was wounded knee a terrible tragedy? was that a massacre? i found the mythology of the andan wars intruding obscuring the answers. i think i have worked out the answers to these and other significant questions pertaining to the american west to my satisfaction. answersou will find my to your satisfaction as well. in working out these questions and developing a narrative, i again had to cut through this shroud of mythology that has andloped the indian wars, that is what i want to talk about this afternoon. myth alwaysee, distorts history, but the indian wars are like the frontier in general, the indian wars are particularly uniquely susceptible to mythmaking. i would argue after working on my book that there is no other at stake in our nation's history that is more deeply steeped in myth than the error of the indian wars of the american west. years, much of both popular and even academic history, film and fiction, has depicted the period as an absolute struggle between good and evil. , he rose and roles villains as necessary to accommodate a changing national conscience. in the first 80 years following the tragedy of wounded knee and 1891, which marked the end of indian resistance, the nation romanticized and lionized indian fighters, while at the same time trivializing or vilifying the indians who resisted them. the army appeared as the shining nice of an enlightened of anment -- knights enlightened government dedicating to civilizing the west and its native american inhabitants. know when i think better conveys that sense than the cinematic duo of john wayne and director "sheford in films like wore a yellow ribbon" and rio -- "rio grande" and on and on. the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme, americans were developing an acute sense of the countless wrongs done to the indians. remember this was about the same time as the civil rights movement was burgeoning. writtenpassionately "bury my heart at wounded knee" and our friend "little big man" shaped the new saga that articulated the nation's feeling of guilt. with books like "bury my heart at wounded knee" and "little big man" public mine came to see the government and the army as willful exterminators of the native peoples of the west, and so it continues in large measure in popular culture even today. in the "earth is weeping", i tried to bring a historical balance to the story of the indian wars. use a word like restore historical balance, which often in revisionist history, this author has restored balance -- i hesitate to use that word because in the case of the indian wars, it is the pendulum swings that have largely defined society's understanding of the period. the first step to presenting a balanced history is to strip away the myths. tore are far too many myths address them all today, so out what i would like to do in the time we have is to address what i consider to be the three most myths and the three that are most commonly held, certainly the ones people repeated me and discussing the indian wars must frequently. here they are. myth in, that was hellar army -bent on killing indians. number two government indian policy was extermination is. st. three theumber indians united to resist. -- i apologize before hand, but i will try to compensate for that. editorughly is that the of the indian wars, the area .hat is addressed in my book essentially it is all of the united states west of the missouri river and the arkansas the way west to the eastern border of california, and even spilling over into the northwest, pacific northwest, from the border of canada all arizona andh beyond texas, new mexico, even into northern mexico. tribes, i will limit my remarks to the principal tribes that we will be talking about this evening, they are the tribes of the lakota nation that occupied much of eastern montana, dakota territory, and some of nebraska. cheyenne.hern closer to home, the shoshone, , the southern cheyenne, the kyowa, the pawnee of modoc or and the gone-california border, and idaho. those of the tribes we will be referring to. the lakota nation, the largest most powerful indian people on ins, allies of northern cheyenne, southern cheyenne, the apache, the shoshone, crow, pawnee of of thea, and the modoc oregon-california border. , i hope i have given you a bit of a field. i apologize for the size of this map. let's go ahead and debunk our , beginning with the false notion that the army was eager to kill indians. thisanyone recognize jaunty gentleman? that's right. crook. george he had a habit of issuing , he wrote to campaign pans helmet, jacket, and carrying a shotgun. he was quite a character. he was also one of the army's , absolute premier, fighting general and the west. of the indianght wars, a newspaper reporter asked him how he liked his job. crook reply, not much. it was a hard thing, he explained, to be forced to do battle with indians who more often than not wear in the right, croo. i do not wonder and you will not wonder either that when indians see their wives and children starving and their source of supplies cut off, they go to war, and then we are sent out there to kill them. it is an outrage. all tribes tell the same story. they are surrounded on all sides. their game is destroyed or driven away. they are left to starve, and there remains the one thing for them to do, to fight while they can. our treatment of the indian is an outrage." that a general would offer such candid and forceful public defense of the indians during the course of the indian wars may seem implausible today because it contradicts that wast myth, that the army the implacable foe of the indians, and other words hell- on killing indians. let's consider these two distinguished gentleman. this is a photograph taken years after hostilities ended. the man holding the large hat is chief joseph. the man beside him is colonel of you mays, some know john givens from the battle of gettysburg. he almost single-handedly defeated pickets charge. chief joseph was the leader, the leader of one band of the nest -- indians. otherssted that he and killed to idaho, but was and the indians led east. colonel gibbons was ordered to intercept them. of august 7, 18 77, gibbons deployed his 155 men on hill at big hole, montana territory. gibbons would have been sitting right about here in the dark, the village was arrayed along the big hole river down here. dawn was still several hours away, and given had nothing much on occupy his time -- gibb had nothing much to occupy his time, so he meditated on the morale of the of his mission. later, he shared with the bishop of montana the misgivings he felt while sitting on that hill waiting to attack the unsuspecting indians in the morning. "knowing our peaceful disposition as you do, you can fancy a seated for hours in the darkness of the night within playing hearing of a parcel of crying babies and the talk of their fathers and mothers waiting for light enough to commence a slaughter, which we knew from the nature of things must necessarily be promiscuous. we had ample time for reflection , and i for one could not help thinking that this in human task was forced upon us by a system of fraud and in justice which had compelled these poor wretches to assume a hostile attitude towards the white." well, the slaughter was all that bbon feared it would be. 19 were killed or wounded among them, and women and children. lost half of his command and would have been wiped out himself had the indians not been more interested in continuing their flight for freedom than infighting. -- in fighting. corralleds were final by colonel nelson miles on a snowy morning of october 5, 1877 in montana and forced a surrender. withel miles seen here chief joseph, colonel miles took no pleasure in his victory. fraud and ind that " justice" had precipitated the conflict, and he thought that the indians were "would be made in six months with anything like honesty and justice on the part of the government." threateneople of idaho to lengthy indians if they returned, so the federal government felt compelled to shun them to a reservation in present-day oklahoma. it was a rather dubious act of mercy. a country unfamiliar to them, nearly every baby born died of disease. miles made come, common cause with chief joseph and loudly protested the governments treatment of the indians. miles was not the only high-ranking officer to defend the indians against injustices. another prominent general, john pope, who some of you may know as the loser of the second battle of bull run to robert e. lee, john pope actually suggested that soldiers be sent to hopi indians it eliminate white interlopers on indian land. at stake in this instance was a very survival of the way of life of the southern plains tribes. in 1860 been defeated nine and concentrated also on reservations in present-day oklahoma, which was then called indian territory. livedur years, the tribes a sort of half-life, supplementing their too often meager government rations with buffalo meat. white buffalo hunters came. they had decimated the herds of western canada, and now they set up shop in an abandoned trading post on the texas panhandle called adobe walls, and then resume the killing on indian reservation land. few unfortunately besides the indian cared. in fact, general pope's superior officer, general philip h sheridan, reveled at the slaughter. he told the legislature of texas, which actually was contemplating a buffalo conservation bill, that the buffalo hunters had "done more to settle the indian problem in two years than the army had done .n 30 for the sake of lasting piece, let them kill and skin until the buffalo is exterminated." well, sheridan making these lofty pronouncements assume the fighting spirit had left the southern plains tribes. he was wrong. 1874, 500 june 27, warriors spilled down a steep ridge a half-mile east of adobe walls and made a -- to wipe out the despised buffalo hunters. the doors of the shack slams shut and the 29 white men battled the attackers to a standstill. one of the buffalo hunters managed to slip through the indian lines at night and right to kansas for help. the governor of kansas in turn appealed to general pope to dispatch troops to raise a siege. the governor turned to the wrong man. general pope turned him down flat. "indians, like white men, are not reconciled to start peacefully," he told the governor. the buffalo hunters deserve all that may befall them. locality of these unlawful establishments, i would break them up and not protect them." generalponse infuriated sheridan. sheridan ordered pope to send theps forth with to save buffalo hunters at adobe walls. in the meantime, however, the wearied of the struggle and withdrawn. stand principle costs in his command and affected his future in the army. gaveer general substantially more in the interest of justice. he sacrificed his life. 1873, he was here in the lava beds of northern california trying to bring an 60 to a standoff between well entrenched modoc war ayers and their families and nearly warriors had 60 been holding off 400 soldiers for approximately four months in the lava beds of northern california. modocs had legitimate grievances, the white ranchers of or gone unwillingly abetted by the army had driven the modocs from the small parcel of land they claimed as their own. .en died on both sides, in the interest of further agreed,d, peace was even though an interpreter, who was a modoc woman herself and happen to be jack's cousin, --ged the general not to have warned him that treachery was afoot. , 1873, theday general, modoc interpreter, and a husband, and to frighten piece commissioners, met captain jack and modoc leaders at a peace tent between lines. the general handed out cigars friends, my modoc heart feels good today." those were his last words. blumts later, captain jack the general's face-off with a revolver. there is his cross in the lava beds. he was the only general officer to die in the indian wars. , what are we to conclude from these episodes? from crops comments to the press comments to the press, from popes principle stand? truths thatsential apply to the indians deeply disturbed most senior officers in the army, even sheridan expressed regret at his duty at times. not, more often than senior officers in the military sympathized with the hostile indians they were charged with subduing. ok, so much for misnome myth nur one, book what about government policy? we can debate the wisdom and morality ad nauseam, but it cannot in any way shape or form be said that the government ever intended to physically exterminate the indians. myth number two bank, government indian policy was extermination ist. this happens to be a delegate of indian chiefs visiting president lincoln, and in the corner here is mary todd lincoln. policy was notan in any way shape or form nist.minatio rather the government response to what was commonly called the indian problem was inconsistent. massacres did occur, and they do ,ppear in my book unvarnished and treaties were broken regularly, the government never contemplated genocide, despite what you may read in some books specials onome tv the west. mustthe indian way of life be a eradicated if the indians were to survive was taken for granted, however. culpable genocide, so to speak, was taken for granted. physical genocide, never contemplated. federal indian policy actually evolved in fits and starts in the years after the civil war. when the war ended, indian policy was in complete tatters. you can imagine that all the attention had been occupied with the feeding the confederacy. neither the president or congress was able to fashion coherent indian policy, which kept things as william t sherman put it -- another problem that compounded the difficulties was rampant corruption in the indian bureau. timeis a cartoon from the for training the corruption in the indian bureau. there was a popular story of the time that was told of a chief who described his indian agent and a conversation with general sherman and these terms. "chief, great man -- excuse me, agent, great man." when h. when he comes, he brings to bags. when he goes, it takes a steamboat to carry away his things." grant9, ulysses s. declared to the nation "let us , speaking about the reconstruction south in the indians in the west. grant instituted a carrot and stick policy that came to be known as the peace policy. again, here making fun of the policy. grant was serious in this respect. he replaced correct indian natives with religious men, especially quakers, and officers. he established independent oversight of the indian bureau, of appointed as commission indian affairs, a full-blooded indian. this was not a panacea to indians because parker subscribed to the prevailing view that the indians future, only future, late in acculturation. parker acting on instructions from grant directed indian agents to do the following. theirmble the indians and jurisdiction on permanent reservations that were well removed from white overland travel routes in the west and from white supplements, and then once they were assembled, to get them started on the road to christianization and civilization, and above all to treat them with kindness and patience. indians who refused to settle on the reservation would be turned over to military control and treated as open and friendly or hostile as circumstances might justify." although kindness and patience, not to mention common decency, were often lacking in and limitation of grants policy, the principles that parker articulated in 1869 officially guided federal policy throughout most of the indian wars er despite these laudable principles, the end result was to dispossess the indians of their land. said ofd lakota chief the government after the indian they were over, he said " made us many promises, more than i can remember, but they never kept but one. they promised to take our land, and they took it. naturally arises, how to the indians respond to the broken promises and the relentless white encroachment on their lands? that brings us to the third and final enduring myth i want to dispel today. the myth that the indians united against the whites, that there was a unified against encroachment. take ledgerwould books that they had found, and they would draw scenes of combat on the books, and more often than not it was indians fighting indians. here we see a cheyenne warrior awneeing his lance into a warrior. they also continued to make war on one another throughout these three decades of the indian wars with the whites. the problem was that intertribal warfare was simply too deeply ingrained in their cultures for them to act otherwise. there was no sense of what i nness" until it was too late. war, athe course of the man happened to ask a cheyenne chief why they prayed on their crow neighbors. "we stole theied, hunting grounds of the crows because they were the best. we wanted more room." chief told ata tree negotiator, "you have split my land and i do not like it, those lands once belonged to the iowa and the crows, but we whipped them. did towhat the white man the indians." thing that is even more frequently lost in the midst of these indian wars then the question of the united resistance and intertribal conflict are the numerous tribes that actually accepted the white presence. for those of you like myself who have read "bury my heart at wounded knee," when he speaks of crow, he speaks of them as mercenaries. because they happened to side in thee government westward march of whites. they were essentially adopting the adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. pawnee of nebraska were vitally important to the construction of the transcontinental railroad,. you havenow if any of watched "hell on wheels" but the awnee don't get the credit on that show or anywhere else. had brought work on the union pacific line virtually to a halt. the army was incapable of catching these fast-moving, rating -- raiding bands of indians. warriorson of pawnee were recruited as regular soldiers. here is the battalion of two companies, a marvelous painting. e battalion mold a cheyenne war party so badly that raids on the railroad virtually stopped. i personally, from work on my book, think it is fair to say ehat the action of the pawne battalion shaved at least a year or more of the construction of the transcontinental railroad. who did chinese workers so much work on the central pacific railroad, the pawnee have been lost to history. as distractive as the fighting between tribes was, the what iibal fighting, think ultimately doomed the indian resistance was the end of the -- inability of individual tribes to maintain cohesion against the white threat. the only tribes that were united during this. were the tribes that accepted crow, pawneesence, . none of the tribes that were famous for fighting the government, the lakota, the apache, none of them were ever unified for war or peace. each had its war and peace factions that struggled for dominance within the tribe and they clashed sometimes violently with one another. these peace factions were obviously a potent fit column for the government -- fifth column for the government and army. particularlyer a poignant example of a tribe toward asunder over a question of making war or peace with white men. in the winter of 1866, the head chief died. there were two contenders for his position, kicking bird was one. he was just 32 years old. he advocated peaceful accommodation with whites. atanta was nearly 50, he was something of a lost ring stering braggart and was famous for being a killer and -- b.s. artist.timate he was austin and often painted teepee, his body, his wife and his horse the sacred color of red. they vied for power. tanta participated in nearly every rate against the army. he was incarcerated for having in what wasn parole called the red river war. kicking bird almost single-handedly kept most of the kyowa people out of the red river war, the great struggle for the southern plains. nevertheless, the army chose into selecting a quarter of kyowa to be imprisoned in florida for supposedly being instigators in the war. kicking bird faced an obvious dilemma. the kyowa were not responsible for instigating the war. secondly, to pick out members for your own tribe for incarceration was difficult, to say the least. mexican captives and tribal delinquents. he also selected a vicious chief who was second only to santanta as a war leader. kicking bird had complicity in ,electing members of his tribe and it cost him his life. as he saw the prisoners off with words of affection and promises that their imprisonment would be he was hexed. "you think you are free, a big man with the whites, but you will not live long." the next day, kicking bird died after drinking a cup of coffee. the person who treated him said that he had been poisoned with strychnine. the white man's road, and i am not sorry. tell my people to take the good path." unending hatred between whites and indians, kicking bird had foreseen the apocalypse. , i feara quaker friend blood must flow and my heart is sad. the white man is strong, but he cannot destroy us all in one year. it may take him to or three or four years. and then the world will turn to water or burn up. it is our mother and cannot live when all of the indians are dead. kicking bird'se words and review our myths. that the army was hell-bent on killing indians, that the government indian policy was extermination list and that the indians united against the whites feared i hope i have shot some arrows into the mix of the wars.hs of the indian i would be happy to take questions pertaining to the indian wars. [applause] >> the adobe walls, i was under the impression it was a short encounter. it sounds like there was a rescue and [indiscernible] how long did that encounter last? longe question was, how did the encounter at buffalo walls take, the impression being that the encounter was brief. charge on battle, the adobe walls was short in duration. , andndian leader was shot the medicine man who promised -- not amedicine choice name, he promised his medicine would render the indians bulletproof. after some of the indians had fallen, one of the buffalo hunters who had a rifle with the scope took aim at a gathering of indians on that ridge i was talking about at least half a mile away and fired a shot that hit his horse in the forehead and killed it and that effectively broke his medicine and the attacks ended. siege fordians laid the next three or four days. they were there. hope -- popeeneral assigned troops to go to the scene, the indians had left. >> was there ever an exchange between littlefield sheraton and president grant about genocide? genocide? se, but the per question was, was there ever a question -- conversation between sheraton and grant about genocide. not as such, not in the larger sense. i thank you for the question because this is free advertising for an article i have coming out in next month's smithsonian magazine. this is something that grants biographers have chosen to neglect. president grant had failed to buy the black hills, they had refused to sell, not because the black hills were sacred but because the price the government was offering was not enough. present grant got together a small cabal of like-minded plot as and officials to means of provoking more against the lakota, who were living off the reservation, but on land that had been promised to them in perpetuity. , and if secret cabal the army defeated the indians who were off the reservations, sitting bull's people and crazy horses people, that would convince them to sell the black hills. secret -- calbal was secret at the time and remained secret for a long time. it was not genocide, per se, but it provoked a conflict of that magnitude against the indians and it was that provocation by grant, sheraton and others that led to the great sioux war and little bighorn. in a matter of speaking, not genocide, but they talked about how to instigate the war. >> what was the role in the press -- of the press in the indian wars? what did the white americans of the east know what was going on? was there a general sentiment among editorialists in the east about pursuing these policies? >> the indian wars were extremely well covered by the press. the papers from "the new york tribune."the "chicago odoc war.moco stanley, he cut his teeth as a reporter for the indian wars and became drinking buddies with santanta. the east, generally speaking, was in favor of a piece policy approach, a humane policy. the western press, on the other hand, was more for genocide and extermination. fortunately, both the eastern and western press send correspondence to the field and they covered not just major but also minor campaigns. newspaper accounts are invaluable sources for the indian wars. they were well covered and generally pretty accurately covered. was muchin the east different than the west. >> can you hear me? so with unity and americans in mind, what your thoughts on the 21st century indian wars and the issues and standing rock right now? >> what are my thoughts on the issues of standing rock right now, and i'm going to claim a historians ignorance. ofm sincerely not a student present-day indian issues. i don't feel really competent to comment on the, to be entirely candid. >> is a plausible that these perpetrated by the government's commitment to two totallyd different cultures recently did not understand each other? >> i'm not sure i understand your question. >> the three myths you talked about, could they not have been fostered -- our government was committed to expansion of the country. >> the question was, were the three mess i talked about fostered because the government was completely committed to conquering the west, conquering all the land in the united states? no, i don't think so, i think they developed independently of government policy. and a think the government ever sought to perpetuate any of these takes on what was happening in the west, to the contrary. congress held hearings frequently never there was a major event in the west, be it the attack on black cattle, the sand creek massacre, any major event, congress held hearings. in some instances they invited indian chiefs to come to washington and testify and share their side of the story. no, the government was not responsible for propagandizing in creating these myths, i don't believe. >> time for two more questions. >> i'm not trying to exculpate the government, but i don't think they created the myths. ofwhat was the role [indiscernible] the question is, what was the role of art of creating the public perception of the indian wars? likee time, artists frederick remington, charles , i forget his name, a german artist, and others who -- the warse horse invariably, portrayed it to the lens of the united states military. i don't think i have any of the pictures up here, but the , into the the time early 20th century, invariably it was the gallant calvary slaying the indians. i think that played a great part in shaping public attitude during the indian wars and during the immediate afterwords, -- aftermath, as did a series of films by a man who went on to write many novels about the indian wars who continued to paint the soldiers as white nights. films, most of which are lost to us now, the earliest silent films, sicily to demille and b others, were sympathetic to the indians, oddly enough. that did not last long. the 1930's,s into cinema portrayed the indians as one-dimensional, cardboard of the whitenents settlers. what was the answer to your question about custer? theour opinion, was he characterization that little bit man has, the vein, ill-prepared, foolish man? >> there is the $64,000 question. what is my answer to question, was custer a reckless, vainglorious glory seeker? when i started my research, i was inclined to that view, i always tried to allow my research to guide my conclusions about historical figures. with aaway from the book good deal more regard for custer. he was in many ways a boy who never grew up, a boy who craved action, who could not live without action. he was also very complex. if he were anhat indian, he would behave exactly as the warriors -- the lakota warrior stood, and he often wished he were a warrior. , he loved to see his name on the front page of eastern newspapers, but he was not a full, he was not full ardy.y -- foolh he was acting on the best intelligence of the united states army at that time, and to the best army scouts. they reckoned that the indians, i forget exactly how many, maybe 500 indian warriors had gathered together in one village loosely under sitting bull's leadership. the trouble was, there had been terrible accretion of indians from reservations that were streaming into sitting bull's village for one last taste of the free way of life. the hunt buffalo one last time and fight for their way of life if necessary. unfortunately, the army was unaware of this, and in today's -- the days that transpired between when custer left for little bighorn and reached the crucial moment of whether or not to send into the valley and attacked the village, the village had grown from some 500 warriors to at least 1500. knowledge of this, he was acting on the best intelligence he had. general,ders from the to find an attack of the indians, use discretion, but to attack them. custer was wiped out, the general change the narrative. sheraton and grant both endorsed the lie. operating with the best intelligence he had, that the indian strength was less thathis regiment, and also the indian village of attack would break up and run, which it always been the case. was, -- and he actually did not want to attack wanted to wait and assemble his entire regiment , rest them overnight and then attack, and whether he would it divided his command to next day, who knows? cheyenne were some discovered on the back trail rifling through rations that had fallen off a mule, when he heard that, he thought, we have been discovered and we have to attack here it -- attack. long story short, he acted according to the best intelligence he had, according to the discretionary orders he had money and knowing that if the indians were aware of him, they would scatter, they would disperse. i think the only thing for which he can be faulted is splitting his command. i think that was a mistake. but again, that is hindsight. --i think he was a full, no fool, no. >> thank you. it will be signing copies of his book upstairs, so please join us and thank you all for attending this evening. >> you are watching american history tv am a 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. forow us on twitter information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. when you grow in environment like i did, you need a lot of people to play a heroic low -- role in your life, and fortunately i had that. this is really the story of how they impacted my life in positive ways. vanceday night, author jd talks about growing up in a poor appalachian family. clearre was not a connection that exist now in my mind between education and opportunities because even the people who did pretty well in school to not necessarily make a whole lot out of themselves. use also many people not really making having the opportunities, it was hard to believe that school mattered very much. eastern. night at 8:00 if you missed any of the presidential day, -- debate, you can see it at c-span.org. you can use the split screen or switch camera options. you can find the content you want quickly and easily and use our video clipping tool to create clips of your favorite debate moments to share on social media. on your desktop, phone or tablet. 50 years ago on october 15, 1966, president lyndon johnson printed -- signed a bill crating the u.s. department of transportation. 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