that. They were offering REWARDS... for RED.. SKINS. The reward posters were hung up everywhere. It is at the very least a terrible choice of mascots and is insulting even as an innocent joke.

As more and more land was taken from them treaties were made and constantly violated. The Indians were forced onto smaller and smaller tracts of inhospitable and poisoned land. Those who refused were murdered. They were forcefully relocated, their paths marked as the 'Trail of Tears'.

All those with a claim to anything were systematically eliminated, their entire bloodlines erased in the name of the United States Of America.

And no one has ever even apologized for it.

Some very sympathetic and brave white people fought a long hard inner struggle to stop the killings. It is so hard to enjoy your afternoon tea with soldiers parading RED SKINS from their pommels as trophies. I can only imagine how the horse must of felt to have human skins hung from them.

The open slaughter stopped eventually, but the breaking of the survivors was indeed the next best thing. There is also an 'inside joke' among confused people referring to Indians eating dogs. He He, they say.

Yeah, I guess it would seem funny if it was not your families starving after your hunting lands were stolen and the food you were promised as compensation either never came, or was deliberately sent ROTTED. Do you understand what the white hunters did to the buffalo?

They slaughtered them too, for PRIZE. And it helped it was the number one factor in the Indians way of survival. These hunters alone factored into the starvation of maybe MILLIONS of natives. They took the buffalo skins and left the meat to rot even as an entire race faced a holocaust.

They don't teach much about that in the history books in any school I ever went too. It is not something people will just openly speak of, much less debate.

I think there are two reasons this history is just left there, with modern day reservation tribes still trying to recover from the effects of their subjugation to the 'Glory' of the United States of America.

I think the first reason it is not debated or.. 'Cool' . To speak of it is shame. Shame, plain and simple. We all know and understand what happened to these people. We all know our families, in one way or another were involved in it. My blood line is a perfect example of two enemy bloodlines learning how to sleep together. It all becomes a collective guilt where all emotion is voided on purpose.

And the second reason is far more technical. Those in power, those reaping the benefits of being on the winning side of history; they will do all in their power to marginalize or eliminate that debate all together. They HAVE too.

This is where the cleverness of our Founding Fathers shines through in all their 'Glory'.

They do not want that debate because of the Constitution of the United States of America.

A funny thing about that Constitution. It makes clear that law and justice can reach into the highest levels of government. By the magnificence of their own laws, the government of the United States of America can be held directly responsible for genocide.

There is NO Statute of Limitations on MURDER.

To this date the Government of this nation has offered no official apology or absolute protection to the victims' families. There is absolutely NOTHING that assures anyone that such behavior will never happen again.

No apologies show not only a lack of remorse, but a consciousness of guilt. They can not apologize because to do so would be to admit guilt. Admitting guilt would immediately make them liable for their present or past actions.

The Constitution was used to justify an army that decimated a people. The Indians died in the name of the United States of America. They could also be restored by the same document.

But have you ever tried to get rightfully stolen loot returned from any white man that has the power to keep it by any means necessary? Indians would call it 'Restoration', white men would call that an 'Indian Uprising'. And we already have many examples of how that is dealt with.

I do not mean to seem hard on white people. As I said I am white as well. But I see white people in two different groups.

I am often amazed at how many white people are supportive of the rights of the native Indians. Just because no one wants to talk about it does not mean we do not know what happened here. I am often pleased to find a person with non native blood speak elegantly about the quite nobility of these broken people. They toss off scorn from their own to do the right thing.

To this date NONE of the Indian Nations, nor is a collective representation of their position allowed in congress.

There are no congressional or senate seats specifically appointed to represent the Indian tribes that have survived. There are many people of all races whom would support that very thing and be proud to bring rightful history back into its place of honor.

Then there is the other group of white people.

As a half breed child in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma (Sorry they broke that treaty too, It is now the STATE of Oklahoma.) As a child growing up there one of my first memories of being recognized as an Indian in casual company occurred when two old white men told me how beautiful I was, and then teased me about being a 'Squaw'. Another inside 'joke'.

The definition of squaw is literally 'Vagina'. I was 5 years old. I did not even know what it meant. But it was the first time I was ever called that.

They let me know in such a silly manner, in a buckskinned dress and moccasins I would be the prettiest half breed squaw in all of Oklahoma. It was all such a joke really. I even remember it was the first time I ever heard the phrase "But we are ALL Americans now!!"

Now perhaps it was just the way they were taught to be. Maybe they were just very old and senile. I would like to believe both of those. But that was not the last time I was recognized as a half-breed. The Indian kids I went to school with, they knew I was white. The white kids said I was Indian. Neither race felt comfortable with me. They saw what they were taught to see. What they WANTED to see.

Sometimes when I come across the 'OTHER' white people I am startled at how sudden and furiously I go back to those days of trying to sort it all out alone on the playground.

Living in the black and white south I can testify that racism is very real against black people. I can even see many racial tendencies towards Mexicans as well, maybe even more so than blacks.

But even people with apparently NO racial issues... suddenly get on the subject of native Indians and the most shocking venom you have ever heard will stream forth. I have seen and heard racism in all colors, and what I hear from these 'other' white people against natives honest to God goes to a level even I am terrified to approach. The viciousness is hard to understand.

Even knowing I am Indian, even to this INDIAN face of mine I have watched these people come unhinged at the thought that native Indians deserve anything BUT starvation. They call the present day Indians the most.. Inhuman things... I have EVER heard one race say about another. They say it straight to my face as if it just does not matter. As if my pride in being American will supercede my own face.

As if MANIFEST DESTINY is an absolute, that the GLORY of this nation will wipe away the human stain as WE lay our PRIZE at Gods feet. I wonder what kind of horse JESUS would ride to crush women and children into earth that belonged to them by birthright.

To the victor go the spoils. Do you know how many times I have heard that when they run out of moral arguments? They even grin to my face as they say it, so clever they have outsmarted themselves.

TO THE VICTOR GOES THE SPOILS! Yeah, we will keep that in mind for the next 'Indian Uprising'. This time though, we get to bring the horses.

But until then your forked tongue has given the Indian the very mechanics needed for that fine, fine day when 'Restoration' will become a golden age for this nation.

The laws of this nation were written specifically with the intent to make justice possible. The Constitution was written so that it will NEVER be finished. When history is hidden, or ignored by those making it, we can make sure that does not happen again. It may take 20 years, it may take 200 years, but when left uncorrupted we can literally correct history itself.

The truth is many of the Founding Fathers were responsible for the deaths of many, many, many Indians. But the gift they gave us was a better way then they had. When the Indian Nations get a senate seat, it will be working EXACTLY as our Founding Fathers saw it when they reached for a 'Vision'. They themselves would never have dreamed of giving a brown person ANY seat in THEIR Congress or Senate, but all of these men knew that things change. The Constitution allows for that change.

THAT is why I am a true believer in the nation that crushed one side of my families' history into oblivion.

There is no doubt in any circle that the native Indians died in the very name of the United States of America. They ALL died for the 'glory' of this nation. One day this nation will apologize, and thank them for it. It is the right thing to do.

Restoration is something that must be accomplished. Justice demands it. One day the people will demand it too. The ones who did not want to hear it spoke of will act surprised and then call it complicated.

Complicated indeed. A million or so square miles of complicated. A few family fortunes of complicated for sure. But hey, we are ALL Americans now right?

If so, then the Native Tribes of the United States of America deserve a senate seat. Even just ONE would be a great start.

If they were willing to find a better way to manage history they would find one, but it will NEVER be complete without BOTH sides of the story. And ONE side of that story is in fact wholly damming and shameful. If we just held hands and faced it, THEN we could change how this story ends. We could finish it, and never again be ashamed of it.

Once that story is complete I think I will go buy myself a swift horse.

Well, I guess I DID have something to say about it after all. I am not sure if this was the, umm, depiction you wanted. But it is my countries' history as I see it. Some things I simplified, or simply skimmed over, but overall, the story itself cannot be defined by one era, one person, or one event. It is like asking WHY a horse will suddenly turn, and run into the wind.

What has happened to the Indians here is similar to the births of other nations. But, this is not your typical nation, and to view them you must see what they actually are.

They are the rightful OWNERS of the mightiest empire ever known. They were born to it. They were slaughtered, starved, and reviled for it.

But ... As I said...History is not yet finished.

Christy Cole

Thank you friend