and who should we compensate?
Should we compensate the Kiowa and the Crows for the Black Hills, or do we compensate the Sioux who pushed out the Kiowa and Crows (at least if you can believe Dee Brown) without any sort of compensation?
"South of the Kansas-Nebraska buffalo ranges were the Kiowas. Some of the older Kiowas could remember the Black Hills, but the tribe had been pushed southward before the combined power of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. By 1860 the Kiowas had made peace with the northern plains tribes and had become allies of the Comanches, whose southern plains they had entered." (BMH pp 10-11)
"Although the Sioux were hereditary enemies of the Crows and had
driven them from their rich hunting grounds, Red Cloud himself
had recently made a conciliatory visit in hopes of persuading them
to join his Indian alliance ..." (BMH p 133)
Should we compensate the Sauk and Fox for taking Saukenuk from them (and paying for it with cash, livestock and over 400 square miles of land in Iowa).
Here's Blackhawk writing about how that village was founded. "They all descended Rock river - drove the Kas-kas-kias from the country, and commenced the erection of their village, determined never to leave it." (BA p 46)
How much payment did they give to the Kaskaskias again? Was it bupkus? Why yes, I think it was.
And what about the Apache, who invaded Colorado about the same time as Columbus infamous voyage?
"The Apaches of the region of southern Arizona found their one irreconcilable foe in the Pima, this being Pima country which the Apaches had INVADED. The Apaches centering in northeastern Arizona were on terms of basic hostility with such nearby people as those of Zuni and the later pueblo of Laguna (founded 1699), for the same basic reason: invasion or trespass. The word Apache, from a Zuni word meaning enemy ..." (Indians p. 353 (emphasis mine))
"Often, however, rather than trading, the Apacheans simply attacked Pueblo or Piman communities and took what they wanted - food, and sometimes slaves - by force. For the generally peaceful farmers, these raids were a terrifying intrusion which compelled them to fortify or move their settlements and engendered a deep hatred for the Dineh." (The Earth Shall Weep p 182)
Here's another example from Wilson, mentioning how much the government paid to just one small tribe.
"Before Termination, for example, the Menominee - who, like the Klamath, paid for virtually all their own services - cost Washington a mere $144,000 a year; by 1966, five years after withdrawal, the federal and state governments between them had spent a total of more than $6 million implementing the new policy and trying to deal with the chaos it created." (pp 375-76)
Yeah, in 1962 a mere $144,000 a year just for the Menominee, in 2014 dollars that is $1.13 million - every year. But then because of a policy change it cost $1.2 million a year for five years Or $44 million in today's money for the five years.
It's hard to get any sort of total, but clearly there has been at least a little bit of money spent trying to help the Native Americans (sometimes in admittedly counter-productive ways). In the meantime life was a picnic for the white settlers.
"In early Plains farming, hardship was extreme. The grasshoppers would have been nightmare enough. They came in clouds, sounding like hail on a house, sometimes covering the ground four to six inches deep; they could stop trains; and they ate indiscriminately." (The Legacy of Conquest p 126)
"The cost of a house, draft animals, wagon, plow, well, fencing, and seed grain could be as much as $1,000; many farmers succeeded on less than that, but they made up the difference in privation and hard labor." (op cit p 125)
Not to mention the money they make from gambling by virtue of being exempt from many US laws.
Clearly some of them still need help to be lifted out of poverty, but general free money based on race rather than need doesn't seem fair to me.
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