Crossroads:
The 1862 Great Sioux Uprising and its geopolitical implications for today
A two part series by Joseph E. Fallon
Part 1
Lincoln's template for the dispossession of American Indians
One of the first Indian treaties to be broken by the United States was a colonial treaty with the Wea tribe. In 1751, "the Wea and the Piankashaw signed a treaty with the British and accepted an alliance with the Pennsylvania colony." With the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Wea allied themselves with the British. It was a fateful decision. As the war ended, the Wea wrote to London. "In endeavoring to assist you, it seems we have wrought our own destruction."
By a series of new treaties with the new republic, the Wea were forced further and further West. The process of dispossessing the Wea took seventy years. In 1862, Lincoln created a template to expediate dispossession of American Indians in months instead of decades.
War is a pendulum swinging back and forth between victory and defea, writes Joseph E Fallon. Its momentum is maintained by the gravity of human nature and human passions, maintained not just by emotions, but by blind arrogance and a blinder illusion.