Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Thematic Question 2

What does the victor owe the defeated after a conflict?

The accounts of history are more often written by the victors than the defeated; and many times the defeated has no voice at all. The motives, plans, and excuses of the triumphant are the ones most told and because of this the winning side is often seen as the side that deserved the victory.

The Europeans that came into the new world of America came for different reasons. Some wanted religious or political freedom, some money, some adventure, and others any opportunity they could find. Once they came they began setting up their settlements, towns and trading posts. The Europeans wanted the American land because they saw how untainted it was and how much potential it had.

The settlers brought their culture and ideas with them to America to set up along with their homes. They established their churches, stores and schools to make the land into a livable and acceptable society. All of the Europeans had their ideas of how people should behave and the world should be run and were going to do what it took to make the new land what they believed it should be.

Most of the Europeans believed that the Indians were in the way. The Indians were a hindrance to what many of the Europeans were trying to do in America. The Indians did not dress or behave the way the Europeans did and they were on the land that the Europeans wanted. The Europeans were trying to progress and many found the Indians were backwards and needed to be civilized or taken care of in another way. When changing the Indians did not work some found it not only necessary but justifiable to move or destroy them by violence.

The Indians lived on the European’s new land; but it wasn’t new to them. The Indians had lived there for centuries before. They knew and loved the land that their ancestors had lived on before them and were buried in. It was sacred to many of them. The Indians watched as the Europeans came on to their land and set up their lives. The Europeans spoke, dressed and behaved different than the Indians did. The Indians saw the Europeans pushing in to their lands, and often without kindness.

Some Indians tried to welcome the white people, and some did the opposite, but in the end it didn’t matter; the white people began trying to change the Indians. Some Indians changed willingly, but others did not understand or want the European ways. The Indians saw themselves as being oppressed as the Europeans tried to press their ways upon them.

The Indians wanted to live their lives in their culture, but were met with aggression from the Europeans who found them unruly and in the way. The Indians who wanted to live their lives as they had before the white people arrived, and the Indians who refused to leave the land of their fathers found themselves in the midst of violence, reservations, terror, massacres, and eventually, a form of defeat. The Europeans succeeded in wiping out or pushing aside the Indians that lived on the land first.

The victorious party owes the defeated it’s story. When the Europeans killed or moved the last of the Indians and began telling the stories and writing the histories of America; how and why the Indians were displaced, the Indians should have been able to speak as well. The victorious owes the defeated the ability to tell the world and the people to come their motives, feelings, and reasons for fighting the battles they lost.