By: Dr. Frank Garcia Berumen
President Trump’s decision to have his Fourth of July celebration at Mount Rushmore Memorial, in the Black Hills, South Dakota is another example of the Euro-American amnesia regarding Native American genocide.
The giant statutes at Mount Rushmore were built between 1927 and 1941. The sculptor was Gutzon Borglum, who was a member of the infamous Ku Klux Klan. Gutzon was one of the six knights who sat on the Imperial Koncilium in 1923. Borglum, the elder, was assisted in his artistic endeavors by his son Lincoln Borglum, who apparently did not share his father’s racial beliefs.
No human being is perfect, not the great men or the common man. All have flaws and contradictions of morality and character. However, there are several issues that challenge the human beings to oppose deeds and behavior that are reprehensible and wrong. History has documented the examples of many men and women, who took the courageous course of dissent and/or opposition to injustice. As we reflect on our history we must honor the good; and decry the evil that men do.
The four U.S. Presidents honored at Mount Rushmore, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt were proponents of Manifest Destiny. The latter is the discredited theory that Europeans were destined by God himself, no less, to annihilate and rob all the indigenous land from “sea to shining sea.”
Although, George Washington (1789-1797) is considered the “father of the nation,” he was nevertheless the architect of the annihilation of native people by any means necessary and the appropriation of all their lands. In 1775, General Washington in response to the stiff resistance by five of the Iroquois Nations ordered Major General John Sullivan to “to lay waste all the settlements around…that the country may not merely overrun but destroyed…{Y} ou will not by any means, listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected….Our future security will be, in their inability to injure us…And in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them.”
In 1785, the Treaty of Hopewell signed by the U.S. government and the Cherokee prohibited white settlement east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Nevertheless, the Washington administration refused to enforce the treaty as thousands of white settlers and settler militias swarmed to burn, destroy, and pillage the lands; and move in. This are only two examples of Washington’s commitment to decimate the indigenous tribes as the new nation began to expand to the west. Finally, it is a well-known fact, that Washington was prosperous plantation owner with hundreds of African slaves.
President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), may be have been one of the “best and the brightest” of the founding fathers, but his reputation is tarnished by his merciless military campaigns against Native Americans. Jefferson is credited with writing most of the Declaration of Independence. This eloquently phrased document states that “all men are created equal.” However, the document also refers to indigenous people as, “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all age, sexes and conditions.” It is obvious in the Declaration of Independence that native peoples were not “created equal.” Upon becoming president, Jefferson continued Washington’s agenda of Manifest Destiny in its expansion to the West.
Jefferson is also responsible for the purchase of the so-called Louisiana Purchase in 1803; and the brutal colonization of those indigenous lands. In 1800, Spain ceded to France what became known as the Louisiana Purchase. It was is another example how Europeans took it upon themselves to make pompous declarations based on the Doctrine of Discover; and take over the land of indigenous peoples, without their consent or knowledge. According to historian Bernard Sheehan, Jefferson had two policies for Native Americans. One was their assimilation; and two, the forced removal to the West. However, Jefferson had another policy and one that he actually favored over the others. Jefferson told Secretary of War General Henry Dearborn (at that time Indian affairs fell under the War Department), “If we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated or driven beyond the Mississippi.” Finally, Jefferson, was a wealthy plantation owner, who used slaves to works his fields and service his household.
President Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) is considered the greatest president of the United States by many. His presidency included the Civil War; and the passage of the landmark Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. However, Lincoln’s policies toward indigenous peoples are ignored by many mainstream historians.
In truth, Lincoln ran for president to win over “free-soilers.” These were white settlers that demanded that federal government open up indigenous lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1859, the Dakota Sioux had been reduced to starvation as a deluge of white settlers pour into their lands. In 1862, they mounted a rebellion to push out, the mostly Scandinavian and German settlers.
Lincoln quickly sent in a Union Army to put down the rebellion. They murdered indigenous civilians; and rounded up suspects in the hundreds. Of these, three-hundred were sentenced to death. However, Lincoln was cognizant of public opinion and foreign countries, that he was anxious to win support in the midst of the Civil War.
As a result, he reduced the number of Native Americans to be hung at random to thirty-eight. It became the largest mass hanging in U.S. History. By any measure of law, these native combatants should have been considered prisoners of war, as they had never taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Native Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924. During his tenure in office, Lincoln conducted ongoing “Indian Wars” of annihilation and forced removals in the West
Undaunted, by his wars against native people, Lincoln passed the Homestead Act (1862), which took Native. American lands by force and gave it to 1.5 million white homesteaders. The Morril Act (1862) took more indigenous land to build land-grant colleges. The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 gave private companies some two million acres of native land. The excuse was that they needed this land to build the transcontinental railroad and its tributary track.
The fourth president honored at Mount Rushmore is Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). Although, his legislation on conservation was commendable. He did so, by removing the native tribes that lived in the areas, where the national parks would be established.
In a speech in New York City, in 1886, Roosevelt stated “I wouldn’t go so far as to think that the only go Indian is a dead Indian, but I believe that every nine out of ten are.” He firmly believed in the superiority of the white man and held darker peoples in contempt.
He was an avid proponent of the Monroe Doctrine, a belief and policy that gave the United States the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin America. Roosevelt’s most notorious action was fermenting a revolution in Columbia (the northern-most country in South America) and then having the puppet rebels to break away as the independent nation of Panama.
cThe newly created nation of Panama, then quickly gave the United States for a canal. In 1903, the United Sates built the Panama Canal. Roosevelt was not apologetic and often boasted, “I took it, and I built it!”
All the aforementioned is history, but most people are unaware of this history. Others, simply perhaps don’t. There is mass ignorance of many, about Native American history. This reflects on the negligence of educational institutions, the ethnocentric curriculum in schools, and the fact that they never bother to teach Native American history.
There have been many efforts by many, before and now, to eradicate the ugly legacy of racism. Mount Rushmore is an ugly symbol of white supremacy and Native American genocide. The Treaty of Fort Laramie (or the Sioux Treaty of 1868) supplanted the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.
The newer treaty set aside the Great Sioux Reservation, which included the Black Hills. Article II of the treaty stated that it would be for the “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians.” In the U.S. Supreme Court case the United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians (1980) ruled that the federal government had illegally taken the Black Hills recognized in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
The high court granted an award for $15.5 million based on the market value of the land in 1877 to the present. By the year 2012, the interest had added up to the amount to more than one billion dollars. However, the Lakota Sioux have refused to take the money and continue to demand the rightful return of the Black Hills.
It is overdue this nation reckons with this history. It needs to undo the legacy of Manifest Destiny, indigenous genocide, and white supremacy. It is only by doing this, can the healing begin. We owe it to ourselves, to our children, and to our children’s children.
Dr. Berumen is an educator and writer. He has a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and has taught grammar school, middle school, high school, and at a university. He has written several books on the Native American and Mexican American experience. His latest book is entitled American Indian Image Makers of Hollywood (McFarland & Co., Inc.).
Copyrighted 2020 by Frank Garcia Berumen. All rights reserved. This article may not be duplicated in any form either in part or in whole without the expressed written permission of the author.
Source: Dr. Frank Garcia Berumen
