AN ENGLISH REDCOAT -- a 'tribute' to those 56 countries which Westminster has sent 'peace-keeping' troops to , and in memory of the six million native people murdered in those countries for resisting the 'efforts' of those 'peace-keepers' :
" I joined the Redcoats then – mo lein! – what would my father say?
And I was sent in one short year on service to Bombay.
I thought to be a pauper was the greatest human curse
But fighting in a robber’s cause I felt it ten times worse!
I helped to plunder and enslave those tribes of India’s sons
And we spent many a sultry day blowing sepoys from our guns.
I told these sins to Father Ned, the murder and the booty.
These were no sins for me, he said, I only did my “duty” ...
No sin to kill for English greed in some far foreign clime
How can it be that patriot love in Ireland is a crime ?
How can it be, by God’s decree, I’m cursed, outlawed and banned ?
Because I swore one day to free my trampled native land."
(From 'A FENIAN BALLAD' [aka 'Sweet Iveleary'] by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa)
Remembrance of Genocide -
In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated his plans, his motivation, and the precedents for the policies which, when he implemented when achieved power with the assistance of Britain.
Extermination or genocide was the norm in the British Empire, providing Hitler with the model for his East-land colony or Lebensraum. Many British authorities and writers stated this plainly, from Edmund Spenser and Cromwell through to the twentieth century. Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke was a prominent Liberal, expected to become party leader and Prime Minister until he was scuppered by a divorce case. Here is what he said about Empire in his book Greater Britain (1894): “The Anglo-Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth. Up to the commencement of the now inevitable destruction of the red Indians, of the Maoris and of the [native] Australians, no numerous race has ever been blotted out by an invader.”
What this means was demonstrated across the British Empire which projected itself by brute force and conquest around the world. Here is what happened in Tasmania:
"In 1830 Tasmania was put under martial law, a line of armed beaters was formed across the island, and an attempt was made to drive the aborigines into a cul-de-sac." (Moorehead, The Fatal Impact.) "The final extermination [of the Tasmanians] was a large-scale event, undertaken with the co-operation of the military and judiciary. Soldiers of the Fortieth Regiment drove the natives between two great rock formations, shot all the men and dragged the women and children out of fissures in the rocks to knock their brains out." (Ziehr, Hell in Paradise.)
And here is how Hitler put it in Mein Kampf:
"We will select the best settlement areas as land for German settlement ...we will deal with the population. ...we don't need to give ourselves any pangs of conscience about this ...after all we don't think of [Red] Indians when eating Canadian wheat. ... England ... was free to ... eat its frozen mutton [from Australia] without looking too closely into how they were produced. ... One task lies ahead: Teutonisation by bringing in Germans and regarding the original inhabitants as [Red] Indians. ... We will have to have a razzia [extermination war], square kilometre by square kilometre and constantly stringing people up. This is to be a real Indian War."
A Real Indian War: The Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, November 29, 1864:
In 1858 white settlers poured into Colorado, where the Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe lived after they had been ethnically cleansed by the settlers from the Great Lakes area a century or so previously, in a pattern repeated over and over again across the continent.
The conquest of the Irish took about a century (late 16th to late 17th century), the conquest of the Indians started a little later (early 17th century) and took nearly three centuries to accomplish. The parallel between these two conquests was fully obvious to settlers such as the genocidal Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh. Cromwell’s chaplain, the Rev Hugh Peters, was familiar with both Ireland and America: "The wild Irish and the Indian doe not much differ, and therefore would be handled alike … [Rather than] spend time about Castles and Forts, [we should] burne up the Enemies provisions every where." In other words, extermination by famine, disease and scorched earth.
An element among the settlers recognised the attractions of Indian life, and a few actually became Indian. Thomas Morton’s sympathetic 1637 account of the Indians includes: "Of their Houses and Habitations: The natives of New England are accustomed to build themselves houses much like the wild Irish."
A campaign of extermination was waged against the Colorado Indians after they were falsely accused of stealing 175 cattle, after they had attempted to make peace, and after they had handed over most of their weapons. The kind of scenes described below were replicated over and over again through the centuries, in America as in Ireland.
When a junior officer, Lieutenant Cramer, protested to Colonel Chivington against his attack on an Indian band (that means families of men, women and children), Chivington said: "I have come to kill Indians, and believe that it is right and honourable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians."
According to Cramer, Chivington ordered his troops to: "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice."
Chivington, a former Methodist minister, commanded a force of 700 soldiers against 500 Indians at Sand Creek, of whom about 100 were men of fighting age. The rest were women, children and old men.
Robert Bent, Chivington’s guide, reported:
"After the firing the warriors put the squaws and children together, and surrounded them to protect them. I saw five squaws under a bank for shelter. When the troops came up to them they ran out and showed their persons, to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all.There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick, she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed, and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Every one I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as I thought, lying by her side. Captain Soule afterwards told me that such was the fact .I saw quite a number of infants in arms killed with their mothers."
First Lieutenant James D. Connor, New Mexico Volunteers:
"About day break on the morning of the 29th of November we came in sight of the camp of the friendly Indians aforementioned, and were ordered by Colonel Chivington to attack the same, which was accordingly done. The command of Colonel Chivington was composed of about one thousand men; the village of the Indians consisted of from one hundred to one hundred and thirty lodges, and, as far as I am able to judge, of from five hundred to six hundred souls, the majority of which were women and children; in going over the battleground the next day I did not see a body of man, woman or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner – men, women, and children’s privates cut out, etc. I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman’s private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick - according to the best of my knowledge and belief these atrocities were committed with the knowledge of J.M. Chivington, and I do not know of his taking any measures to prevent them; I heard of one instance of a child of a few months being thrown in the feed-box of a wagon, and after being carried some distance left on the ground to perish; I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-boxes, and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks. "
Lieutenant Cramer:
" We arrived at the Indian village about daylight … Colonel Chivington moved his regiment to the front, the Indians retreating up the creek, and hiding under the banks. White Antelope ran towards our columns unarmed, and with both arms raised, but was killed. Several other of the warriors were killed in like manner. The women and children were huddled together, and most of our fire was concentrated on them . The Indian warriors, about 100 in number, fought desperately; there were about 500 all told. Our force was so large that there was no necessity of firing on the Indians. They did not return the fire until after our troops had fired several rounds . I told Colonel Chivington that it would be murder in every sense of the word, if he attacked those Indians. His reply was, bringing his fist down close to my face, ‘Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians’ -he had come to kill Indians and believed it to be honourable to kill Indians under any and all circumstances."
Ashbury Bird, Company D, 1st Colorado Cavalry:
"I went over the ground soon after the battle. I should judge there were between 400 and 500 Indians killed . Nearly all, men, women, and children were scalped. I saw one woman whose privates had been mutilated."
Corporal Amos C. Miksch, 1st Colorado Cavalry, Company C:
" Next morning after the battle, I saw a little boy covered up among the Indians in a trench, still alive. I saw a major in the 3rd regiment take out his pistol and blow off the top of his head. I saw some men unjointing fingers to get rings off, and cutting off ears to get silver ornaments. I saw a party with the same Major take up bodies that had been buried in the night to scalp them and take off ornaments. I saw a squaw with her head smashed in before she was killed. Next morning, after they were dead and stiff, these men pulled out the bodies of the squaws and pulled them open in an indecent manner. I heard men say they had cut out the privates, but did not see it myself."
Sergeant Lucien Palmer, 1st Colorado Cavalry, Company C:
" The bodies were horribly cut up, skulls broken in a good many; I judge they were broken in after they were killed, as they were shot besides. I do not think I saw any but was scalped; saw fingers cut off [to get the rings off them], saw several bodies with privates cut off, women as well as men."
David Louderbeck, 1st Colorado cavalry:
" The dead bodies of women and children were afterwards mutilated in the most horrible manner. I saw only eight. I could not stand it; they were cut up too much- they were scalped and cut up in an awful manner. White Antelope’s nose, ears and privates were cut off."
John S. Smith, interpreter:
" All manner of depredations were inflicted on their persons, they were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word - worse mutilated than any I ever saw before, the women all cut to pieces , children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors."
In celebration, Denver Opera House strung Indian scalps across the stage during intermission, to standing applause. A few months later, in July 1865 Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin addressed the Denver audience, and said that the choice was to put the Indians on reservations or to exterminate them. Doolittle wrote that the audience gave "...a shout almost loud enough to raise the roof of the Opera House – ‘Exterminate them! Exterminate them! Exterminate them....!"
(Doolittle’s proposal was for mere ethnic cleansing as opposed to genocide. Early photographs show the concentration camps or death camps – stockades guarded by military watchtowers – into which the Indians were sometimes herded to rot, starve and be murdered.)
Like the anti-Hitler resistance, the Indians often displayed spectacular heroism. Hitler was defeated by his intended victims in Russia within a few short years. The Indian ordeal went on for three centuries....
(By Pat Muldowney ,on this thread. )
And they dare to call us 'terrorists....'
Sharon.
