Tale of Tears

 

   It was on this day in 1918, that U.S. Army soldiers skirmished with several Yaquis Indians in the Battle of Bear Valley in Arizona. The Yaquis leader was killed and nine Indians were captured. It was the last time the U.S. Army fought with Indians and it's considered the official end of the American Indian wars which had begun more than three centuries earlier.

   We could say the wars really began nine centuries earlier when the Vikings arrived. The Viking sagas report that the Vikings gave as good as they got, but they lacked guns and millions of other Vikings to follow up their beachhead, and were forced to retreat to Greenland and Iceland.

   When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, the Indians welcomed him. But Columbus insisted on enslaving the locals to dig for gold. The Indians did not take to this lifestyle and died off in great numbers. If they complained about conditions, they were killed. 

   It's sheer guesswork, but scientists think there were at least fifty million and possibly a hundred million Indians in the Americas when Columbus arrived. These numbers were reduced by about 90% in the coming centuries. Ninety percent of that 90% died from disease, and only 10% died by other means such as wars, massacres, forced relocations, etc.

   There are a couple of theories about why so many of the indigenous peoples died of diseases. One is that the local peoples had no resistance to the European diseases. The other theory says they may have had no resistance to the diseases, but under normal conditions, they would have built up resistance and their population should have recovered. The conditions the Europeans forced the Indians into, slavery and relocations, set them up for huge losses of population which could not be recovered  

   Smallpox was the biggest killer. The Europeans who were moving into the Midwest knew about inoculation and the need for quarantine, but making money was more important to them than disease prevention. There is evidence that goods infected with the smallpox virus was intentionally sent to uncooperative tribes.

   It's hard to make an exciting story about disease, which I think is why the relatively less deadly Indian wars have gotten so much of the attention. There were wars right from the beginning. The Indians were almost always welcoming at first. They wanted the conveniences the Europeans had: iron pots, steel knives, and especially guns. But the Europeans had strange ideas about the land. They thought a person could own it and keep others off. This is where all the trouble started.

   There were hundreds of wars big and small over the next three centuries. Sometimes the Indians allied themselves with one group of Europeans against another, but once one European group came out on top, the Indian allies were pushed aside. Not long after the Battle of Bear Valley noted above, the total population of Indians in the U.S. dropped to it's lowest point of about half a million. It has since rebounded to almost seven million according to the latest census.

   So what was the Battle of Bear Valley about? The Yaquis Indians were actually from Mexico. They were trying to establish a sovereign state along the Gulf of California. They would work on the citrus farms around Tucson, then buy guns and ammunition with their wages and return to Sonora to carry on their war with the Mexican government. 

   The Mexicans asked the U.S. for help with this gun smuggling, but nothing happened till farmers in Arizona complained that their cattle were disappearing. The Army's10th Cavalry composed of Buffalo (Black) soldiers was sent into the desert to look for the Yaquis. They found them in Bear Valley on their way to Mexico. The nine captured Yaquis had formed a rear guard to allow 20 others to get across the border.

   There was an 11 year old boy among the prisoners. Charges were dropped against him, but the other eight were sentenced to 30 days in jail on a charge of "wrongfully, unlawfully, and feloniously exporting arms and ammunition to Mexico without first procuring an export license." After completing their sentence, all the prisoners opted to remain in the U.S. The Army offered them jobs at the fort.

   There was one final conflict, the Posey War in Utah in March, 1924. But that was between Ute and Paiute Indians and Mormons, not the Army and is not counted as an official "war." In 2009, President Obama signed a Native American Apology Resolution in which the president apologized, not for the government's actions, but on behalf of the American people, for instances of violence and neglect against Native peoples. 

   The apology resolution was buried in a big defense appropriations bill and was never spoken aloud by the president. It also contained a disclaimer stating that the resolution does not support any claims against the United States. Reparations, anyone? Maybe the government thinks having a license to vacuum the pockets of gullible casino visitors is reparations enough.

Who owns the land?  Photo by Edward Curtis, 1904